ChessPro – Scrabulous Builders Bring Us Chess

ChessPro is the newest Facebook application from the guys that brought us Scrabulous.

Here’s a quick screenshot before I head into some details.

The pieces are immediately recognizable on the default board. Classic choices here for black and white pieces.  Above the game is show the game number, and the opening name.  This feature alone makes this version of online chess a notch above.

Over to the right is the menu, allowing viewing of all open games, statistics, and more.  From words to pictograms though as you move down.  The next menu row is of symbols. Those of you who play Scrabulous will be some what at home with those.

The buttons from left to right are:

Settings, Capture Pieces, Move History, Refresh Board, Move List, Delete/Resign, Help

Below the buttons is the player names, and rankings.  The rankings are based solely on games played with ChessPro.

Next down is the shown the last move.  The notation choice here is standard alpha numeric. This will allow for easier use across languages and skill levels.

Underneath the message box area are three colored dots.  One is refresh, one flips the board, and the last shows captured pieces.

One additional feature here, not present in Scrabulous, is the private notes area.  This area is only visible to you as a player.  The probable intended use is for annotating your games.  Notes are free form.

Several people already show up as users. Some friends and I have started a few games

My initial thought is that this will likely become my home for chess on Facebook.  The game play seems bug free, and the game appears to be built on the same framework as Scrabulous.  I expected it will scale well with much use.

I already have feature requests too:

- allow me to export completed games – at least the moves

- allow handicapping

- allow game snapshots to be posted to the news feed – or at least share the game in the stream

Looks good though. And you can find me playing there.