Frequently asked questions

Chessity is a digital method to learn chess in a fun and easy way. The method is suitable for both primary school pupils and secondary school students, as well as adults. Chessity is designed in such a way that you can learn to play chess independently, even without a chess teacher.

The pupils go through the program at their own pace and receive help from our robot Chessto. It explains chess concepts, helps when a student finds something difficult, and distributes missions to ensure that students achieve their goals. The teacher guides the pupils in their learning process from a coaching role and does not need to be able to play chess himself. 

Chessity is fully adaptive and adapts to the level and way of learning of the user in a variety of ways, thanks to specially developed artificial intelligence. In Chessity, learning to play chess is a playful process. Gamification connects the method to the digital world in which children grow up. Learning chess in a game-based, child-friendly online learning environment boosts motivation and is super effective.

See also:

• Can I use Chessity to teach chess?
• Can my child learn how to play chess with Chessity without adult help?

Chessity is an excellent tool for teaching chess in schools and at chess clubs. 

Chessity offers unique functions for chess coaches, including a complete curriculum and extensive student monitoring system. Correcting homework is a thing of the past, students can help each other, and the system gives direct feedback if a student makes a mistake.

This enables chess coaches to teach larger groups, while differentiating between chess levels at the same time. Chessity's student monitoring system provides chess teachers with a wealth of information to optimize student potential. 

See also:

• What role does Chessto play in the learning process?
• How does Chessto help me as teacher in teaching and coaching my students?

If your child has an student account from his school or chess club, he can use also software at home, absolutely free of charge! Your child logs in with their own username and password and continue at home where they left in school.

Children can learn to play chess from around the age of five. Thanks to the playful design and teaching method, Chessity is very suitable for young children. Even four-your-olds have mastered piece movement and captures with Chessity.

Chessity is suitable for chess players of all ages. Chessity offers a fun way to learn to play chess for both kids and adults. Users can select a kid-friendly design or an adult learning and training environment.

In Chessity children learn chess by playing. The program provides feedback and explanation, mostly in a visual way. This makes Chessity also suitable for young children who are not (yet) able to read (well) and for struggling readers.

When the program uses language, both in spoken and written form, its level is attuned to the vocabulary and the language and reading levels of young children.

The lessons are introduced with short instruction texts. At the beginner level, the explanation is a bonus; most children skip the explanation and start practicing immediately.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, the children receive personalized help while practicing. Our friendly robot Chessto provides personalized explanations and instructions during the exercises and helps until a student has fully mastered the skill.

For the games, no reading skills are required at all.

Chessto is the virtual chess teacher in Chessity. He is a friendly little robot that helps the student learn new skills, coaches while playing a chess game and guides them through their learning process on their way to an exam. Chessto uses artificial intelligence specially developed by Chessity and is completely unique in chess education. 

Moreover, Chessto enables teachers who feel unqualified to teach chess or cannot play chess themselves to include scholastic chess in the curriculum. With the aid of Chessto, in the addition to the existing gamification and teaching bot technology in Chessity, schools worldwide can now make chess available to their entire student body. 

And kids? They simply love to have a little chess friend that helps them play chess.

Read more about Chessto:

• Chessto keeps learners in the flow (blog)
• What role does Chessto play in the learning process?
• How does Chessto help me as teacher in teaching and coaching my students?
• How does Chessto coach students before and after an exam?
• What happens if a student does not do the Chessto tasks?
• What reading skills are required for Chessity?
• I want Chessto to coach me in my chess learning process. Is that possible? (Individual user)

In order to understand this properly, it is good to know a little more about the background of Chessity. Chessity is designed to give all children the opportunity to learn chess in school. In a fun and effective way, with a method that on the one hand helps chess specialists in classroom management and on the other hand does not require school teachers to be able to play chess themselves.

It's no coincidence that Chessity is a digital method. A digital learning method is not an end in itself, but a springboard to more effective, personal and modern chess education. Thanks to digitalization, chess teaching has become scalable (one teacher can mentor more children at the same time) and within reach for teachers or parents who cannot play chess themselves or feel unqualified to teach. 

