7 ms·

Chesscademy, a free chess learning site

228 points by Matetricks 13y ago

shloime 13y ago
The name makes me think this is a codecademy sister site. Otherwise, very awesome.
shire 13y ago
I like this, very cool Just wondering why the design is based on TeamTreehouse? are these the same guys.
jfarmer 13y ago
So, I know the basic rules of chess, but I'm terrible at the game because I've never practiced. This site looks neat! I also spent the last two years designing curriculum to teach folks how to program. I have some issues as a student. I'm currently on the "Sharp Pin" exercise: http://chesscademy.com/exercises/the-sharp-pin-that-piece-isn-t-going-anywhere http://chesscademy.com/exercises/the-sharp-pin-that-piece-is... I get the basic idea. You have a piece which can't move without exposing a more valuable piece to attack. Here's where I get confused. There are three pieces involved in this situation: the piece you might want to move, the more valuable piece you would expose, and the piece that would attack. Let's call these pieces M, V, and A, respectively. It's unclear when you say "X pins Y" which of M, V, and A can go into X and which can go into Y. Now, if I'm confused about this, look at the hint: "Try pinning the knight to the king" Pin whose knight to whose king? If I'm confused about the syntax of pinning this hint doesn't help me at all. It's all the more confusing because I'm not sure what you mean by "the" king. There are two kings on the board, right? Which is "the" king? It's worse with "the" knight, since there are four knights on the board. Now, I spent about 15 minutes parsing out what you meant and saw what was intended. However, I started doing some no-no student things along the way. At first I tried to understand what the sentence meant. I looked at the kings and knights and tried to imagine how one would pin one to the other. "Pin the knight to the king." Well, the king is the most valuable piece, so it's probably V in this formulation above. But is the knight the M or the A? Now I'm looking at the knights on the board, thinking about moving them around, and I don't see how any move I make could be consistent with the instructions. Hmm, ok, so the knight must be the M which means it must be one of the black knights. You can see already how I'm not really thinking about the problem but trying to reverse-engineer what you mean. I'm doing this because I don't have a clear picture what "pinning" means in my head. Now, when I think about moving pieces, I look at the board. What piece should I move? Well, I dunno, the pawns are out there and are near a knight. Maybe that's what pinning means? I'll move the pawns in the center and see if it yells at me. Ok, it yelled at me both times. What other piece could I move? Maybe I was wrong about knights being the M, so let's try all possible knight moves and see if the system lets me make any of those moves. Nope, ok, those are all bad. Yikes! Now I'm just guessing and relying on your system to tell me what's right or wrong. Ok, obviously the problem is I'm confused about WTF pinning means. How can I see some examples of pinning? I don't see anywhere on this screen. So, I go to Wikipedia and read the article on pinning. Ah, I see, "X is pinned to Y" means X can't move without exposing Y. So, maybe "Pin X to the Y" means move some piece into a position where "X is pinned to Y." Ok, well, the knight and the king are lined up diagonally, so the only way the knight could be pinned to the king is by a bishop. Oh, look! Ok, I can move that bishop. Yay! I get the gold star. This sequence of events is a problem on several levels. First, most students wouldn't keep at it like I would. They also wouldn't have the self-awareness to see that their first priority is to deconstruct the ideas you're trying to express and reframe them in a way they understand themselves. They most likely wouldn't look to outside resources like Wikipedia, either, because they'd get "tunnel vision" on the current page. Second, you confused me by talking about absolute and relative pins. I don't know whether I'm going for an absolute or relative pin in this exercise. The hint gives it away, but only by process of elimination. That is, "This must be an absolute pin because otherwise it wouldn't make sense for a king to be involved." Third, although I eventually get the "right" answer, my path to that answer looks nothing