Chesscademy

August 10, 2014 9:23 AM

Chesscademy is a chess teaching website modelled on Codecademy. As such, it gives a sequence of short puzzles and exercises which help you build up knowledge of everything from how the pieces move to the intricacies of positional play. Sections of each 'course' are introduced by a short video. It's like a well-written chess book with interactive diagrams!
posted by kaibutsu (11 comments total)

For chess videos, of course, nothing compares to the streams uploaded by ChessNetwork -- nothing else comes close in conveying the excitement of play. Example.
posted by fredludd at 10:06 AM on August 10, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm slowly working my way through Farnsworth's free e-books at Chess Tactics. I'm apparently one of the weirdos who likes solving chess problems more than playing chess, tho..
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:30 AM on August 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is great and something I've been looking for recently. Thanks.

(Though I first read it as Cheesecademy,which also sounds interesting to me.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:37 AM on August 10, 2014 [5 favorites]

This is the kind of thing I'd gladly pay for as an app. Chess U has a decent app for Apple devices that I've been playing with for a while, but it's not as comprehensive as this.
posted by KGMoney at 11:11 AM on August 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Awesome!!
posted by Renoroc at 11:20 AM on August 10, 2014

Ok, now I need one for Dota 2.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 11:20 AM on August 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

There have been very strong chess players/teachers that have been giving personal lessons over the Internet via ICC/Skype/etc. for years, often for very reasonable rates, especially ones that are from eastern Europe. I'd recommend that route for most people wishing to get stronger at chess.
posted by gyc at 11:40 AM on August 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wake me when there's Go Academy.
posted by leotrotsky at 2:47 PM on August 10, 2014 [5 favorites]

It strikes me that this model would translate over to Go Academy pretty easily, and I would be stoked to see it!

There's been a decent amount of chatter about how revision control systems (like git) exist to solve a problem which occurs in lots of different arenas (how do we collaborate on a document?), but which arises in a particularly nasty way in CS. The documents involved -source code - are long, complex, and have little room for error.

The thing I like here is that they've taken the CS solution to a different really hard problem - how do we teach people to code - and translated it over to a different but extremely relevant problem area. And the site is super-slick at the same time, which doesn't hurt.
posted by kaibutsu at 2:56 PM on August 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

!!!!! I have no idea how to play chess, so something like this is really handy.

Any recs for Android apps so I can continue to learn while I'm offline?
posted by divabat at 4:41 PM on August 10, 2014

The 'tactics' speed-puzzles are awesomely addictive. I've been clicking through them trying to keep the rating above 1250 for way too long...
posted by kaibutsu at 7:58 AM on August 12, 2014