ECE Intuition Chess

[LuiVis]

ECE Intuition Chess GUI 26.9.191880 — CURRENT RELEASE
BUG FIX / THEME UPDATE — August 19, 2026

• Saved Career, Cup, World Cup, preset and Custom Tournament games now reconnect to their original tournament pairing when reloaded, so the completed result correctly advances the event instead of repeating the same opponent.
• Added 6 new fixed-name interface themes: Moonstone, Amber Velvet, Sage Studio, Polar Blue, Wine Cellar and Night Copper.
• Added 8 new colour-only board themes: Harbor Mist, Cedar Chess, Sage Linen, Copper Slate, Midnight Teal, Rose Granite, Ivory Navy and Autumn Clay.

Thanks as always for testing ECE and for all the feedback!

Luigino Viscione
Developer of ECE / ECE Chess GUI
https://www.ecechess.it
luigino.viscione@gmail.com

[LuiVis]

ECE Intuition Chess GUI 26.9.213799 — August 21, 2026

Another day, another ECE update.
Apparently the bugs have finally decided to show up now that I am testing the Career and Game Review workflows more heavily.

This release is mostly about analysis improvements and Career consistency.

A new Game Review mode system has been added with three options:

Auto / Human Review / Engine Review

The reason is simple: a human game and an engine-vs-engine test should not always be judged in exactly the same way.

Human Review evaluates Inaccuracies, Mistakes and Blunders mainly by the practical loss of winning chances. For example, losing a few hundred centipawns in a position that is already completely winning is not necessarily as serious for a human player as turning a balanced position into a losing one.

Engine Review keeps the stricter technical centipawn-loss approach, which is much more useful when comparing chess engines, where even small technical differences may still matter.

Auto chooses the appropriate model automatically: human/player games, personalities, Career, Cups and Memorial events use Human Review, while tournaments made exclusively of external chess engines use Engine Review.

The review system has been tested with both Stockfish 18 and ECE 26.8 Intuition HBuP. Stockfish 18 obviously remains the main reference engine here — it is roughly 600 Elo stronger than ECE in my own estimates, possibly more — but ECE is also useful for testing the complete analysis workflow.

Full changelog:

• Added Auto, Human Review and Engine Review modes for post-game analysis.
• Human Review now evaluates Inaccuracy, Mistake and Blunder according to practical loss of winning chances.
• Engine Review keeps technical centipawn-loss evaluation for engine testing.
• The selected analysis mode is saved in Settings and stored in analyzed PGNs.
• Improved the Analysis settings layout so labels and controls remain readable on smaller displays.
• Games loaded directly from the personal Game Archive/database can now be analyzed immediately, without saving and reloading them as PGN first.
• Fixed a Game Review edge case where a move identical to the engine's best move could occasionally be marked as an Inaccuracy, Mistake or Blunder because of evaluation differences between the independent before/after searches.
• Improved Career progression: League titles and Cup/Memorial trophies are now identified correctly.
• Career History now records all completed Career events.
• Career events no longer show the unrelated New Tournament action.
• Novice League Division IV is now the bottom of the Career ladder: finishing in the bottom two ends that Career and allows an explicit restart.
• Career rosters now try to preserve promotion/relegation continuity, prioritize qualified players and avoid unnecessary repeated opponents; repechage is used only when needed.
• Window/board geometry is reapplied once after every GUI update so board size is recalculated even when no new layouts are introduced.

As usual, this is mostly polishing rather than adding features just for the sake of adding them. The goal is to make ECE more coherent both as a GUI for human players and as a tool for engine testing.

Thanks again to everyone testing ECE and reporting problems. At this rate I may have to rename the development model to “one bug, one release.”

Luigino Viscione
Developer of ECE / ECE Chess GUI
https://www.ecechess.it
luigino.viscione@gmail.com

[LuiVis]

ECE Intuition Chess 26.9.309779 — Major Update Coming August 30, 2026

Hello everyone,

ECE Intuition Chess 26.9.309779 is scheduled for release on August 30, 2026, approximately nine days after the previous public version, 26.9.213779.

The build is now entering five days of final testing.

Although this update introduces several visible features, many of them were already part of ECE Chess’s internal architecture and have now been enabled, connected or completed for public use. A large part of the work has also focused on bug fixes, consistency and safer data management.

Main improvements

• Game Review is faster and clearer, with context-aware analysis threads, 1–5 star ratings, separate Opening/Middlegame/Endgame accuracy, automatic Key Moments and improved human-oriented move classification.

• Repeated or contradictory PGN review notes have been fixed. Good moves can now display the analysis engine’s preferred alternative when appropriate.

• Career history, time controls, event sequencing, Division/Cup/Memorial progress and continuation messages have been corrected and synchronized.

• CSR values are now consistent across tournament standings, scheduled matches, clocks and reports.

• Official ECE_26.8 personalities are excluded from automatically generated events. Winning the strongest Division I now unlocks a random official ECE boss challenge. Defeating the boss awards a dedicated trophy, while Career Mode continues indefinitely.

• Draw offers from personalities are now handled more naturally using CSR, evaluation, game maturity and personality settings.

Backup and profile management

• Complete Backup/Restore now correctly restores every profile and overwrites the associated settings, accessibility preferences, personality CSR data and other user configuration.

• Profile import can reconnect profiles by UUID or by a unique normalized name, including after reinstalling Windows.

• External UCI engine paths can be included optionally, avoiding invalid paths after moving engines or reinstalling the operating system.

• Profile and complete-backup operations now display progress windows and detailed final reports.

• Archive validation, automatic safety backups and rollback handling have been improved.

Installer

• The installer is available in seven languages and now distinguishes between a first installation and an update or reinstallation.

• First installations always include the complete official personality set.

• Updates can preserve existing .epr files while adding missing files, or replace the complete packaged set.

• The uninstaller can preserve personal data and manually added engines or remove the entire installation.

ECE Official Music

• ECE Chess now includes an independent music player with authenticated encrypted tracks played directly from memory.

• It provides a random startup introduction, Play/Pause, Stop, Previous/Next, volume, Shuffle, Repeat 1, playlist loop, title search and elapsed/total track progress.

• Music preferences are stored separately for each profile and are included in profile and complete backups.

• Settings have been reorganized into GUI, Visuals and Audio. The Audio section now groups game sounds, TTS, accessibility and music options.

• A localized music license is available directly from the player and Settings.

Additional fixes

• Fixed missing Career events and tournament reconnection issues.

• Improved Custom Tournament focus isolation and independent Cup/Memorial edition numbering.

• Improved settings loading, lazy tab creation, interface consistency and Windows music-player behavior.

• Help and all seven language packs have been updated to revision 19.

Thank you

A sincere thank you to everyone who is testing ECE Chess, reporting bugs and providing detailed descriptions of unexpected behavior.

Many of the corrections included in this release were possible because users took the time to report problems that could otherwise have remained difficult to reproduce.

Bug reports, suggestions and constructive criticism are extremely valuable for improving the GUI.

ECE Intuition Chess 26.9.309779 will remain in testing until August 30. If no critical problems are found, it will then become the new official public release.

Luigino Viscione
Developer of ECE / ECE Chess GUI
https://www.ecechess.it
luigino.viscione@gmail.com