Frequently asked questions : Learning, training and gaming
Chessto is the virtual chess teacher in Chessity. It is a friendly little robot that helps chess learners to learn new skills, coaches them while playing a chess game and guides them through their learning. Chessto uses artificial intelligence specially developed by Chessity and is completely unique in chess education.
Chessto was designed for educational settings, such as schools and chess academies. Given the enormous success of Chessto, the robot is now also available for individual users. With Chessto you have your own personal chess teacher.
You will automatically get Chessto features if your profile is set to 'Player'. Read here how you can check this and how you can change your settings if needed. If you have a coach profile, you need to enable Chessto tasks manually (the functionality of Chessto in the chess lessons is always available, regardless of whether you use Chessto tasks or not).
This is what Chessto does:
1. Explaining and teaching
How does a knight move? Can a queen make far moves? And how do you take an opponent's piece without losing one of your own pieces? At Pawn Level, Chessto acts as a virtual chess teacher that helps children learn how to play chess.
Chessto also plays a prominent role in teaching and practicing new chess skills. Not only does it help you to understand these concepts properly, it also activates prior knowledge in a structured way. This makes it easier to process and remember the new information. You will automate the thinking steps, so that you can better apply the lessons you have learned in your chess games.
Chessto doesn't mind explaining things three times, ten times, or even twenty times. It never loses its patience and is always helpful and cheerful. However, the robot has deliberately been programmed in such a way that you cannot sit back and let Chessto do the work.
2. Coaching during a game
Chessto is full of sophisticated artificial intelligence. As soon as you are able to play a real game of chess, it helps you during your games with tips and advice based on your personal level of chess and user data. Chessto teaches you proper opening strategies and what choices you have to make in the different phases of a chess game. Think of aspects like developing pieces, castling and king safety, and attacking safely. At the right time, focused on your personal learning objectives, while Chessto adapts to your level. In short, Chessto offers truly customized learning, that focuses on what it is all about: the chess student.
Our user data shows that the chess level of learners improves by leaps and bounds in a very short period of time. After half an hour of playing chess with Chessto, the effect is already measurable!
3. Coaching in the learning process
Chessto keeps an eye on which lesson(s) still need to be made in order to get a new badge on the way to the exam. It coaches you in your learning process.
Once a week, Chessto assignes these lessons to you as a special mission. If Chessto has assigned you tasks, you will see this backpack on your homepage:
(image in Dutch)
Mission accomplished? Then a new badge will be displayed on the homepage and you are one a step closer to your chess diploma.
Once all stickers have been received, you can take an exam. Chessto's guidance, both in the exam coaching and during the lessons, ensures that you learn even more efficiently, so that you can quickly obtain chess diplomas and enjoy learning.
4. Coaching after a failed exam
If you fail the exam, Chessto comes back into action. It analyses the mistakes that were made during the exam and on the basis of this it compiles a package of lessons that need to be practised in order to pass the next attempt.
Yes, the level of the chess puzzles in the Arena is adaptive. So when you play games, you'll always get chess puzzles on your own level. This way players with different levels can still play against each other and they both have a chance to win.
Of course this concerns the games in which tactics are central, such as the Frog Race and the Space Race. In games with a regular chess game mode (such as gong chess and rapid/blitz chess) the level differences do come to the fore.
Children who learn chess with Chessity at school or as an extra-curricular activity receive this information from their teacher or trainer. Based on the extensive data in the teacher dashboard, the teacher coaches his or her students to do the most suitable learning and training activities.
For users who learn chess and improve their game with an individual Chessity account, we have designed a personal dashboard. This is a special page that makes you conscious of your personal progress and statistics. It helps you set personal learning goals and motivates you to achieve them.
The personal dashboard shows:
- your daily activity
- how your rating develops
- what your strengths and weaknesses are in chess
- the moves that were played in your chess games
- which lessons you have completed
- what mistakes you made in the puzzles and the right solutions were
- how many stars you have earned
The statistics about your strengths and weaknesses in chess are based on your game performance in the Arena (' Games'). Presented in a table, you see data that show whether you play safe moves, suffer from hanging pieces, do or don’t recognize mating opportunities, and so on. You can play back your own games move by move and analyze them.
This gives you an insight into which chess skills you have already mastered and where you can still improve. By practising in a deliberate way or by taking lessons on subjects you are not so good at yet, you will improve your play and win more chess games.
Curious about your progress? Check out your personal dashboard now:
>> Click here <<
You can find your personal dashboard under the button 'My dashboard' on your profile page:
It is tough to give a general answer to this question. It depends on your level and what you want to achieve. But to give you an idea:
Beginner
If you are completely new to chess, you start with the lessons in the Pawn, Knight and Bishop levels. You will learn the rules and practice your tactical skills. That way, you build a solid basis. You can alternate your lessons with fun games in the Arena. Chessity is adaptive, so you will always play games at your own level. In ‘training’, the Jumping Jack game is a good way to master the movements of the knight.
Somewhat advanced chess player
If you are somewhat advanced (from Bishop level onwards), it is good, in addition to the lessons, to play a lot of games (which you can do in the Arena, under ‘gaming’) and to learn from your mistakes.
The ‘training’ section offers various tactics trainers. This mixed assignments closely resemble actual chess game situations, making them ideal for training. They teach you tactical pattern recognition and search strategies. You also encounter these assignments in the gaming section.
In addition, it is very important to develop a good board vision, for which Chessity has develop the Routeplanner training games. If you practice theseregularly, your visualization skills will keep improving.
