Issue 1
Our first newsletter, and a favour to ask
Hello, chess lovers!
Thank you for using Snap That Piece! This is our first newsletter. We’ll keep them rare and only write when there’s something worth telling you.
Faster and better models. Over the last three months, we rebuilt our infrastructure from the ground up and started updating our recognition models on a regular schedule. We don’t use LLMs, and train a bunch of our custom small models. With so many new people joining, we get far more photos to learn from, so we can now ship a new model every two weeks, sometimes every week.
Here’s a tip. If your set is unusual and the app gets it wrong, don’t give up on it. Upload more: 10, 20, even 50 photos of the same board, even if every one comes out wrong. We’ll spot it on our end, and a coming model update will learn to read it.
Bots and stuff. While chess is better played with friends, we all need bots to analyze positions and hone our skills. We moved to Stockfish 19, which is faster and stronger than 18. And we finally wired in the Maia networks through Leela Chess Zero: bots trained on real human games, so they play like a person of their strength. They’re genuinely fun to play against, they’re free, and you don’t need to scan anything – just tap New Game. (We’d still love you to scan, though.)
A favour to ask. We need photos of real chess boards. Screenshots and photos of screens still work, but they don’t teach the models much. What we’re after is real sets, weird ones, rare ones. We’re especially looking for Latvian and Dubrovnik sets: if you own one, or anything like it, please send it our way. More is better than less.
Snap That Piece is free; all you need is an account. If you like it, share it with your friends and tell everyone you know.
– Nik