Changelog

Three articles to start

• Articles sits between Learn and Leaderboard in the menu.
• How Magnus Carlsen names a famous game from one position
• Adriaan de Groot's 1944 test of chess memory, by the numbers
• How Judit Polgár played blindfold chess at age seven
• Every article has a portrait, a fact file, the sources it draws on, and a drill that opens a round sized to the story.
• After every round, the result screen suggests one article and sets its drill beside the round you just played.
• The articles can be read in every language the game supports. The other languages are translated from English with AI assistance.

The articles are researched and drafted with AI assistance, then checked against their sources before they go up. If you spot a mistake, please tell us through the contact page.

Made to be read

• Open an article from the list and its portrait moves into place while the text types in. Press Show all text to skip the typing.
• Arrive from a search engine, or refresh the page, and the whole article is there at once.
• If your device asks for reduced motion, the movement and the typing are skipped.

Views and likes

• Each article shows how many times it has been viewed and liked.
• Like an article with one tap. Your like is remembered in your browser, with no account.
• Sort the list by newest, most viewed or most liked.
• No visitor identifier is stored. The privacy page says exactly what is kept.

Your last settings, remembered

One of you wrote: "When clicking 'New game' the view should keep the last settings we played with." Fair point, and thank you for writing it down. Every new game used to snap back to Medium, whatever you had just played.

• New game now opens on the pieces and look time you last played, whether that was a preset like Hard or your own mix, such as 3 pieces with 18 seconds to look.
• Your settings stay put after a reload, in a new tab, and the next time you visit, on the same browser.
• A link that names a level or a drill, like the buttons in the guides, still opens exactly that setup.

Keep the suggestions coming. This one took a single sentence in the feedback box to set off.

A simpler settings page

• The Difficulty and time controls on the settings page never changed the game. They are gone, because the game screen is where you choose, and it now remembers. Board coordinates stay on the settings page.

Faster on phones

• On a typical phone the home page and the game now paint their main text in about 1.4 to 1.5 seconds, down from up to 3.8. The game screen arrives ready instead of waiting for scripts, and pages no longer download fonts they never use.

Fly your flag on the leaderboard

A score used to be a name and a number. Now it can say where you played from, if you want it to.

• Pick a country when you submit a score, and its flag sits beside your name on the board.
• The globe is the default, because not everyone wants to say where they are. Leave it alone and it stays a globe.
• Start typing to find a country instead of scrolling the whole list.
• Your choice is remembered for next time, the same way your game settings are.
• Every score already on the board keeps the globe. Nothing was guessed on your behalf.

We now say when a score is worth submitting

• Finish a round and the result screen tells you, in one line, whether that score reaches the leaderboard.
• It compares against the lowest score actually on that board, so it is an answer rather than encouragement. On the quieter boards there is still room, and it says so.
• The line appears only when the answer is yes, and it leaves once you have submitted.

The knight that was scored as a king

One of you wrote: "The system doesn't see the placed knight and shows that it has been missed." You were exactly right, and it was worse than it looked.

• Every knight you placed was recorded as a king, so a knight on the right square was marked wrong. Rebuild a six-piece position perfectly with one knight in it and you scored 67%.
• It could take a second piece down with it. Once a knight had claimed a square as a king, the next king or knight of that colour silently failed to appear at all.
• Knights are knights again. A perfect rebuild scores 100%, as it always should have.

If your scores looked stingy, they were. Sorry about that.

Pieces that vanished when you played fast

Another note: "the pieces I put on the board originally isn't exactly the submitted position board... especially if I put some pieces fast." Also exactly right.

• A hidden timer was throttling taps, and when they came close together it threw the earlier ones away. Tap eight squares quickly and four of them never happened.
• Every tap now lands, however fast you go.
• Removing a piece straight after placing it works too. That used to be ignored for half a second.

A board that stays put

• The board no longer jumps or slides when the timer runs out and it is your turn to place. It stays exactly where it was.
• Memorising and placing no longer scroll. The board is sized to the screen you actually have, so there is nothing to scroll to.
• On a phone the board is bigger and sits 4px from the edge instead of 15px, so the squares are easier to hit. The timer and the piece tray now line up with the board's edges instead of drifting wider than it.