Chessto - as small and cute as he is - is a very powerful, innovative and absolutely unique instrument. While the children learn independently with high-quality instructions from Chessto and feedback from the program, the teacher has plenty of time for personal attention to individual learners. This can take the form of chess instruction (chess trainers) or coaching children in their learning process (teachers), or both.

For students, especially children, it is simply great to be helped by Chessto; exactly with the things they find difficult or don't quite understand yet. Just as often as is necessary and in the way that this individual student learns the most from.

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? In the lessons, 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 checkmate and defending against mate. Not only does it help the children to understand the concept of 'mate' properly, it also activates prior knowledge in a structured way. This makes it easier to process and remember the new information. Children learn to automate the thinking steps, so that they can better apply the lessons they have learned in their chess games.

Chessto doesn't mind explaining things three times, ten times, or even twenty times. He never loses his patience and is always helpful and cheerful. However, the robot has deliberately been programmed in such a way that children cannot sit back and let Chessto do the work.

2. Coaching during a game 

Chessto is full of sophisticated artificial intelligence. As soon as children are able to play a real game of chess, Chessto helps them during their games with tips and advice based on their personal level of chess and user data. Chessto teaches them proper opening strategy and what choices one has 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 the individual learning objective of the user, while Chessto adapts to the level of the user. In short, Chessto offers truly customized learning and coaching, that focuses on what it is all about: the chess student.

Our user data shows that the chess level of children 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 the students in their learning process.

Once a week, Chessto distributes these lessons to the students as a special mission. Mission accomplished? Then a new badge will be displayed on the homepage and the student is one a step closer to their chess diploma.

Once all stickers have been received, the student can take the exam. Chessto's guidance, both in the exam coaching and during the lessons, ensures that the students learn even more efficiently, so that they can quickly obtain chess diplomas and enjoy learning.

4. Coaching after a failed exam

If a student fails the exam, Chessto comes back into action. He 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.

As a teacher you can leave the guidance to Chessto without any worries (although it is always possible to view the exam results yourself).

If you are looking for a teaching method to teach chess, then of course you want the best teaching method. Chessity is made from the conviction that digitalization is the most powerful means to let children learn and to aid teachers.

Our method is designed in such a way that it allows every school to include scholastic chess in the curriculum. Teacher do not need learn how to play chess in order to teach chess, there is no need for hiring a chess professional to teach, and differentiating between chess levels within a group is easily done.

Chessity is not a digital version of a paper method, but is fully developed from our digital DNA. Not only is Chessity adaptive and makes use of gaming learning, we have also developed advanced artificial intelligence that is absolutely unique. This makes Chessity one of the most innovative teaching methods in the world, both in the field of chess education and in general. 

Independent learning with Chessto 

The method is designed in such a way that children can learn to play chess completely independently. This is done in a playful manner, in an attractive child-friendly online learning environment, full of challenging mini-games. The Chessto robot, a virtual chess teacher, helps the students to master chess skills. It gives personalized chess instruction, helps when a student is struggling and motivates the students to persevere.

Chessto not only helps with learning and practicing new subjects, it also teaches the children what choices to make during a real game of chess. During a game, Chessto coaches students with tips and advice based on their personal level of chess and user data. This technology has been developed by Chessity and is not available in any other teaching method.

Motivation for each pupil

Children learn best when they are motivated to learn. Chessity lets students discover how much fun learning can be. The students are owner of their own learning process and can learn both linearly and non-linearly. The method uses gamification and game-learning. This makes practicing more fun and stimulates you to do more tasks. As a result, the learning process is more intensive.

Tailor-made teaching material

The method adapts itself in various ways to the level and learning styles of the user. The exercises are automatically differentiated on multiple levels. The same applies to the feedback and instruction provided by the program. Through the use of teaching bots and artificial intelligence, each student receives personal feedback and instructions that are precisely tailored to their own level. The teacher doesn't have to check anything; that's what the program does.

Student Monitoring System

For teachers there is an extensive dashboard that provides detailed insight into the progress and learning development of the students. This gives the teacher a powerful tool to coach students in their learning process.

Badges and exams

Students also have insight into their progress and performance themselves. For example, children can earn badges if they have sufficiently mastered a learning objective. Once a student has earned all badges of a level, they can take the level exam.

