ChessKid Puzzle Duel v3.0: Everything you Need to Know

Things to expect from this blog:

• You getting a (somewhat) better understanding and appreciation of puzzle duel (I hope)
• Me making everything cringy eventually because I'm tired
• Me adding extra stuff to ruin a good blog once I'm done with it (like I'm doing right now) 😆😹
• Lots of cat emojis 😸

(ok fine I'll try to keep those down a bit) 😸😸😹😼😼😼

What NOT to expect:

• My mental stability --  jk lol
• My best effort put into the second half of this blog I'm tired cut me some slack ok lol
• A good thumbnail aghhhh it haunts my dreams

Hello everybody! It's your favorite furry chess player ChessKidBadger here with another blog to throw at you. I'm writing this blog because chesskid recently edit 1 month later: OK not so recent anymore applied massive changes to one of (if not) do not dare say otherwise the best features on their site, puzzle duel. As king of puzzle duel, I kind of felt obligated to write this blog post to inform you all about the new changes in case any of you didn't notice. And if you don't play on chesskid, I definitely recommend you read this blog to the end, because if you ever decide to play on chesskid you'll have a much better understanding of puzzle duel than any other random noob out there. I'll do a really quick review of what puzzle duel is in case anybody isn't familiar with it, then I'll get into what's new in v3. If you're familiar with how puzzle duel works then you can skip on ahead if you'd like.

Speedrun walk-through of what puzzle duel is and how it works:

When you click play you will be paired up against another user on the site. 

Once the match begins, both participants simply have to solve puzzles accurately and quickly to win the duel. Here's some additional information on the matches:

• There is a 2 minute timer for each duel.
• Both ChessKids will receive the same puzzles in the same order.
• Most puzzles will be one-move tactics, like checkmates, free pieces, forks, and pins.
• You get a rank given to you based on how many games you win and how fast you win them. To advance in ranks, you'll need to win Puzzle Duels!
  You rank starts at bronze pawn. There are 3 stages of each rank, Bronze, Silver, and Gold.
• Once you've won enough games to advance past gold pawn, then you'll get promoted to bronze knight, etc. all the way up to Gold King. After gold king, there is a special rank called "champion" for the elitest of the elite puzzle duelers.
• In the case of both ChessKids being champion ranked and having a high puzzle rating, then two-move puzzles will be introduced.
• A correct answer fills the ChessKid's power meter +2 while an incorrect answer reduces the power meter by -1.
• If a participant gets their power meter to 20 then they win the match by "explosion."
• If neither player explodes the power meter, whoever is ahead at the end of two minutes wins the duel.

And, without further ado, lets get into the new update!

I'm going to start with a changelog/overview of what's different in v3.0, then I'll take a more in-depth look at everything that's changed, adding my thoughts/comments.

PUZZLE DUEL v3.0 CHANGELOG(unofficial)

Below is the full changelog for what changed from v2.0 to v3.0 in puzzle duel. This list was made to the best of my knowledge and may not be 100% correct. If I'm missing anything please leave a comment below.

• Fixed a bug where friends/clubmates wouldn't show up for some users to direct challenge
• The board size, power meters, and placement of both you and your opponent's usernames adapts a design almost identical to fast chess. You also can now see (next to the username of your opponent) which color pieces they are playing as in their current puzzle while in-duel.
• Champion rank picture changes
• The sword clashing sound now plays every time you click the "Play" button
• Removed +2 or -1 showing depending on whether or not you get a in-duel puzzle right or wrong
• ^ Due to this, there is a significant less amount of time in between puzzles
• Changed the piece movement programming from what's used in "Slow Chess" to "Puzzles"
• The top 3 users in each category of the leaderboard have their rank # either gold, silver, or bronze depending on whether they are 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. Additionally, their avatar gets outlined with the color associated to their rank.
• Wins by explosion gets changed to "Win by Firework"
• Draw color in latest results gets changed to blue
• Fixed a scaling bug with the leaderboard where the #200 player wouldn't show up on some computers
• Puzzle streak was removed
• The background coloring to the leaderboard is now transparent and changes colors depending on what theme you are using. Previously, in v2.0, the background to the leaderboard maintained a solid white color no matter which theme you were using.
• The explosion of stars no longer happens if you win a match "by firework"
• Your current win streak is no longer displayed on the landing page, it was replaced by what your win streak all time is.
• In-duel 2 minute timer no longer stays on the screen after the duel is finished
• Added various emojis and animations
• Removed losing streaks
• GOSH DARN IT I JUST LOST MY 159 GAME WIN STREAK WHILE WRITING THIS
• [bug] The win sound effect sometimes plays when you lose(it just did lol)
• [bug] If you accept a rematch challenge, a chess puzzle remains on the board while the countdown is occurring.

