SquareOff Chess Pro Issues

So I just purchased the SquareOff Chess Pro board. To start off I’d wanna say that I love the board. For me, the ability to play on a physical board at anytime by myself is something I’ve always wanted.

The first thing and biggest issue for me is that you can’t see the elo/skill rating of people your competing against. Even with linking lichess and chess.com profiles it doesn’t who their skill level. This a huge issue because most people I believe play with a certain amount of awareness and fundamentals when playing against certain ranked people. When you play with the SquareOff app, which is the only way to use the board, it only gives you their profile name. That’s it. When you play against lower ranked people it’s easy to tell that they’re are a lower ranked player simply because they’re easy to beat. But sometimes I’ll get smoked or have a close game with players and I have no idea what to expect. If they were around my elo I can say certain things like perhaps I made some mistakes or I wasn’t playing my best. They might have 200-300 higher ranked elo than me and it’s completely understandable that I got beat because that what’s should’ve happened on a regular basis. But there’s no way to tell because it just doesn’t show their elo. So every loss is a loss in confusion.

Second, the AI/Bot difficult needs to be adjusted in my opinion. There are 20 levels of difficulty but if you’re around 1300-1400 elo like me you’ll only be able to play up to around level 4 if that. I find myself getting wrecked at level 3 easily if I make some mistakes and it’s only 1100. Level 1 is like playing the first bot on chess.com. It’s just terrible and barely serves as a confidence boost. You don’t get below 1500 until level 9 which was disappointing to me considering I find myself as a decent player and expected to be able to compete with some fairly higher levels like around 6-7 but that’s not the case. It’s pretty demoralizing.

Third, the whole app could use some polishing. The themes for your pieces on the app are pretty lame and have like 4 options which aren’t great and pretty dull. Sometimes as well, I can’t find a game even though I know there are millions of players. On chess.com it’s instantaneous matchmaking whereas on SquareOff I can find myself just not being able to find a match. It’s not always bad, just happens every now and then. It also makes me upset that the advertisements for all the other chess boards SquareOff sells kind of get pushed in your face throughout the app. Considering I just purchased a $250 board I feel like I should be provided with a solid experience throughout instead of trying to be enticed to purchase more SquareOff products every time I finish a game.

Was wondering if anyone had a similar or different issues? I’m hoping SquareOff sees posts like these and takes them into consideration.

I don’t think it matters to know someone’s elo before a match. Are you not playing your best every time anyway? I have one of these boards also and love it besides some minor bugs here and there.

For me I would like to see the elo, just to know how well I’m competing against people of my skill level or above or below. It’s just the fact of I have no idea what the skill level of the people I’m playing is. I play to the best of my capability every time but for example today I took 7 straight losses and I don’t have a clue if it’s because im not playing well or if im getting matched against higher rated players. I would assume not but how can I know because it doesn’t show you. I think it would be a simple and big improvement for me personally.

Play within the square off app. Pool is small but you see rating.

Analyze your game afterwards with the app and find your mistakes.

Completely agree, the Square Off AI difficulty needs some major adjustment. As of right now, it's just broken and not even fun. Skill progression is totally out of whack. Level 1 - 3 are a complete joke -- like playing someone that's 200 elo. Then all the sudden level 4 plays about 14-1500 human strength, which is a ridiculous skill jump for one level. Level 5 & 6 can feel like 1800+ at times. 
As a test to make sure I wasn't going crazy, I paired SO level 5 ("1326" elo) against Chesscom's Li bot (2000 elo) and Square Off crushed it, despite being a supposed 674 elo pts lower. I understand the Chesscom bots aren't super accurate with their elo estimates either, but a "1326" bot should not be crushing a 2000 like that. Just shows its calibrated incorrectly. 
Im 1750 Chesscom rapid, and can barley compete with SO level 5, if it makes you feel any better.

I played two games with my Square off pro at level 6 in last two days, I normal I only play classic games and use Chess.com for training , I have a FIDE rating of 1451.