Advanced chess player
For advanced chess players, the lessons of the Rook and Queen levels are interesting. In addition, it is important to do a lot of tactical training. The chess puzzles in Chessity go up to the master level, so you can always train on your own level.
At this chess level, the Endgame trainers are also recommended.
Normally speaking, new lessons have to be unlocked first by completing the lessons before them. However, for advanced chess players, it is also possible to unlock all the lessons, which means you no longer have to 'earn' lessons, but you can start with a lesson of your choice.
For individual users:
Go to My account – Account settings and check the option ‘Unlock all lessons’.
For users with a student account:
You cannot unlock lessons yourself, only your coach can do that for you.
However...
Many (young) chess players overestimate their own level. They start with lessons that are too difficult for them, and they become frustrated, which is why we recommend being very cautious when it comes to unlocking all lessons! Even for chess players with one or two years’ experience, it is better to start at the beginning. They will proceed quickly, until they reach their own level.
Only the design is different. Other than that, the lessons are exactly the same. It is a series of lessons teaching absolute beginners the basics of chess. For young kids, the river with the frog is an attractive learning environment. Older children and adults will probably prefer using the normal environment.
All tactics have a certain rating level. ‘Easy’ contains tactical problems with a rating up to 1200, while ‘medium’ has a rating between 1200 and 1600, and ‘hard’ contains chess tactics with a rating higher than 1600.
The chess tactics in this section are selected especially for you. They have a level that is an exact match for your own Chessity level.
This section provides you with chess tactics that you have done before and where you made mistakes. The puzzles (containing the mistakes) that you made most recently are the first once to be shown. So you can use this tactics trainer to learn from your mistakes. The answers you give in this section do not affect your rating.
Route Planner is a unique training tool to improve your board visualization.
The assignment is to always to check the king. The pieces on the board are shown briefly, after which they disappear. So to be able to solve the puzzle, you need to remember where the pieces are!
Blind training with the Route Planner is a very effective way to improve your board vision skills. The Route Planners/TPR selects assignments that match your level.
If you are new to this training method, it is best to start with the TPR trainer.
Route Planner is a unique training tool to improve your board visualization.
The assignment is to always to check the king. The pieces on the board are shown briefly, after which they disappear. So to be able to solve the puzzle, you need to remember where the pieces are!
Blind training with the Route Planner is a very effective way to improve your board vision skills. The Route Planner Mixed mixes assignments of different degrees of difficulty.
If you are new to this training method, it is best to practice first with the Route Planner TPR, which selects assignments that match your own level.
Jumping Jack is a special training game designed to practice the movements of the knight. The game is also used in the lessons of the Pawn level.
Go to the Arena in the Gaming section. Click on the name of the other player to invite them to a game. After the invitation has been accepted, you can choose between Blitz or Rapid.
In the Arena, you can also play against one of the robots, which are positioned at the bottom of the screen. The robot with number 80 is the weakest player, 20 is the strongest. Robots adapt to the player’s level during the game.
The Arena (to be found in the Gaming section) is the place for gaming. You can invite other players to play against you by clicking on their username. Then you click on the game you want to play. If the other person also wants to play that game and clicks on it, the game is begins. If the other person clicks on another game, the two of you need to ‘negotiate’ until you reach an agreement.
The games in the Arena are a mixture of regular chess games, learning games and tactics training games.
If there are no other players in the arena, or you don’t want to play against the players who are there, you can also play against one of the robots that are positioned at the bottom of the screen. Robots adapt to the player’s level during the game.
Chessity has developed the Route Planner training games especially for training your board vision skills. These games teach you to visualize your position. By practicing regularly, your board vision will improve immensely. You will find that you stop hanging pieces, win more games and that your rating will improve.
Chessity has three different end game trainers, developed by top chess players:
- IM Robert Ris (1) teaches you everything about endgame theory (Endgame – Theory)
- GM Erwin l’Ami (2) teaches you all the essential knowledge of the endgame (Endgame – Essentials)
- IM Yochanan Afek (3) (grandmaster of chess compositions), composed special endgame studies (Endgame - Studies) that you can use to train your endgame calculation.
In the menu bar, click on the Coach icon.
Then go to Coach yourself.
This takes you to a page with your personal chess level and extensive training results per lesson. By clicking on the icon with the eye, you open a page with the training results for the lesson in question. The puzzle piece icon opens the lesson itself.
After you have finished a lesson or set of tactical problems, you are automatically taken to the Café, where you can see what you did wrong in each of the assignments you completed. You can play the solution in its entirety or click through it move by move. You also have the option of coming up with alternatives. Use the ‘hint’ button to get a chess computer to help you think about the next moves.
The Café also has a chat function, where you can ask questions about the assignments or the solution, and get answers from other users or someone from Chessity. If you want to revisit a chess puzzle later on, you can save it by clicking on the star.
The Café can also be accessed via the Café tab at the top of your screen.
Chessity uses the standard tables that are also used by FIDE. We treat each puzzle as though it were a player. If the puzzle isn’t solved correctly, the puzzle ‘wins’ and the player loses rating points. If the puzzle is solved correctly, the player ‘wins’ and his rating improves.
Your normal FIDE rating gives an indication of your overall strength as a chess player. Chessity uses different ratings: when you train tactics, you get a tactics rating, and for endgame training, you get an endgame rating.
Suppose that your FIDE rating is 2200, but your tactics raring at Chessity is 1800. That means you are probably better at openings and endgames, and there is room for improvement in your tactical game.
Is your Chessity rating for tactics 2600, but your actual rating much lower? Then you know that openings and endgames are your weaker points.