A More In-Depth Look at What's New

(with the king of puzzle duel's comments)

"Fixed a bug where friends/clubmates wouldn't show up for some users to direct challenge"

Out of all of the things changed in this update, this is definitely one of the big improvements from v2.0. It bugged me so much when I wanted to play puzzle duel with one of my friends, or somebody here on chess.com wanted to play me in puzzle duel and we had to do open seeks to try to play each other. Very grateful to chesskid for finally fixing this bug.

As a side note, I have a theory on what I believed caused this bug to occur for some users. I think this bug only happened to users who had too many friends. For example, I have 200+ friends on chesskid so the bug was happening to me. On the other hand, one of my friends @thepremover15 didn't have the bug because he only has a handful of friends on chesskid. But that's just a theory... Sorry I had to do it lol

"The board size, power meters, and placement of both you and your opponent's usernames adapts a design almost identical to fast chess. You also can now see (next to the username of your opponent) which color pieces they are playing as in their current puzzle while in-duel."

Previously, this is what the in-duel board design looked like: (in v2.0)

Here is the new v3.0 in-duel board design:

And, for comparison, here is the live fast chess server's in-game board design:

Notice the similarities to v3.0 puzzle duel with the placements of player's usernames .

Here are my thoughts on the new in-duel design:

While I get that chesskid may be trying to stick with a similar design across the entire site, I honestly don't really like how player's usernames and power meters are so far away from their opponents. Essentially, moving both player's power meters so far apart from each other makes it basically impossible to tell at a glance who is winning the match. I liked v2.0 better as far as this goes because it was very easy for me to shoot a glance over at the side of the screen in between puzzles to give me an idea of what the score was. As far as telling you which color it is to move for your opponent's current puzzle, I don't see any real meaningful purpose behind this, so I don't exactly know why chesskid added this feature. Moving on...

"Champion rank picture changes"

Ok. I'm going to try to stay calm for this but-

OK WHAT THE HECK WERE YOU THINKING @CHESSKID!?!?!?!?! IS YOUR BRAIN MADE OF THISTLE-FLUFF OR SOMETHING??? YOU CHANGED THE CHAMPION RANK FROM AN ICONIC IMAGE REPRESENTING YOUR TALENT AT PUZZLE DUEL TO JUST A TROPHY WITH A STAR???????? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!? THIS MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL. Please @ChessKid, even if you don't change anything else in v3.0, please PLEASE PLEASE change the champion rank back to how it looked in v2.0. PLEASE!

Here is the devolution of champion rank from v2.0 to v3.0:

WARNING: Viewer discretion advised for the next image...

Don't try telling me it's even possible for a SECOND to compare the two. v2.0 champion rank is infinitely better. I have to stop myself there or else I could go on for years on this topic.....

"The sword clashing sound now plays every time you click the "Play" button"

... it's..... OK, I guess? It does lag a little every time you click play now though because it plays the sound, but I don't mind it that much. It doesn't really affect the gameplay, so whatever.

"Removed +2 or -1 showing depending on whether or not you get a in-duel puzzle right or wrong. Due to this, there is a significant less amount of time in between puzzles"

This is something that I had really wanted to have happen back when puzzle duel was in v2.0. When I would play puzzle duel and start solving the puzzles super fast, I always would have to wait after each puzzle I solved correctly for the +2 to come up, which took about half a second. It doesn't seem like much time, but without the +2 or -1 coming up after each puzzle, I can now score some really fast times in puzzle duel v3.0 that weren't possible previously in v2.0. Overall I'm really happy with this.

"Changed the piece movement programming from what's used in "Slow Chess" to 'Puzzles'"

The best way I can describe this is that grabbing the pieces on the board with your mouse is much MUCH smoother and easier. If you click on a chess piece on the board in v3.0, the piece will move slightly in the direction from the center of the piece that you clicked. Also, if you select a piece to move and click on a square that piece cannot move to, the piece remains selected now with the new piece programming. Here is a comparison of how the piece programming is smoother in v3.0 as compared to v2.0:

"The top 3 users in each category of the leaderboard have their rank # either gold, silver, or bronze depending on whether they are 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. Additionally, their avatar gets outlined with the color associated to their rank."

I actually really like this new feature, as insignificant as it may seem, because it makes it more... rewarding? I guess? to be in the top 3. Maybe it's just me though (a sweaty gamer that will do anything to grind a game in order to be ranked high up on a leaderboard)

"Wins by explosion gets changed to "Win by Firework and "The explosion of stars no longer happens if you win a match 'by firework'"

Not in favor of it. It would be better if they actually played a FIREWORK animation for a WIN BY FIREWORK, but they don't even do the star explosion now. smh

"Draw color in latest results gets changed to blue"

pro stats and techs/nerd info from the King of puzzle duel 😹

"Fixed a scaling bug with the leaderboard where the #200 player wouldn't show up on some computers"

I've been waiting for this bug to be fixed for a long time. I think this fix is more useful to players who aren't ranked on the all time leaderboard because they can now see which rank they are after the #200 player. 

