Clubroom

How to play

Controls, then the numbers that matter

1. 01

   Your club rating starts at 800 and moves after every game at even against a member, by the Elo formula against their rating: up to 40 points a game for your first ten games, up to 24 after that. A hint, a takeback, the evaluation bar or a look at the analysis board during the game makes it unrated, and a win then earns no trophy. Odds games are never rated, and a win at odds is not a member's trophy.

2. 02

   Once you have played a member at even, they will give you a knight. Once you have beaten them at even, you can give them a knight, then a rook once you win that, then the queen once you win giving a rook. Each member's card on the Play tab marks the odds you have won, and the result card says what to play for next.

3. 03

   Starting a new game abandons the unfinished one, and a rated game abandoned counts as a loss. Otherwise an unfinished game comes back after a reload, and its clock kept running while the page was closed.

4. 04

   While the other side thinks you can premove: pick up a piece and drop it, and the move plays the moment theirs lands, if it is still legal. A click anywhere on the board cancels it.

5. 05

   Game review judges a move by how much of your winning chance it gave away, not by pawns: under 2% is excellent and under 5% good, ?! is an inaccuracy (under 10%), ? a mistake (under 20%) and ?? a blunder. ! marks the only good move in the position, and !! a sacrifice that still holds.

6. 06

   Review a game against a member and each move of yours marked ?, ?? or a miss, played while your winning chance was between 20% and 97%, goes into the Lamp's notes under Puzzles (Your games), to find a better move. Any move the review would call good counts (under 5% of your winning chance given away), as the Lamp judges it, not proved like the box. A note leaves when you put it right at the first try; the notes keep your newest 30 and never move your puzzle rating.

7. 07

   Puzzles come from a box of 56, rated 600 to 2000, an unsolved one near your puzzle rating each time; yours starts at 1000. A wrong first try or Show solution counts against you, a hint leaves that puzzle unrated, and on the last move any mate counts. A puzzle whose solution you were shown is not counted as solved: the box deals it again later, unrated that time.

8. 08

   Each day the Puzzles tab sets one puzzle from the box for everyone, new at midnight, Taipei time: Monday's from the gentlest seventh of the box and Sunday's from the hardest, and each of the 56 comes round once in eight weeks. It keeps its own record (the days you played, how many at the first try, your best run of days), a missed day costs nothing, and it never moves your puzzle rating. Copy the line puts your result on the clipboard as text.

9. 09

   Right-drag draws an arrow and right-click marks a square; hold Shift for green or Ctrl for red. A left click clears them all.

10. 10

    V steps the camera through three heights: your seat at 57°, nearly straight down from overhead, and low across the board at 36°. Pass and play turns the board to whoever is to move after every move; untick Turn the board after every move to keep it still.

11. 11

    D swaps the table for the diagram, the board as a chess book prints it: engraved dark squares (or an ink wash, in Settings), the file and rank of the square in hand inked in brass in the margin, a caption under the board with the last move and whose move it is, and in review the annotator's glyph on the square the move went to. The choice is kept with your settings, and the diagram is the board on any device that cannot draw the 3D table.

12. 12

    In Analysis the Lamp shows its three best lines for the position on the board. Paste a FEN or a PGN and Load it, step through with ← →, and Review these moves gives any line a full game review.