Why I'm Building ChessCloud

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Straight to the point

The primary focus of ChessCloud is for opening repertoire management. With a central place to store your opening lines you can tailor post-game analysis to your own repertoire.

My recurring problem

A few moves into a Morra Gambit on lichess or Chess.com I'm forgetting the line I read about in Marc Esserman's (highly recommended) book, Mayhem in the Morra. After the game I'll grab the book, find the line I played and, if necessary, review where I went wrong.

Whatever analysis tool I'm using should already know where to point me. Instead I'm more often flooded with all the games in a database none of which I've ever studied before.

There are a lot of great tools built by some really awesome people in the community and at companies like Chess.com and chessify. There are tools like OpeningTree.com which are fantastic for reviewing openings of prospective opponents or your favorite players. However, nothing has really nailed this repertoire/review process for me.

The dreaded... wall of move text

If you've ever put together multiple lines in an analysis board then you probably have seen something like this:

I find these walls of text hard to read and navigate and comments get jumbled among other moves. Trying to keep track of an entire opening repertoire in this format is a nightmare.

A better builder

Here we see the first version of ChessCloud's opening builder. When you use ChessCloud's analysis tool it will check your moves against the repertoire you've built. As you encounter moves outside your prep you may choose to study your favorite response(s) and add them to your repertoire. Let's look at a basic example of this...

Analysis

With our openings built we can upload games we'd like to review. ChessCloud will check your moves against your repertoire and alert where you deviated from your prep or if you've encountered a new line. Here we see the classic scholar's mate.

Since my opening prep for white consists of 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3, the scholar's mate (or wayward queen attack) with Qh5 has been identified as a mistake. I am also directed to my standard Nf3.

Now let's take a look at the black side of this game.

1. e4 e5 is also defined in my openings for black, but since I have no defined response to 2. Qh5 I am alerted that I have encountered a new line. I can now study this line and add it to my repertoire. I can also choose to add my opponent's "new" response 2. Qh5 directly to my openings for black by clicking the plus button beside it.

A game server, too

ChessCloud is also a game server. Of course you can simply bring your PGNs from other websites directly into ChessCloud. But building, playing, and reviewing all together is an ideal flow that I am striving for with ChessCloud.

Development of a live game server comes with its own set of challenges. If you're interested in the development of ChessCloud, I'll be writing more about the tech behind it in future blog posts.

Have ideas? Reach out!

I'm always looking for feedback and ideas to improve ChessCloud. You can contact me on X/Twitter @JeffreyThor_ or email support@chesscloud.com with any issues or questions.