What’s New on FIDE Online Arena — July 2021

New features and updates for the FIDE Online Arena, the official FIDE gaming platform, are being introduced every week. Here we are keeping you up-to-date with the latest:

Number of people waiting to get paired

Arena is a new but growing platform, and the number of users is increasing every day, and the wait to be paired has gone down dramatically, to less than 5 seconds in most cases. We’ve added a very useful indicator on the front page — number of people who are waiting for an opponent. To start a new game, you can choose a time control and type of rating (unrated, or FIDE-rated), or click on the list of players who are waiting to play right now. Once you select an opponent, your game starts immediately. In rare cases when there is no one who is waiting to be paired right away, we invite you to play with a human-like bot or wait for a new player to appear (it’s likely to happen in seconds).

Domain

The platform has gone out of the Beta version and has moved to arena.myfide.net (most of the features were available at new.arena.myfide.net).

Password recovery improvement

Now you can easily restore your password by clicking ‘restore’ under the ‘Sign-in’ tab. We will email you a recovery code and you will be able to access the platform.

Mobile version improvements

Sometimes you want to play some chess on your mobile device. We worked hard to make the mobile gaming experience as pleasant as on desktop and had to fit all the features (such as game notation, resign button, settings and more) into a very small screen. We also made scrolling smart — it knows when it can scroll and when it shouldn’t not to interrupt the game. Try it!