Chessnut Evo or ChessConnect

Hi everyone,

I was all ready too pull the trigger on a Chessnut EVO board but being a research oriented individual,  I came across this ChessConnect Plugin that seems to be getting rave reviews.

For those of you familiar with both the ALL in 1 solution that is the EVO vs another board such DGT or Chessnut air, pro etc using Chessconnect, plugin and a separate device, which is the more enjoyable and seamless solution?  Also, as a training tool, to improve as I am very new to Chess and have much to learn.  

Any and all help/suggestions appreciated.  Thx!

I have a lot of boards, the Evo, Go, Air, and Pro from Chessnut among others (DGT, Millenium, Chessup, SquareOff pro).

The Evo is the all-in-one so you do not need another device ... but it can be fickle sometimes. The updates they have put out since the beginning (I have had it since it first got released) made it better overall. It allows for a lot of training stuff like building your own engines to play against (although that is a bit clunky and way behind schedule for full implementation) and using it for studying your games afterwards. Overall, the integration is good, and you have one device to find space for.

The other boards have apps and while they are good, it is yet another device to do something with.

As for Chessconnect, it is fantastic for playing. I play in several tournaments on Lichess and I setup my Pro, turn on my Chromebook (pretty much dedicated for playing chess) and I rarely look at the screen. I can concentrate solely on playing the game (not that truly matters, I still stink).

If you have any specific questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Almost forgot - you can also use Graham's drivers as noted here:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/chessnut-go-bluetooth-connection-not-showing-on-devices#comment-107084595

when using the regular boards, you cannot with the Evo AFAIK.

Yes, you can.

There is a driver for the Evo too that connects using Wi-Fi rather than Bluetooth. So you can use the Evo, like the other boards there are drivers for, in Fritz/ChessBase/Playchess, LucasChess, Arena and Shredder using their support for DGT boards. For other GUIs such as SCIDvsPC you can use the UCI/Winboard engine version of the driver. You can even use the Evo with Chessmaster.

Firstly, I only have experience with the Chessnut Go, didn't see an evo irl yet.

That said, what device you need depends on your use case - are you planning to do a lot of electronic chess training (play on from positions, analyze games, openings etc)? Or are you primarily looking to play online otb? Yes you can do both with either board, but the evo is made with training in mind and the other chessnut products with playing, depending on what your focus is you'll probably notice that design intention.

My use case is not wanting to look at the monitor and not having my hand locked to a mouse, so I went with the cheapest entry into that universe - the Go - to try it out. I'm pretty amazed by it and it'll probably even get better in the case a dedicated eboard clock hits the market, then I'd just need the monitor to set up a game and forget about the computer during play.

I would say currently the Pro (I have the premium pieces), followed closely by the Evo.

The Pro is an absolute joy to play games with, with Chessconnect it is probably as close to an IRL OTB game you can get.

I use the Evo occasionally, but not as much as I thought I would as the engine creation system is a little clunky ad that is one of the main features I want to use with it.

My rankings of my current e-boards is as follows:

Chessnut Pro

Evo (*)

Air (*)

Chessup 1 (I have a Chessup 2 ordered, waiting for the final product to ship, hopefully Dec)

Chessnut Go (still getting used to this one, it is a bit smaller - much more of a travel board than any of the others)

DGT Pegasus (*)

Millenium eOne

SquareOff Pro (I have not used this in a long time, IMHO it is the worst of the lot)

(The ones with the (*) after them I have modified my own pieces to also work on the boards.)