21st-century skills

Chessity is in line with current educational and pedagogical developments and contributes to the development of 21^st-century skills among children. Learning to play chess with Chessity strengthens the metacognitive skills of the students. The long-term effect of this is that children become less dependent on a teacher and learn better.

Everyone who learns to play chess - be it children or adults - has their own strengths and weaknesses. What is an easy chess lesson or puzzle for one person can be a huge stumbling block for another.

For effective chess training, it is important that the difficulty level of the exercises matches as closely as possible the level of the chess player. It must be challenging enough, but not too difficult to make it demotivating. ‘Level’ is thus an individual given, which also changes as a player gets better. 

The kind of technology-enhanced learning that Chessity offers makes it possible to respond to the different learning and training needs of users. The chess level is adjusted for each user in such a way that everyone achieves an optimal learning efficiency.

Such an adaptive and therefore personal teaching method is not only good for those who learn to play chess, but also for teachers. Because of the flexible way that Chessity adapts to students’ individual needs, teaching groups of students with different chess levels is no effort at all.

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Why It Is Good To Make Mistakes by JacquelineW Doing is learning and making mistakes is part of the process. More than that: mistakes are a good thing! This is a key concept of Chessity: 'productive failure', making m... read more »

Yes. Chessity offers more than two hundred chess lessons at five different levels. From absolute beginner to very advanced. The lessons can be taken independently. Every lesson comes with a short explanation.

Yes, you can. Chessity has developed the Route Planner-training games especially to train board vision.

These games help you to visualize your positions. By practicing this regularly, your visualization skills will improve enormously. You will notice that you stop hanging pieces, win more games and improve your rating.

Chessity offers a complete online training course. For beginners, it is a fun way to learn how to play chess and it offers excellent training tools for advanced chess players. Chessity provides users with all the feedback they need.

All of the lessons can be taken independently and come with clear examples, a clear explanation and thousands of exercises.

Yes, Chessity has an elaborate student monitoring system that provides teachers with detailed insight into the progress of their students. You need a coach account to get access to these features.

If your child wants to learn chess, but you cannot or do not know enough chess to teach them properly, Chessity is ideal.

Chessity is a didactically responsible method designed so that your child can learn chess completely independently. This happens in a playful way, in an attractive child-friendly online learning environment, full of challenging mini-games. Your child progresses through the program at their own pace and receives help from the little robot Chessto. He provides chess explanations, helps when your child finds something difficult, and motivates them to persevere.

Learning chess offers children many benefits. Chess is good for brain development, sharpens thinking skills, and is so educational for children that it even helps improve math and language skills. By playing chess, your child learns to concentrate better and improves memory.

Absolutely! Chessity is very suitable as a training method for youth sections of chess clubs. Thanks to the attractively designed digital lessons and game-based learning, children find Chessity much more fun to work with (at home) than traditional chess methods.

Because the program gives children direct feedback, the chess trainer has no marking work and there is plenty of room during training for playing on the board and discussing positions and games.

Fewer chess trainers needed

Many chess clubs struggle to find enough trainers. By using Chessity, fewer trainers are needed and trainers can be deployed more effectively. Children learn to play chess independently with Chessity, where the program guides them in chess content. This makes it very easy for parents or grandparents to supervise a beginner's chess training.

The assistant acts as a coach in the learning process. With the online dashboard, he/she can see exactly where the children are in the exercises and how well they master the material, without having to look over their shoulder. The assistant monitors the results and stimulates and motivates where necessary.

Linking accounts

Youth members who already have a Chessity account through school or privately do not need to purchase a separate club account. They can link their existing account to the club by adding their club trainer as their coach. Their data will then appear in the trainer's student tracking system.

If you know the basics of chess or are an advanced player looking to improve your game, Chessity has a lot to offer you. The more you learn and practice, the better you become.

Our didactic specialists and chess trainers have developed about three hundred lessons and training games that are not only very effective but also very fun to do. 

Research has shown that chess level improves by training various brain functions with chess patterns and interesting exercises at an adaptive level.

Chessity is developed with that knowledge as a starting point. By practicing and training with Chessity, chess players become demonstrably stronger.

Yes, you can. We offer schools the opportunity to follow a free chess workshop with Chessity. This way, you can experience how easy it is to teach chess with Chessity and how enthusiastic the students are.

Click here for more information or request a workshop directly.