like the path an expert would take. What hint can you give that suggests not just the proper outcome but encourages expert-like habits in the student? I don't know enough chess to suggest, but here are some ideas. "Think about what moves your various pieces can make. Are there any avenues of attack that line up with those possible moves?" "To pin the black knight to the black king, you need to move one of your pieces so that it is attacking the knight and would be attacking the king were it not for the knight's position." This latter hint is nice because it also reinforces previous lessons about attacking, including the forking exercise which also involved attacking two pieces at once. Now I'm relating this current situation to a previous one, and it makes me think there might be some interesting relationships between pinning and forking. Anyhow, just some thoughts from a guy who spends too much time thinking about curriculum and pedagogy!
- jfarmer 13y ago
  Ok, sorry, now I'm on the next lesson: http://chesscademy.com/exercises/skewer-the-shish-kebab http://chesscademy.com/exercises/skewer-the-shish-kebab This hint is silly. It talks as if I've already made a move, but I haven't made any moves. This is totally confusing. Update: Ok, I read the Wikipedia article and it mentioned that long-range pieces can skewer. That's interesting. I had never thought of grouping the pieces into long-range and short-range attackers, but that makes total sense. I see now that both pins and skewers are really tactics for long-range pieces. They're ways for you to control parts of the board "at a distance" by forcing your opponent to move or stay put. There might be situations where a short-range piece could pin or skewer, but I can also see how that would be more precarious. Both pieces being pinned or skewered would have to be close together and the attacking piece would have to be close to both. This means you'd probably be in "enemy territory" and your attacking piece more vulnerable to attack. With a long-range piece you don't have to worry about any of this. Your opponent would have to enter your territory to halt the pin or the skewer. That seems like an important distinction to understand. I look back on some of the things I was doing in previous exercise and they make no sense in light of this distinction, e.g., moving pawns around like a monkey trying to pin and skewer things.
  - pjungwir 13y ago
    Good insight re long- and short-range pieces. A pawn can never pin or skewer because it can only attack one space away. Also a knight cannot pin or skewer, because the squares it attacks are not in a straight line. (Pawns and knights have a "fork" tactic though.)
    - jfarmer 13y ago
      As a beginner this was totally invisible to me and nevertheless it's critical to understanding why pinning and skewering are valuable: you can control your opponent's behavior from a distance. This is the curse of expertise. Experts have internalized the most important distinctions so well they're like air. Beginners haven't internalized any distinctions and therefore couldn't possibly see that their struggle is a product of not having them. They can't even express the concept of air. "Just breath! Inhale! Fill your lungs up!" the expert says, as the beginner coughs and grabs at their throat.
digitalmerc 13y ago
Videos not working for anyone else?
- thelastnode 13y ago
  The videos are hosted on Dropbox. Dropbox disabled the videos because there has been too much public traffic.
  - hkmurakami 13y ago
    ugh can't wait till it comes back up. When it does, I'll be sure to lose many hours of my life to this :)
  - srik 13y ago
    Hosting publicly accesible videos on dropbox is not the best strategy.
  - weisser 13y ago
    Unless you have a pro account there is a 20 gig/day bandwidth limit. With pro it's 200 gigs.
- Matetricks 13y ago
  Ah sorry, we were blocked by Dropbox! We weren't expecting this much traffic and we're moving our videos over to AWS soon. We're going to use Box as a quick fix in the meantime.
  - pavs 13y ago
    ... Youtube?
  - tucson 13y ago
    This videos on Box don't work very well unfortunately: I can't pause and resume a video. Every time I miss any information I have to reload the page and start from the beginning of the vid.... Otherwise, great and I like the one video I watched. Thanks.
charlesju 13y ago
