Where we came from and why we exist...
The modern chess world has brought with it a myriad of problems that for some players can become a deterrent to their ability to enjoy and learn chess. Solving the primary problems that online chess has been faced with is our primary goal.
My entrance into the modern chess world began at the age of 40 when I first started to teach my two young boys chess. In order to teach them I found that I needed to learn myself, so over the years I searched for materials to train both myself as well as my children.
This step into the world of modern chess brought me to a realization that there are a number of very difficult to deal with emotional and psychological problems that chess as a game brings with it, and through this experience I realized that the world of chess needs a safe haven for players that want to focus on learning and improving. This brought me to create the site you see here today and hopefully with it, solutions to what I consider are the largest problems modern players face: malicious behavior, Elo anxiety, and repertoire training.
We want to aggressively tackle the problems players face in modern online chess.
Learning chess in today's online world unfortunately brings with it great potential for malice. Cheating and sandbagging are something we will all face at some point and to what extent we face it is largely unknown and sometimes boils down to random luck. Beyond this players can face harassment in various forms from clock stalling to name calling and more.
We are in a golden age of computing that has unfortunately tainted the world of online chess, bastardizing it into something that can cause players grief, paranoia and mental anguish. We believe that computers can also be the solution to the problems that have been created by our malicious use of them. Computers by definition cannot cheat, sandbag, or say nasty things...
Because all chess interactions on this site are kept between the player and the engines, we can definitely say that our site is safe for players of all ages and all walks of life who wish to avoid these things. While we don't believe this is the final solution to cheating in chess, it will at least provide a safe haven for those who want to avoid it.
Elo is of course an amazing gift to the competitive chess world. It allows us to rank and categorize our abilities relative to the players we play against. Unfortunately, Elo also brings some very difficult to transcend psychological barriers for players. Many of us want to be able to log onto a computer and practice chess without worrying about a number that represents the sum of all our life's mistakes following us for an eternity. We want to wipe the slate clean and start a new chapter in life where we are better versions of ourselves than we were yesterday, but modern chess sites simply don't allow this.
We believe that despite Elo being an intrinsic part of chess, it doesn't have to weigh us down in a manner that causes us to feel psychological pain. For this reason we are moving towards shorter Elo cycles that get wiped clean daily, and calculating Elo for leaderboards based on play quality in the context of a single game or set of games rather than an ever evolving number that we can never escape. It is our belief that this will foster a better, happier, and more joyful environment and ensure students of chess can relax and learn knowing that their mistakes today won't prevent them from greatness tomorrow. Having one bad day, or one bad moment can be exactly what it should be: a bump on the road to greatness. We want chess students to be unafraid of making mistakes today because tomorrow they can start over and shoot for the stars again.
Chess theory has become an incredibly fundamental part of learning chess and excellence in chess in the modern world. There are thousands of lines for new players to learn and understand to gain knowledge of chess and improve as players. The problem is that move training often is boring, repetative and has no reward systems in place for players, so especially younger players struggle to take the time to learn and understand these things.
Our site allows the easy creation of small to large libraries of lines or FEN positions that players can train against in full matches from start to finish. The better they perform the higher their scores will be on the leaderboards, and each day they can try to set new records. This allows chess teachers to give their students extraciricular learning activities that are fun and engaging.
Also, the students will be able to keep track of all the things they have learned and practiced over time seemlessly without the need to manage and update messy libraries. And last, these line / FEN libraries will be designed to be created very easily by simply importing PGN files or inputing a series of FEN positions and chosing which side of the board the student should be playing on. You can train students to spot tactics, setup your own puzzles, etc. You can specify the maximum number of moves that should be played or have them play positions out to the end of the match.