It had som good games I will definitely play more on higher levels :-),

But I took my time and used around a hours on the clock to wins each game, and the last game lasted 55 moves. I feel that the AI is solid in the opening and I think AI is good at taking advantage of the mistakes I make, especially if my kingside becomes weak

But SOP also makes mistakes and I just have to be ready for these blunders

I have played against SOP level 8 both with Black and white and won both games, where SOP made som mistakes in the opening, I was not perfect:-) but SOP made more mistakes.

I my first game, was with white, I play d4, I ended with a accuarcy of 85% against SOP 78%. next game was with the black pieces, I play c5 against e4 , I had a accuarcy of 81% against SOP 75%, It was a very close but I had one amazing move (!) which won me the game, analyzed by stockfish :-)

Great information guys. I love the board. and the idea of a rollup tournament size board and pieces that I can travel with. Awesome idea. I am sure they can hire someone to make the necessary app updates on the fly. I can never find an opponent on squareoff. Maybe someone should start a Square Off Pro Club here.

I have played a couple of games on Chess.com with SOP, 30 minutes and 15|10 minutes games and it work without problems.

To be honest, I'm only 1050-1100 and I best the Li bot.

I am frustrated that there are not enough people who accept games in or on the Square Off app Community. Isn't there a way to start a Square Off or DGT board and tournaments with stipulations?

There’s a huge difference between beating a bot on occasion and competing at a 50/50 win rate with it. So many people will play a bot 5 times, beat it once, and declare they’re as good as that bot. Nope — its still 5x as good as you.

There’s absolutely no way you're competing at a 50/50 win rate with Li bot as an 1100. If you were, you wouldn’t be 1100. Youd be crushing 1100’s for breakfast. Im 1800 rapid and I barley compete with Li at a 50/50. 

Sure, Ive beaten up to the 2400 bots, but Im still no where near as good as them as I would not beat them 50% of the time

Add me on Square Off. Id be up for arranging a game.

Username: Contact126

Hey DunkarooDan ! Great deal. Thanks so much/ Any other Square Off Pro user friends you can connect me with?

very true.

One day an honest Administrator will look at the games played against me in this account and do the right thing. Look at the number of times layers" with different accounts play the same moves, against me, always win, regardless of their rating once I reach close to 2100 in blitz or 2200 in rapid! The opponent nor their rating matters. It is horrible that someone here hates me that much to spend that kind of energy. I also despite being a titled player never get responses to having a Speedrun account so that I can use during streaming. This is so sad. However, it doesn't seem like anyone cares enough to rectify this situation.

I'm going to have to completely disagree with everything here. If anything the rating on Square Off is over-rated. I just tried level 5. I'm 1350 on chess.com. I not only destroyed it without breaking a sweat, but it played the craziest random moves. I wouldn't expect a 1300 level player to play this poorly. There's no chance it got paired against 2000 rated bot and didn't lose in a few moves.

[Event "?"]
[Site "squareoffnow.com"]
[Date "2024.11.02"]
[White "Jeffrey Ward"]
[Black "Square Off"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1-0"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 Qe7 4. d4 d6 5. Nf3 Nbd7 6. Nc3 c6 7. Bd3 b5 8. a3
Nb6 9. O-O Bd7 10. Re1 Rc8 11. e5 dxe5 12. dxe5 Ng4 13. Bg5 Qe6 14. h3 Nh6 15.
Nd4 Qf5 16. Bxf5 Nxf5 17. Nxf5 Bxf5 18. e6 fxe6 19. Qd4 c5 20. Qd2 Nc4 21. Qe2
Kf7 22. g4 Bxg4 23. hxg4 Re8 24. b3 h6 25. Bh4 g5 26. Bg3 Nb2 27. Nxb5 Bg7 28.
Nd6+ Kf8 29. Nxe8 e5 30. Bxe5 Bxe5 31. Qxe5 Rh7 32. Qf6+ Kg8 33. Qg6+ Kh8 34.
Nf6 Rg7 35. Re8+ Rg8 36. Qxg8# 1-0

You’re commenting on a thread that’s over a year old. They might have adjusted it since then. That game it clearly played quite weak

Yeah true. This came up in a google search on the strength of their engine. But I wanted to set the record straight. However we got here, I think it's a lot more accurate strength-wise.