
ChessLab
Play, analyze, improve
About
What's New in ChessLab
1.8
September 7, 2026
NINE CHARACTERS TO FACE Next to Stockfish's Elo level, pick an opponent with a personality: Lena the attacker, Nils the wall, Milo the gambiteer, Nadia the technician, Sacha the trapper, Ana the counter-attacker, Yuri the materialist, Pablo the impulsive one, and Maia the reference. They are played by Maia-3, a network trained on millions of human games: it does not look for the best move, it plays the one a human of that level would play — blunders included when the level is low. Each has a style, an opening repertoire, a temperament and an illustration; the level is set and remembered per character, on the human scale (close to Lichess). Everything runs on the device, offline. STOCKFISH ANALYZES, AND COVERS Hints, blunder alert, evaluation bar and analysis are still Stockfish's. Behind a character it only steps in for a short mate, an endgame with few pieces or a repetition in a won position — and the end-of-game screen says so. PROGRESS AND LAB Your record against each character, with the highest level beaten. In the Lab, one side can be played by Maia. FOUR MORE VARIANTS — THE HUB GROWS TO 12 Crazyhouse (captures switch sides and get dropped back), Duck Chess (a duck blocks a square, two-part turns), Barricades (d4 and e5 walled) and Random Barricades (the walls move after every move). All against the computer, post-game analysis included. A GUIDED TOUR, AND VARIANT ANALYSIS COMPLETE Eleven short steps on first launch, replayable from Help. All twelve variants get the same analysis as the classic mode: curve, per-color accuracy, colored inline moves. "Offer a draw" works everywhere. RELIABILITY AND LAYOUT Six engine failure mechanisms fixed in depth; above 2850, variant strength is no longer limited instead of silently dropping to 1350; mode grid on the iPad and Mac home; layout revisited on large windows and small iPhones.
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