
Chesscademy, a free chess learning site - Matetricks
http://chesscademy.com
======
vkolencik
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
searched this page looking for a "Chessacademy for Go"

thanks.

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dmix
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
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.

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jfarmer
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-
is...](http://chesscademy.com/exercises/the-sharp-pin-that-piece-isn-t-going-
anywhere)

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!

~~~
Matetricks
This was some awesome feedback! I spent some time trying to approach the
exercises from the perspective of a complete beginner, and I tried to design
them accordingly. This is invaluable information that will help me design
future lessons. Thank you for your detailed and rigorous analysis.

~~~
jfarmer
Thanks!

Keep in mind I'm really, really, really far from a "complete beginner" in many
ways. I already understand the rules of chess. I've played maybe 50 games of
chess in my life, although I've lost nearly every one. I'm a teacher by
profession and spend almost all my waking hours thinking about how people
learn and implementing that in curriculum. I have a B.S. in mathematics from
the University of Chicago, which means I've been trained academically to think
abstractly and reason about formal systems (e.g., chess).

All this, and I was still incredibly confused bordering on frustrated! Now
imagine someone who was really a complete beginner and doesn't have the
ability to stop what they're doing and think, "Wait, maybe I should be
thinking about this a different way. Let me look up some other information and
see if I can relate it to what is happening in front of me." Plenty of
students in that situation would instead think, "This is impossible. I can't
even guess correctly. I'm terrible at chess."

I'd strongly encourage introducing some broad, strategic distinctions between
the various pieces, e.g., long range vs. short range. Whatever is important --
I'm the beginner so I have no idea!

I'd also give better examples. You don't need to do anything complicated.

You want to illustrate "pinning." There are two components to this: the
movement of a piece which created a "pinned" situation and the "pinned"
situation itself. A novice chess player is told there is a pin, which means
they'll look for pieces to move to create a pinning situation. A more expert
chess player does the opposite: they evaluate the state of the board and
realize that there is a possibility to pin.

So, the goal is really to help novices become better at seeing when it's
possible to pin a piece. Imagine a picture like this (I'm going to describe it
in words)...

You have a chess board with some "pinnable" situation. Let's take the one from
the exercise which involves moving the bishop from f1 to b5. The picture would
have the bishop in the b5 position. There would be an arrow emanating from the
bishop at b5, going through the knight on c6, and ending at the king on e8.
You'd somehow want to label each of the three points. Maybe put a tiny colored
dot in each (R,G,B) or the like.

This is meant to represent the state of "bishop b5 pins knight c6 to king e8."

Then have a translucent bishop in f1 with a dotted border. There'd be an arrow
with a dotted line pointing from the ghost bishop at f1 to the bishop in b5.
This is meant to represent the movement of the bishop from f1 to b5.

Then, next to this image, you would list a bunch of statement which are true
about this picture, interweaving chess jargon:

"The <red>bishop</red> pins the <green>knight</green> to the
<blue>king</blue>."

"<red>b5 bishop</red> pins <green>c6 knight</green> to <blue>e8 king</blue>."

"Moving the bishop from f1 to b5 pinned c6 knight to e8 king."

"The e8 king is pinned by the c6 knight."

"The c6 knight is pinned to the e8 king."

etc. Just list out phrases and relate them to the image. Modify the image to
emphasize the relationship in multiple ways (e.g., coloring the text to match
the colors of the appropriate pieces you marked the board with).

Something like this would give me an opportunity to see pinning from every
which angle. If one angle was easier for me to understand than the other,
that'd be my "entrance point" and I'd then come to understand all the other
angles by relating them to the one I really understand.

Also, keep in my that the above suggestions are coming from someone who knows
almost nothing about chess. They may or may not be confusing to other novices
in ways that I can't see. For example, they might introduce bad habits or
ideas that I haven't considered because (as a beginner) I couldn't possibly
anticipate them.

~~~
magmadiver
Playing 50 games of chess is still in the "complete beginner" phase.

~~~
jfarmer
Thanks! That's an invaluable addition to the conversation.

For my purposes and for the purposes of the people building this site, I was
taking "complete beginner" to mean "never played chess, ever." If you think
about it there are many things I know that such a person doesn't, e.g., what
it's like to make an ill-considered move.

I knew what pinning and skewering were, for example, although I didn't have a
name for them. Learning about pinning for me is putting a name to something
I've experienced. A "complete beginner" doesn't have access to that and will
be incrementally harder to teach.

That's what I meant, not that 50 games is substantial experience or that I am
not a beginner.

------
lbotos
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!

------
_mhr_
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!

------
hkmurakami
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
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...

------
_roman
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.

------
nicholassmith
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.

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ronaldx
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.

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

~~~
rohit89
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)

------
digitalmerc
Videos not working for anyone else?

~~~
thelastnode
The videos are hosted on Dropbox. Dropbox disabled the videos because there
has been too much public traffic.

~~~
srik
Hosting publicly accesible videos on dropbox is not the best strategy.

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

~~~
Qtz
Yeah, I agree with this. No more gibbirish.

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

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level09
Are the guys of Team Treehouse behind this ? their website/concept are very
similar ..

~~~
benwoodward
Can't remember the other, but this is the second website I've seen that seems
to have lifted the Treehouse look.

~~~
nickpettit
If you do remember the first one, please let us know.

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

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morgante
Inspired by codecademy?

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

~~~
spazmaster
Chess.com. They have a nice iOS app too for playing the games on the go.

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

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webwanderings
This is amazing. Very much needed.

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CalinBalauru
so slow!

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

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kazagistar
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.

~~~
rjempson
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
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.

