u/ChessFlow_org

Hi all,
Wondering how the community would feel about a tool like this:

Say for example you could load a book like dvoretsky’s endgame manual, and as a 1600 extract all that’s useful from it for someone at your level, and as you improve it unlocks more and more of the book. Perhaps the price could follow suit ie if you can only use 20% of the book at your level, you only pay 20% of the price, and then pay more as you improve and unlock more.

Other features:
- spaced repetition
- visual depictions of the solutions that improve on wall of text + diagrams
- adaptive visualization trainer

It’s about 2/3rds built but we’re a small team and building a lot at once, trying to get a sense of how much we should prioritize it. Got digital rights to a few upcoming books.

Let me know your thoughts!

Hi all,

I‘m a CM from Toronto, Canada.

About 6 years ago at age 30 I started trying to optimize my chess training, after learning through my actuarial career how to study and learn better.

Openings:
- hired a GM coach to get my opening repertoire in good shape for the first time, used chess position trainer to drill the lines
- rounded out with Chessable courses

Endings:
- made flashcards of 100 Endgames you must know, learned ALL the positions

Middlegame:
- made flashcards of the first mistake after getting out of theory, to go over with my coach

The result was I gained 40 rating points after a 3.5 year hiatus from classical, got the CM title and hit my peak of 2209 FIDE, not bad for a comeback in my early 30s.

But the overhead of making flashcards was a lot, chess position trainer and chessable although more effective than my prior attempts at studying openings felt like too much work to maintain let alone learn a second line for each opening to be less predictable. It all seemed not worth it. So I focused on other things like learning languages, where the tools were better, I learned German and Spanish and brushed up on my French.

But March of last year, I bit the bullet and hired someone to build the tools to improve at chess that I needed. It took a lot more time and $ investment than I was expecting, but it‘s also been fun to work on something I’m passionate about.

Finally now, between the features in beta and the ones live, the site is good enough for me to use it to improve very quickly.

My problem is I‘m now burnt out from a year of working basically two fulltime jobs.

I still have some $ saved up and was thinking of a 6 month sabbatical from my day job to study chess and keep working on the site. But I figure I‘ll need 3 years grinding the site to get to GM and I don’t have that kind of $ saved.

I guess the advice I‘m looking for is more life advice, should I pursue my passion and take the leap of faith, hope to inspire people that serious improvement is possible in your late 30s and beyond? Or wait until I can turn the site into a profitable business, and keep working my two fulltime jobs and burning myself out, while my precious remaining neuroplasticity slowly seeps out of my aging brain.

But since it’s a serious chess sub, I also want chess advice, if you could focus on chess all day every day how would you structure your study schedule? Where do you think existing chess tools are lacking, and what would the perfect study tools look like?

Hi all, CM Geordie here from Toronto (here’s me getting owned by GothamChess at my local chess club: https://youtu.be/ZziUIdOtx\_0?t=559&si=uFVK0WZ-bWgyWQ\_t). Fun fact I also have the account x.com/chessbrah 😅

Wanted to see what people think of my ideas for a new tactics mode. Any other gaps in chess land for improving at tactics or pain points with existing tools?

Here’s my ideas:

Tactics puzzles:
- timed mode 2 min or 5 minutes, puzzles start easy and get harder
- train by theme eg forks, skewers (1 theme, multiple, weakest themes etc)
- gives you a rating that rewards accuracy more than speed
- fix mistakes afterwards for rating bonus
- flag puzzles you got right that you want to revisit after (otherwise they’re hard to find in the list so no one bothers)
- puzzle session starting point adapts to your rating