Chess Lab 4+

- IN THIS RELEASE (4.4.0)

• Fixes and improvements in move annotation management: new symbols have been added for handling annotations.
• Minor bug fixes, general improvements and optimizations.

- MAIN FEATURES INTRODUCED IN THE LATEST RELEASES

• Chess Lab is enhanced with a new feature: the ability to browse an Online Database of games organized by Year and Tournament. Currently, the years considered range from 1960 to the present, but tournaments from years prior to 1960 will also be added. This extensive Online Database will be updated daily with new tournaments and games. Access to this database requires a symbolic Premium subscription.

• The new version of the Stockfish 17 engine with Neural Network (NNUE) support has been integrated. According to the authors, this version brings a gain of up to 46 ELO points and an increase in speed. Compared to version 14, this version can analyze games 6 times faster.

• A new training feature has been added: the user can load a game from a database and decide whether to move for White or Black without seeing the moves to evaluate his skills. At the end a report will be produced that traces the entire training session. It is possible to use this functionality either by choosing the game to train with or by letting the application decide the game in random mode. To use this functionality, some settings are possible via an appropriate interface. There are various ways to access this functionality, for example from the menu at the top center of the chessboard screen. In future versions of the application this training mode will be expanded and enhanced.

• Chess Studio can now read databases in ChessBase format. It can import cbh, cbp, cbt, cbg, cba, cbs and cbc formats, thus it is able to interpret not only the moves of a game but also the variations and comments.

• A new section dedicated to training has been added. At the moment it is possible to solve a series of puzzles taken from games played mainly online. These are puzzles suitable for all players. There are currently 10,000 puzzles available but they will be continuously updated. Other types of puzzles of increasing difficulty will be included in the future.

• New feature: Search for games by position. This new feature is found in the main menu under the "PGN Tools" section. It allows you to search for games in a database starting from a given position. The position can be set both with normal pieces but also with different symbols that have different meanings. In this way it will be possible to search, for example, all the games that have a typical pawn structure regardless of the position of the other pieces.

• Management of very large databases.

• Automatic insertion of engine analysis into games. To enter the analysis, simply touch the engine analysis line. To use this feature you need to activate it in the application settings.
• The new function "Search games by material" has been added, through which it is possible to search for games in a database according to the material present on the chessboard. This new functionality is accessed from the main menu of the application.

• New feature that allows you to delete tags in a database.

• In the Chess Board screen, you can customize the colors of the top bar, bottom bar, buttons and background. The customization is done in the Settings section. In the opening section is the new functionality to explore the Lichess Master Opening Tree. It is now possible to activate the speech synthesizer to announce the moves made both when entering and when viewing a game.

• From the opening section of a database it is possible to save the games relating to a single ECO code or to a single opening variant in a new database. To do this, just swipe left on the opening variant you want to save and follow the directions.

• Contact me at chess.studio.app@gmail.com to organize a Skype session.