Great site! I've wanted to learn chess for a long time, this is a great place for me to start.
- rohit89 13y ago
  You could also check out chesstempo.com I've spent loads of fun time practicing tactics at http://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics.html http://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics.html
dmix 13y ago
Copywriting/conversion recommendation: "create you wonderful account" -> "start learning chess now" or "start improving your chess now". Always keep it specfic to your product value prop. Generic text like "Try it now" never converts as well. Also adding "free" helps.
- cpayne 13y ago
  I saw that too. Is English a second language? At the moment, you seem to be looking for audience engagement (as opposed to generating revenue). If that is the case then I'd leave it as is. I read that sort of thing and see it as cute enthusiasm.
- mlchild 13y ago
  Also I clicked the "play" button at the center of the splash page about 8 times before realizing that it was not, in fact, a video, but merely advertising forthcoming videos.
hkmurakami 13y ago
I wonder if the site will after time start offering (1) premium memberships to the tune of poker training sites to access the best/newest videos and/or (2) 1 on 1 coaching sessions with the coaches for $X00/hour, and the site gets a cut. ex: http://www.cardrunners.com/ http://www.cardrunners.com/ http://www.deucescracked.com/ http://www.deucescracked.com/ http://www.bluefirepoker.com/ http://www.bluefirepoker.com/ Alternately I'd be excited to see a new business model for this kind of game training site.
- jaredmck 13y ago
  Poker is definitely an easier sell for that business model, since you can make money immediately by improving your poker game. Since chess doesn't have nearly the luck component, making money by gambling on chess is much more difficult, making the video lessons market a bit less lucrative than the poker sites (who I believe generally made decent $). Definitely some possibilities though! Makes me want to try and actually get decent at chess, but it's so much work...
morgante 13y ago
Inspired by codecademy?
FedRegister 13y ago
I love the very short and to the point ToS. Thank you.
- Qtz 13y ago
  Yeah, I agree with this. No more gibbirish.
kazagistar 13y ago
Meh, chess is broken. The best humans can now be handily beaten by the best computers. Go, or even Starcraft, clearly show greater difficulty and have higher standards of mastery.
- adamconroy 13y ago
  Usain bolt can be beaten by my 1999 Toyota, doesn't mean we should stop running.
- cpayne 13y ago
  lol - What does that even mean? You know there are variants right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess Being great at one style doesn't normally mean you will be good at the others...
- rjempson 13y ago
  Are you saying no game is relevant if there is a more difficult game (and that is assuming what you say is true or even provable)? And as someone who has played 100's of hours of both Starcraft and tournament chess, I can assure you that chess is much harder to master. And just to throw around some unprovable opions, much like you, I declare that Starcraft becomes more a test of keyboard/mouse agility than strategy or tactics, because it has dominant strategies available for a master player. Back to chess, I think it is actually entering a golden era of interest and popularity. The last 2 decades at the top level have been dominated by opening theory and computer assisted home preparation, which has made it a hard slog for the professional and spectator. However the last 5 years or so have seen the emergence of a new breed of player that is shunning that approach. The number one player in the world is a prime example of someone who doesn't focus on opening theory and computer assisted preparation, and he has been blowing everyone away.
  - catnaroek 13y ago
    In many ways, Carlsen reminds me of my two favorite champions: Like Capablanca, he plays the opening and the middlegame "naturally", seemingly just following "common sense" positional principles - sure, backed by calculations, but not by home preparation. And, like Fischer, he clings to even the tiniest advantage (even if it is actually not good enough to win) until his opponent cracks down and makes a decisive mistake.
level09 13y ago
Are the guys of Team Treehouse behind this ? their website/concept are very similar ..
- benwoodward 13y ago