Fun fact: you actually could make the #200 player show up but you had to highlight the win streak (or win count) of the #200 player, then press and hold down Shift+right arrow key. pro tech lol

"Puzzle streak was removed"

This effectively ruins the reason to slow down and actually think and try to be extra accurate on puzzles. Honestly, I have NO CLUE why this got removed. 😾

"The background coloring to the leaderboard is now transparent and changes colors depending on what theme you are using. Previously, in v2.0, the background to the leaderboard maintained a solid white color no matter which theme you were using."

This doesn't change gameplay at all, but it does make the layout more nice and presentable when changing themes. I won't post a screenshot example because you can just change your theme and play puzzle duel to see for yourself.

"Your current win streak is no longer displayed on the landing page, it was replaced by what your win streak all time is."

Don't know what chesskid was thinking when they did this. Hopefully it is just a bug and not intentional, because you can't view your win streak for the week unless you look at the leaderboard as of now.

  
"In-duel 2 minute timer no longer stays on the screen after the duel is finished"

Because of this, it's now a lot harder to see what time is on the clock when the match is over. You can still see it if you glance over quick enough to the timer if you win, you should have a split second to do so. However, if you lose, since the power meters aren't near each other any more, you most likely won't be able to anticipate the match ending(unless you're staring at your opponent's power meter in total fear and despair) and therefore will probably miss the end time. Overall, not a fan of this change at all.

"Added various emojis and animations"

It's.... more kid/gen A appeasing. Just check it out for yourself, but don't say I didn't warn you if you absolutely despise it.

"Removed losing streaks"

Not that it mattered to me, but I actually liked being able to see people's loss streaks as well as win streaks. It made it able to distinguish the difference between draws and losses. Now, draws and losses show up the same at the start of each match (0). Another downfall to this is that users could potentially cheat and it would be harder to tell if they were cheating because instead of a loss streak of, say -67, it will only show up as 0.

"GOSH DARN IT I JUST LOST MY 159 GAME WIN STREAK WHILE WRITING THIS"

 I-----------have no words. *breaks down crying*

"[bug] The win sound effect sometimes plays when you lose) and
[bug] If you accept a rematch challenge, a chess puzzle remains on the board while the countdown is occurring."

Both of these bugs are pretty consistent for me at least, they don't change gameplay at all but it could definitely be more polished. That is what the v3.0 update was trying to do, after all @ChessKid? ....... 

Finally, a comparison of the landing page from v2.0 to v3.0:

And that's it!! That's a complete overview of everything that's changed from puzzle duel v2.0 to v3.0 (I think, don't yell at me if I missed anything 🥺 :3 😸) If you do notice anything that's off, or see something that you believe to incorrect, then be sure to DM me. Overall, I'm kind of disappointed with this update, there were some small changes that translated into big plusses, and some much needed bugfixes, but I wish that they had added a lot more puzzles. There were definitely some things that I don't like that got changed (champion rank and more, but you just read the blog so you should know)

Don't forget to leave your v3.0 update thoughts/opinions in the comments below, and be sure to say if you enjoyed this post! If you want me to write more blogs in the future, say so in the comments and I'll try to fit writing blogs into my busy life schedule 😅😸 I think that's everything now! oh shoot I didn't make a thumbnail lemme do that reallll quick 30 minutes laterYES IT TOOK ME ABSOLUTELY FOREVER TO MAKE THAT DUMB STUPID STARCLAN FORSAKEN THUMBNAIL OK I'M BACK HAHA where was I now? Oh yes, make sure to check out my other blog I wrote exactly 1 year ago! Just know those stats are way outdated now 😸

Oh yeah, yesterday was my 4 year anniversary of joining chesskid, maybe next hypothetical blog post will be on my accomplishments on chesskid since then?.. or perhaps more puzzle duel stuff. I'll figure something out 😸

This ending has gone on way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY TOO LONG NOWWWWW but it is really late at night and I just finished another 10.75 hour day at work. *sighs* life truly is a continual grind..... It ain't one of my blog posts without a cringy ending!! Alright, that's enough mouse-brained rambles from me. Have a great rest of your day, and as always, I will see you next game. :3

Until next time,
         ChessKidBadger, signing out.

                                                                         😸^w^😸                                                                                                

I hate myself for that thumbnail lollllllll

Alright I've already overstayed my overstay bye for real this time