We've deployed a few improvements and fixes today, which we'd like to share with you:
Firstly, there have been some behind the scenes changes to how Backgammon matches determine the starting player. In Backgammon it is random who goes first in every game. This means that the piece colour does not indicate who gets to go first. There shouldn't be much to notice here, but if you notice any problems with any of Backgammon, Nackgammon or Hyper please let us know.
We've been able to make a few Backgammon improvements along with this change:
- The end of tournament stats (for both Arena and Swiss) now display the win % by who went first in the game ('Player 1') or second ('Player 2'). This is only true for tournaments from this moment on. All previous tournaments are still displaying this data segregated by piece colour (less useful). White is 'Player 1' and Black is 'Player 2'.
- The number of turns required to trigger arena rules regarding berserk bonus points etc is now standardised no matter who the starting player is.
- The mini boards now update at every dice roll and piece movement, and the correct player colour icon is shown next to the usernames in all cases.
We also have some other fixes/changes that aren't specific to Backgammon:
- Where appropriate, mini boards now display the game score. Think Oware, 3-check, Backgammon, Go, Othello etc.
- In studies, you can now colour moves using the 'annotate with glyphs' tool. For example setting a move to '!! - Brilliant Move' will make it appear dark green, '?? - Blunder' is red, '!? - Interesting Move' is pink... This copies the annotation colours that lichess use, and appears in the move log and on the board.
- In Swiss tournaments where multiple games are played for each pairing (using the setting 'Best of X'/'Play X games') the pairings are now made using the true points scored in the tournament, which gives more accurate pairings.
- A bug that was preventing users from creating a Chess 'From Position' game against a friend has now been fixed. We have plans to extend the 'From Position' feature to all our variants in 2025...
As always, please let us know if you come across any problems. Happy gaming!