Quicker under the finger

• Every tap used to wait 50 milliseconds before anything happened, whether you were rushing or not. That pause is gone.
• The board also redraws less. Keeping track of a tap no longer re-renders all 64 squares, and the selected square's highlight animates only the two properties that actually change.
• The ring marking the square you tapped is now drawn on all four sides. It always had been on two.

Housekeeping

• The board used to be told how big to be, worked out from a hand-written guess at how much room everything else needed. Five copies of that guess had to agree with each other, and they drifted apart, which is how a good deal of the above went unnoticed. The board now measures the space it has, and the guess is gone along with 73 lines of code.
• One stray English line on the memorise screen had escaped the 24-language release. It now counts your pieces in all of them, in the right plural.

Both of the bugs above came from the feedback box after a game. If something feels off, tell us — it is by far the fastest way to get it fixed.

24 languages

• Memory Chess is now available in 24 languages: English, Spanish, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, German, French, Hindi, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Turkish, Swedish, Dutch, Polish, Indonesian, Norwegian, Finnish, Romanian, Vietnamese, Czech, Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Danish, and Hungarian.
• Everything you read while playing is translated, from the home page and settings to the timer, the results screen, the leaderboard, and this changelog.

As of September 2026, this changelog is back to English only. The game itself still plays in all 24 languages.

All 16 Learn guides, in every language

• Every guide in Learn has been translated in full. The practice steps, the drills, the weekly plan, and the questions at the end all read naturally in your language, with chess terms that match how players actually speak it.

As of September 2026, the Learn guides are in English only, and two of them have been merged into others. Chess board vision drills is now part of How to stop blundering in chess, and Working memory exercises for chess is now part of Chess calculation exercises for beginners. The game itself still plays in all 24 languages.

Switch language whenever you like

• A globe at the top of every page opens the language list. Each language is written in its own name, so you can find yours without reading English first.
• Choosing a language keeps you exactly where you were, and Memory Chess remembers your choice the next time you visit.

We try to get it right before you ask

• New visitors now start in the language their browser or region suggests, whenever we have it. If the guess is wrong, the globe is right there to fix it.

Steadier gameplay

• Thanks to helpful player feedback, the board now stays in the same place when memorization ends and placement begins. The controls and piece picker line up with the board too.
• Page headers, sound controls, and spacing now stay more consistent as you move through the game. Board pieces and labels can no longer be selected by accident.

Better random positions

• Thanks to a player who reported this on Reddit, random positions no longer place kings beside each other, two bishops for one side on the same square color, pawns on the first or eighth rank, or both kings in check.

Clearer results

• After each game, you can now compare the position you memorized with the board you submitted. Clear markers show correct, incorrect, and missed pieces.
• Your accuracy and the main replay and leaderboard actions now stay together at the top of the results. Missed pieces use a clear black dotted outline while the board remains visible underneath.

A clearer finish

• When you submit, the timer stops for one second so you can see your locked-in time and final board before the results appear. A quick GAME! flash marks the end of the round, and the placement timer now shows milliseconds.

Some statistics for everyone!

Here is a snapshot of public leaderboard submissions through August 16, 2026.

Among 50 repeated player-name and difficulty combinations, 33 had a faster latest solution and 17 had a slower one. Accuracy improved strongly overall, but taking more time can also lead to a better score. These figures cover voluntary leaderboard submissions, not every game, and the Easy leaderboard is limited to its top 200 entries.

Thank you for playing

• A huge thank you to everyone who helped Memory Chess reach more than 800 monthly players and over 32,000 games played. We are especially grateful to everyone who shared ideas, encouragement, and bug reports through the Contact Us page or the end-of-game feedback form. Every game and message helps Memory Chess keep growing.

Learn and improve

• Explore new, easy-to-follow guides for chess memory and visualization.
• The refreshed home page now explains how Memory Chess trains your spatial memory.

Everyday improvements

• Mobile play, piece setups, and leaderboard rankings are more reliable.
• Game sounds now start at a gentler 10% volume.

Feedback and updates

• You can now rate the game after you play and see new releases in the changelog. The feedback prompt appears at most once a day.
• A new privacy page explains saved settings, analytics, feedback, and future ads in simple language.

Piece selection

• The color picker has a fresh new look.
• It is easier to see which color you picked.
• Buttons now feel smoother and more consistent.

Mobile play

• The game, timer, and Skip button fit small screens better.
• Taps and spacing feel better on mobile.
• Sounds behave better as you move through the game.