  Can't remember the other, but this is the second website I've seen that seems to have lifted the Treehouse look.
  - nickpettit 13y ago
    If you do remember the first one, please let us know.
- camus 13y ago
  nope they are just using bootstrap+flat-ui template. Please developpers, hire actual designers. Using the same theme everybody uses will make your product forgettable.
donniezazen 13y ago
What's everybody's favorite chess site here on HN?
- spazmaster 13y ago
  Chess.com. They have a nice iOS app too for playing the games on the go.
- thejteam 13y ago
  I use gameknot.com. Good for correspondence style chess games. Lots of people too.
- _roman 13y ago
  http://en.lichess.org/ http://en.lichess.org/
- akbarnama 13y ago
  redhotpawn.com - good for correspondence chess and an active chess forum. chesscafe.com - a great collection of articles (including instruction) on chess
- navan 13y ago
  I am not sure what specific activity you are asking for. There are play sites, news sites, forums, learning sites etc. I like chessbase for news. But I play at fics which is a chess server.
- dfan 13y ago
  chesstempo.com, for tactics problems, is the chess site I visit most frequently.
jeyaganesh 13y ago
Amazing... exactly like codeacademy
vkolencik 13y ago
One concept I really like for teaching Go (and I think it would be a great addition to this site) is the "Go teaching ladder": http://gtl.xmp.net/ http://gtl.xmp.net/ It lets you submit a record of your game and people who are just a bit better players than you are review it and point out obvious (from their point of view) mistakes. Everyone's games are reviewed by someone above them in the ladder, therefore most people are both students and teachers at the same time. I think it would be possible to use this concept for teaching chess as well, and maybe to some extent even programming.
- pclark 13y ago
  searched this page looking for a "Chessacademy for Go" thanks.
ronaldx 13y ago
Very nice - despite playing a fair amount of chess, I never understood the openings in such a clear way as they are explained here. One comment: the lone King in the King+Rook endgame wasn't as defensive as it could have been - and therefore learners could miss some tactics here.
CalinBalauru 13y ago
so slow! running throw some your basic tutorials and the quizez take huge amount of time to load.
CalinBalauru 13y ago
and you should also take a look at those js errors, they might have something to do with the speed issue
lbotos 13y ago
Great concept. I've always been a fan of chess but never really played. I think that's going to change. Feedback: You could use some work on your marketing message/brand. Chess has some much potential for interesting plays on the black/white concept and terminology. "More than just black and white.","Checkmate.". These are iconic chess ideas that I think if executed right, could add a the missing piece to the message you are trying to send. I think the flat-ui is actually holding you back and with a few more iterations on your brand you could have a really unique presence. If you want to talk more, my email is in my profile. Hope this helps!
nicholassmith 13y ago
This is great, I was playing some chess (vs computer) recently and whilst I can occasionally snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat I've never been a particularly good player, so I was planning on hitting the books at some stage. This looks by far more suited to my learning style, so I'm looking forward to building some new skills.
webwanderings 13y ago
This is amazing. Very much needed.
_roman 13y ago
Beautiful site. Terrible exercises. On the first exercise when you sign up there is an extra unnecessary check with Queen on h7, then queen on h6. Straight to h6 is all you need to start off the combination. The extra check on h7 actually has the potential to disrupt white's attack if black responds correctly. In the exercise black does not. The rest of the exercises I tried were uninspired. A couple of suggestions: a) Have a goal in the exercises explicitly shown to the user (mate in 4, material advantage, winning end game, etc.) b) Please, please proof-check your exercises. At least have a link to report bad ones.
_mhr_ 13y ago
Chesscademy - Codecademy, that's cutting it close, but you guys have a very similar logo font to Codecademy as well (both cursive-y). I'd suggest a change, somewhere. Otherwise, awesome idea, good luck!

