Hallo,

wie erwartet hat sich chessnut zeitnah gemeldet...lt. deren Aussage, ist mein schnellerer Expressversand wie gewuenscht versendet worden.
Da der schnellere Express eine Nachbestellung von mir war und unter einer zweiten Ordernummer registriert war, wurde die Bestellung unter der alten Nummer zusammen gefuegt und tauchte dort dann nicht sichtbar auf.
Aber Chessnut hat es deutlich bestaetigt, dass der schnellere Versand ausgefuehrt wurde.
Damit sollte alles geklaert sein (hoffe ich mal)

Gruss

Andre

I've only had a quick test of the Evo and first impressions are overall good.
Here is a brief summary of my findings so far:

Positive points:

It seems to have good build quality. A large and quite heavy board approx 32cm x 36cm, so not really portable.

Piece recognition works flawlessly and so it should of course.

The chess pieces are plastic but have a nice design and size. This King is 6cm tall and the base is 2cm in diameter. They have a reasonable weight so don't easily fall over in my experience.

The display is large and very clear, essentially as Android Tablet as we all know.

I have only briefly tested using the Evo with Chess.com and the Evo's so called Chessnut Vision technology, and this so far is working very well. Rapidly identifying board positions from the web site and highlighting positions of the pieces on the board with white coloured LED's. Changing colour schemes on Chess.com does cause issues though, but using the default scheme causes no issues.

I don't know if the Google Store App would work, it is not pre-installed and I suspect not. Chessnut say that APKPure works and I can confirm this is the case. Using APKPure was able to install F-Droid which then enabled me to install DroidFish. This program partially works with the Chessnut vision. Moves made on the board are entered into the program automatically and moves made by the engine are highlighted on the board. However, for setting up positions, this has to be done manually from the Droidfish program, but the Evo then highlights the positions on the board. Overall this works very well.

Negative Points/bugs

If any 'bot' is set to play with the White pieces on a time control it will never make a move and lose the game on time! I have emailed Chessnut about this. It will play as white when there is no time limit which leads to the second issue.

Whatever time control is set either no time limit or to the maximum of 3 minutes, any selected 'bot' e.g. Stockfish, Maia etc. will always moves virtually instantly not making use of the available time to consider positions more deeply. This is the case with any of the available ELO settings. So setting the built-in Stockfish16 engine to the highest ELO rating available on the EVO of 2850, it will still make its moves instantly. Now for me, even with SF16 moving instantly at 2850, I'm still going to lose! But, if we are hoping to test a Maia bot with say the CGPro, something I will do, then I wonder how accurate the Evo's ELO level settings are? Is Maia set to 1900 ELO going to win against CGPro set at a similar strength or lose badly because its not thinking for long enough?

When playing a game, there is an evaluation graph which is good, but we don't get the traditional analysis info, node count, best line, eval etc. Although the graph does show the eval on the curve.

There is no infinite analysis mode with the built in SF or other bots. There is an analysis option and this will work out a move for a position but you will just see a spinning disc for a couple of seconds and then it displays a move. So no good for a deep thorough analysis. The fall back solution of course is to use F-Droid and then everything is possible!

There is an option to take back moves when playing a 'bot' but this is not working perfectly. I find that sometimes it will take back a ply but then sometimes nothing is taken back until I go back two ply. If I try taking back to the start it wont take back the first move of the game. Of course, we could just start a new game, but obviously this is not working as it should.

These are my findings after a brief initial test. I will report what I have found to Chessnut but they may already know about these issues.

I get the feeling the built-in engines (bots) are just meant for human/machine play and move instantly on purpose. This is fine and I'm not disappointed because the playing strength is going to be more than enough for me.

I do feel this is quite a departure from a normal dedicated machine. The Android tablet really enforces this idea. That said, it does make some sense to use such a device with its high processing power etc., but then have the advantage of a real board and pieces, so I feel this is a plus point.

It was good to find out I could install the Droidfish program that certainly provides the missing features but at the same time this somehow feels even more of a departure from a dedicated machine.

The Evo must be considered as just a tool for learning and playing chess in a very convenient form factor, and indeed it is very convenient. So although we have the Android tablet bolted onto the side, playing with nice chess pieces on a real board that seamlessly integrates with many websites is quite pleasurable in my opinion.

Ray

Hallo Andre,
ich habe seit dem 20.11. eine Sendungsnummer von DPD für den Evo, aber der Status ist weiterhin "die Sendung ist angekündigt". Der Service von Chessnut schrieb, dass das Gerät per Express verschickt wird. Merkwürdig.

Hast du auch eine Sendungsnummer von DPD?

Herzliche Grüße
Harry

Hallo Harry,

ich habe zwar eine Trackingnummer bekommen, aber ich kann sie (noch nicht) zu keinem Dienstleister zuordnen.
Ich denke, dass die kommenden Tage ein Update per mail kommt..dann kann ich von meiner Seite auch mehr sagen.

Gruss

Andre

Weiß jemand wie lange es dauern wird bis dieser gute Computer auch bei uns verfügbar sein wird? Übrigens: Endlich mal was Gscheits!

I reported the bugs I found with the EVO and Chessnut replied saying the bug with EVO playing with the white pieces in a timed game and not making a move will be fixed in the next release. They are also going to increase the thinking time so that SF16 will make more accurate moves. I have e-mailed again with some more suggestions one being to add average levels, user-programmable time controls and infinite analysis. Lets see if they decide to implement them but they seem to be a very responsive company.

The bug with taking back moves I believe is only if the back arrow button is pressed. I had neglected to try just physically moving the pieces back! I will give that a go when I get back to my Evo. However, the buttons should also work otherwise no point in having them!

Ray

Hallo Harry,

ich hab auch bereits eine Trackingnummer. Leider auch DPD, die schmeißen die Pakete immer vom Gartentürchen im hohen Bogen vor die Haustür. Hoffentlich überlebt das der Evo

Status ist ebenfalls seit 20.11 lediglich „Auftragsdaten übermittelt“. Tracking wird erst funktionieren, wenn die Evos in Deutschland angekommen sind. Laut der letzten Info ist das erwartete Lieferdatum bei dem fast track Mitte Dezember. Also müssen wir uns wohl oder übel noch ein paar Tage gedulden.

__________________
Gruß Tobias

Bei mir genauso. DPD hat die Sendung wohl am 21.11. übernommen, aber seitdem nichts mehr upgedated. Aus meiner Sicht ist das aber schon recht lange her, falls dies ein normaler Flugzeugversand ist. Habe vor einer Woche ein MacBook Pro aus China erhalten. Da lagen zwischen Verlassen des Werks und Ankunft bei mir (inkl. Wochenende) ca. 5 Tage. Ich nehme mal an, dass die hier aber mehrere Geräte zusammen nach Deutschland versenden und dann die auf die Empfänger aufteilen (?). Oder die haben ein langsameres Zollverfahren (sind ja auch keine „bekannte Firma“ wie Apple). Wie dem auch sein… meine Info war auch Mitte Dezember. Halte es sicher bis dahin aus…

Keine Ahnung! Vielleicht bis zum Sankt Nimmerleinstag.
Denn wenn es über den Direktvertrieb hinausgeht, wird es deutlich teurer.

Gruß,
Wolfgang

Aaah. Verstehe. Besten Dank für die Info. Das wurde mir nicht angezeigt.