228 points by Matetricks 13y ago

shloime 13y ago

The name makes me think this is a codecademy sister site. Otherwise, very awesome.

shire 13y ago

I like this, very cool Just wondering why the design is based on TeamTreehouse? are these the same guys.

jfarmer 13y ago

So, I know the basic rules of chess, but I'm terrible at the game because I've never practiced. This site looks neat! I also spent the last two years designing curriculum to teach folks how to program. I have some issues as a student. I'm currently on the "Sharp Pin" exercise: http://chesscademy.com/exercises/the-sharp-pin-that-piece-isn-t-going-anywhere http://chesscademy.com/exercises/the-sharp-pin-that-piece-is... I get the basic idea. You have a piece which can't move without exposing a more valuable piece to attack. Here's where I get confused. There are three pieces involved in this situation: the piece you might want to move, the more valuable piece you would expose, and the piece that would attack. Let's call these pieces M, V, and A, respectively. It's unclear when you say "X pins Y" which of M, V, and A can go into X and which can go into Y. Now, if I'm confused about this, look at the hint: "Try pinning the knight to the king" Pin whose knight to whose king? If I'm confused about the syntax of pinning this hint doesn't help me at all. It's all the more confusing because I'm not sure what you mean by "the" king. There are two kings on the board, right? Which is "the" king? It's worse with "the" knight, since there are four knights on the board. Now, I spent about 15 minutes parsing out what you meant and saw what was intended. However, I started doing some no-no student things along the way. At first I tried to understand what the sentence meant. I looked at the kings and knights and tried to imagine how one would pin one to the other. "Pin the knight to the king." Well, the king is the most valuable piece, so it's probably V in this formulation above. But is the knight the M or the A? Now I'm looking at the knights on the board, thinking about moving them around, and I don't see how any move I make could be consistent with the instructions. Hmm, ok, so the knight must be the M which means it must be one of the black knights. You can see already how I'm not really thinking about the problem but trying to reverse-engineer what you mean. I'm doing this because I don't have a clear picture what "pinning" means in my head. Now, when I think about moving pieces, I look at the board. What piece should I move? Well, I dunno, the pawns are out there and are near a knight. Maybe that's what pinning means? I'll move the pawns in the center and see if it yells at me. Ok, it yelled at me both times. What other piece could I move? Maybe I was wrong about knights being the M, so let's try all possible knight moves and see if the system lets me make any of those moves. Nope, ok, those are all bad. Yikes! Now I'm just guessing and relying on your system to tell me what's right or wrong. Ok, obviously the problem is I'm confused about WTF pinning means. How can I see some examples of pinning? I don't see anywhere on this screen. So, I go to Wikipedia and read the article on pinning. Ah, I see, "X is pinned to Y" means X can't move without exposing Y. So, maybe "Pin X to the Y" means move some piece into a position where "X is pinned to Y." Ok, well, the knight and the king are lined up diagonally, so the only way the knight could be pinned to the king is by a bishop. Oh, look! Ok, I can move that bishop. Yay! I get the gold star. This sequence of events is a problem on several levels. First, most students wouldn't keep at it like I would. They also wouldn't have the self-awareness to see that their first priority is to deconstruct the ideas you're trying to express and reframe them in a way they understand themselves. They most likely wouldn't look to outside resources like Wikipedia, either, because they'd get "tunnel vision" on the current page. Second, you confused me by talking about absolute and relative pins. I don't know whether I'm going for an absolute or relative pin in this exercise. The hint gives it away, but only by process of elimination. That is, "This must be an absolute pin because otherwise it wouldn't make sense for a king to be involved." Third, although I eventually get the "right" answer, my path to that answer looks nothing like the path an expert would take. What hint can you give that suggests not just the proper outcome but encourages expert-like habits in the student? I don't know enough chess to suggest, but here are some ideas. "Think about what moves your various pieces can make. Are there any avenues of attack that line up with those possible moves?" "To pin the black knight to the black king, you need to move one of your pieces so that it is attacking the knight and would be attacking the king were it not for the knight's position." This latter hint is nice because it also reinforces previous lessons about attacking, including the forking exercise which also involved attacking two pieces at once. Now I'm relating this current situation to a previous one, and it makes me think there might be some interesting relationships between pinning and forking. Anyhow, just some thoughts from a guy who spends too much time thinking about curriculum and pedagogy!

jfarmer 13y ago
Ok, sorry, now I'm on the next lesson: http://chesscademy.com/exercises/skewer-the-shish-kebab http://chesscademy.com/exercises/skewer-the-shish-kebab This hint is silly. It talks as if I've already made a move, but I haven't made any moves. This is totally confusing. Update: Ok, I read the Wikipedia article and it mentioned that long-range pieces can skewer. That's interesting. I had never thought of grouping the pieces into long-range and short-range attackers, but that makes total sense. I see now that both pins and skewers are really tactics for long-range pieces. They're ways for you to control parts of the board "at a distance" by forcing your opponent to move or stay put. There might be situations where a short-range piece could pin or skewer, but I can also see how that would be more precarious. Both pieces being pinned or skewered would have to be close together and the attacking piece would have to be close to both. This means you'd probably be in "enemy territory" and your attacking piece more vulnerable to attack. With a long-range piece you don't have to worry about any of this. Your opponent would have to enter your territory to halt the pin or the skewer. That seems like an important distinction to understand. I look back on some of the things I was doing in previous exercise and they make no sense in light of this distinction, e.g., moving pawns around like a monkey trying to pin and skewer things.
- pjungwir 13y ago
  Good insight re long- and short-range pieces. A pawn can never pin or skewer because it can only attack one space away. Also a knight cannot pin or skewer, because the squares it attacks are not in a straight line. (Pawns and knights have a "fork" tactic though.)
  - jfarmer 13y ago
    As a beginner this was totally invisible to me and nevertheless it's critical to understanding why pinning and skewering are valuable: you can control your opponent's behavior from a distance. This is the curse of expertise. Experts have internalized the most important distinctions so well they're like air. Beginners haven't internalized any distinctions and therefore couldn't possibly see that their struggle is a product of not having them. They can't even express the concept of air. "Just breath! Inhale! Fill your lungs up!" the expert says, as the beginner coughs and grabs at their throat.

digitalmerc 13y ago

Videos not working for anyone else?

thelastnode 13y ago
The videos are hosted on Dropbox. Dropbox disabled the videos because there has been too much public traffic.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  ugh can't wait till it comes back up. When it does, I'll be sure to lose many hours of my life to this :)
- srik 13y ago
  Hosting publicly accesible videos on dropbox is not the best strategy.
- weisser 13y ago
  Unless you have a pro account there is a 20 gig/day bandwidth limit. With pro it's 200 gigs.
Matetricks 13y ago
Ah sorry, we were blocked by Dropbox! We weren't expecting this much traffic and we're moving our videos over to AWS soon. We're going to use Box as a quick fix in the meantime.
- pavs 13y ago
  ... Youtube?
- tucson 13y ago
  This videos on Box don't work very well unfortunately: I can't pause and resume a video. Every time I miss any information I have to reload the page and start from the beginning of the vid.... Otherwise, great and I like the one video I watched. Thanks.

charlesju 13y ago

Great site! I've wanted to learn chess for a long time, this is a great place for me to start.

rohit89 13y ago
You could also check out chesstempo.com I've spent loads of fun time practicing tactics at http://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics.html http://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics.html

dmix 13y ago

Copywriting/conversion recommendation: "create you wonderful account" -> "start learning chess now" or "start improving your chess now". Always keep it specfic to your product value prop. Generic text like "Try it now" never converts as well. Also adding "free" helps.

cpayne 13y ago
I saw that too. Is English a second language? At the moment, you seem to be looking for audience engagement (as opposed to generating revenue). If that is the case then I'd leave it as is. I read that sort of thing and see it as cute enthusiasm.
mlchild 13y ago
Also I clicked the "play" button at the center of the splash page about 8 times before realizing that it was not, in fact, a video, but merely advertising forthcoming videos.

hkmurakami 13y ago

I wonder if the site will after time start offering (1) premium memberships to the tune of poker training sites to access the best/newest videos and/or (2) 1 on 1 coaching sessions with the coaches for $X00/hour, and the site gets a cut. ex: http://www.cardrunners.com/ http://www.cardrunners.com/ http://www.deucescracked.com/ http://www.deucescracked.com/ http://www.bluefirepoker.com/ http://www.bluefirepoker.com/ Alternately I'd be excited to see a new business model for this kind of game training site.

jaredmck 13y ago
Poker is definitely an easier sell for that business model, since you can make money immediately by improving your poker game. Since chess doesn't have nearly the luck component, making money by gambling on chess is much more difficult, making the video lessons market a bit less lucrative than the poker sites (who I believe generally made decent $). Definitely some possibilities though! Makes me want to try and actually get decent at chess, but it's so much work...

morgante 13y ago

Inspired by codecademy?

FedRegister 13y ago

I love the very short and to the point ToS. Thank you.

Qtz 13y ago
Yeah, I agree with this. No more gibbirish.

kazagistar 13y ago

Meh, chess is broken. The best humans can now be handily beaten by the best computers. Go, or even Starcraft, clearly show greater difficulty and have higher standards of mastery.

adamconroy 13y ago
Usain bolt can be beaten by my 1999 Toyota, doesn't mean we should stop running.
cpayne 13y ago
lol - What does that even mean? You know there are variants right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess Being great at one style doesn't normally mean you will be good at the others...
rjempson 13y ago
Are you saying no game is relevant if there is a more difficult game (and that is assuming what you say is true or even provable)? And as someone who has played 100's of hours of both Starcraft and tournament chess, I can assure you that chess is much harder to master. And just to throw around some unprovable opions, much like you, I declare that Starcraft becomes more a test of keyboard/mouse agility than strategy or tactics, because it has dominant strategies available for a master player. Back to chess, I think it is actually entering a golden era of interest and popularity. The last 2 decades at the top level have been dominated by opening theory and computer assisted home preparation, which has made it a hard slog for the professional and spectator. However the last 5 years or so have seen the emergence of a new breed of player that is shunning that approach. The number one player in the world is a prime example of someone who doesn't focus on opening theory and computer assisted preparation, and he has been blowing everyone away.
- catnaroek 13y ago
  In many ways, Carlsen reminds me of my two favorite champions: Like Capablanca, he plays the opening and the middlegame "naturally", seemingly just following "common sense" positional principles - sure, backed by calculations, but not by home preparation. And, like Fischer, he clings to even the tiniest advantage (even if it is actually not good enough to win) until his opponent cracks down and makes a decisive mistake.

level09 13y ago

Are the guys of Team Treehouse behind this ? their website/concept are very similar ..

benwoodward 13y ago
Can't remember the other, but this is the second website I've seen that seems to have lifted the Treehouse look.
- nickpettit 13y ago
  If you do remember the first one, please let us know.
camus 13y ago
nope they are just using bootstrap+flat-ui template. Please developpers, hire actual designers. Using the same theme everybody uses will make your product forgettable.

donniezazen 13y ago

What's everybody's favorite chess site here on HN?

spazmaster 13y ago
Chess.com. They have a nice iOS app too for playing the games on the go.
thejteam 13y ago
I use gameknot.com. Good for correspondence style chess games. Lots of people too.
_roman 13y ago
http://en.lichess.org/ http://en.lichess.org/
akbarnama 13y ago
redhotpawn.com - good for correspondence chess and an active chess forum. chesscafe.com - a great collection of articles (including instruction) on chess
navan 13y ago
I am not sure what specific activity you are asking for. There are play sites, news sites, forums, learning sites etc. I like chessbase for news. But I play at fics which is a chess server.
dfan 13y ago
chesstempo.com, for tactics problems, is the chess site I visit most frequently.

jeyaganesh 13y ago

Amazing... exactly like codeacademy

vkolencik 13y ago

One concept I really like for teaching Go (and I think it would be a great addition to this site) is the "Go teaching ladder": http://gtl.xmp.net/ http://gtl.xmp.net/ It lets you submit a record of your game and people who are just a bit better players than you are review it and point out obvious (from their point of view) mistakes. Everyone's games are reviewed by someone above them in the ladder, therefore most people are both students and teachers at the same time. I think it would be possible to use this concept for teaching chess as well, and maybe to some extent even programming.

pclark 13y ago
searched this page looking for a "Chessacademy for Go" thanks.

ronaldx 13y ago

Very nice - despite playing a fair amount of chess, I never understood the openings in such a clear way as they are explained here. One comment: the lone King in the King+Rook endgame wasn't as defensive as it could have been - and therefore learners could miss some tactics here.

CalinBalauru 13y ago

so slow! running throw some your basic tutorials and the quizez take huge amount of time to load.

CalinBalauru 13y ago

and you should also take a look at those js errors, they might have something to do with the speed issue

lbotos 13y ago

Great concept. I've always been a fan of chess but never really played. I think that's going to change. Feedback: You could use some work on your marketing message/brand. Chess has some much potential for interesting plays on the black/white concept and terminology. "More than just black and white.","Checkmate.". These are iconic chess ideas that I think if executed right, could add a the missing piece to the message you are trying to send. I think the flat-ui is actually holding you back and with a few more iterations on your brand you could have a really unique presence. If you want to talk more, my email is in my profile. Hope this helps!

nicholassmith 13y ago

This is great, I was playing some chess (vs computer) recently and whilst I can occasionally snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat I've never been a particularly good player, so I was planning on hitting the books at some stage. This looks by far more suited to my learning style, so I'm looking forward to building some new skills.

webwanderings 13y ago

This is amazing. Very much needed.

_roman 13y ago

Beautiful site. Terrible exercises. On the first exercise when you sign up there is an extra unnecessary check with Queen on h7, then queen on h6. Straight to h6 is all you need to start off the combination. The extra check on h7 actually has the potential to disrupt white's attack if black responds correctly. In the exercise black does not. The rest of the exercises I tried were uninspired. A couple of suggestions: a) Have a goal in the exercises explicitly shown to the user (mate in 4, material advantage, winning end game, etc.) b) Please, please proof-check your exercises. At least have a link to report bad ones.

_mhr_ 13y ago

Chesscademy - Codecademy, that's cutting it close, but you guys have a very similar logo font to Codecademy as well (both cursive-y). I'd suggest a change, somewhere. Otherwise, awesome idea, good luck!