Help & questions

Sign in with Google or an email address, then take the placement test — about fifteen minutes of puzzles that find your level. Answer honestly: wrong answers are how the app learns what to teach you first. After that, Today shows a daily scoresheet and you just follow the gold button.

Yes — tap “Teach me the rules first” on the sign-in screen, or read Rules School without signing in at all. Five hands-on lessons cover every rule including castling, en passant and promotion. The placement test waits until you are ready.

About twenty minutes. That genuinely beats three hours on a Sunday — chess patterns stick through spaced repetition, not cramming. The streak counter exists to protect the habit, not to nag you. Split it across the day if that is easier; it all counts.

No. Everything a student uses is free and always will be — puzzles, lessons, bots, reviews, friend games, the endgame gym, all of it. The only thing that may ever be paid is a coach running more than three students at once, and that is charged to the coach, never to the child.

It is built to be safe for the youngest player in the room, which is a different thing from being aimed at them. Ratings run past 2600, the puzzle library goes to 3000, and the endgame gym and the Woodpecker are methods titled players use. What you will not find is chat, a player directory or matchmaking — plenty of adults come for the coaching and stay because there is nobody to mute.

Yes, and on iPhone you should. Open chessit.app in Safari → Share → Add to Home Screen, then always open it from that icon. It runs full-screen, and on iOS it is the only way move notifications can reach you.

You do not need to. Your rating moves with every game and puzzle from day one, so a placement that started too low or too high corrects itself within a week. If you play online elsewhere, linking that account (see My Games) recalibrates you far faster.

You hand them a code — they cannot add you themselves. Five steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Find Invite a coach or parent and tap what they are to you — school coach, private coach, club coach or parent.
3. Tap Make a code. Six letters and numbers appear.
4. Read or send those six characters to your coach.
5. They type it into /coach → Add a student. Done — they appear in your Coaches following me list straight away.

Ask your student for a code — you cannot request access, by design. Once they read you the six characters, go to coach mode (also Settings → Open coach mode), type the code into Add a student and press Connect. Their rating trend, weekly training, repeated mistakes and recent games appear immediately. Your first three students are free.

Because if a coach could do it, so could anyone else claiming to be one. The pattern that hurt children on other platforms always started with a stranger being able to reach a child unprompted. So ChessIt has no way to ask: the child creates the code, hands it over in the real world, and nothing happens until they do. More on how we keep this safe.

Three usual reasons. It expired — codes last seven days. It was already used — each code works once, so a second coach needs a second code. Or a newer code replaced it — making a fresh code cancels the old one. Any of these: ask the student to make a new code. Codes never contain the letters I or O or the digits 0 and 1, so if you are reading a scribbled note, those are 1s and 0s misread.

Yes — up to five at once, which covers a school coach, a private coach and a parent with room to spare. Make one code per person and label each one as you create it, so your list reads Mr Ali (school coach) and Dad (parent) rather than two identical rows. Each code is single-use, so make the second one once the first has been redeemed.

Remove the old one and invite the new one: Settings → Coaches following me → Remove, then make a fresh code. The moment you remove someone their access stops and they keep nothing. Nothing about it is permanent either — if you remove the wrong person, just make them a new code.

They see your rating and how it has moved, which days you trained, your puzzle and game counts, the mistakes you keep repeating, and a list of your recent games. It is read-only — a coach cannot play as you, change your settings, message you, or alter a single thing in your account. There is no chat anywhere in ChessIt, including here.

Settings → Coaches following me → Remove. It takes effect at once, no reason required, and they are not told why. Coaches can also drop a student from their own roster. Either side can end it; neither side needs the other to agree.

Exactly the same way, and it is free forever. Make yourself a ChessIt account, ask your child to make you a code labelled Parent, and redeem it in coach mode. You will see their training honestly, including the quiet weeks. Your child can remove you, which is deliberate: consent that cannot be withdrawn is not consent.

The first three students are free permanently. Beyond that, paid seats are planned but not built — tell us you want them and you go first in line. Nothing a student uses will ever move behind that paywall.

Not yet. Coach mode today is a window, not a controller: it answers “what should I teach this child on Saturday?” before you walk into the lesson. Assigned homework is on the list — say so on the contact page and it moves up.

Friends → Set up the board. Choose a clock if you want one, and you get an invite link plus a six-letter code. Send the link by WhatsApp, Messages, anything — they tap it, sign in, and land in the game. The code is for a friend sitting next to you who would rather type six characters than open a link.

Send them the invite link anyway. It survives sign-up: they create an account, and the link drops them straight into the waiting game rather than the home page.

Friends → Join with a code, type the six characters, and you are seated. Codes are not case-sensitive.

That is working as intended. You can only challenge people you have already played. To reach someone new, one of you sends the other an invite link — after that first game you are friends and can challenge each other by name forever. Knowing somebody’s username is not enough to reach them, and that is the whole point.

No, and this will not change. There is no matchmaking pool, no player directory, and no way to browse other people. You play bots — there are plenty, at every strength — or people you invited. That single decision removes most of the risk other platforms spend enormous effort trying to police.

Yes — 5+0, 10+0 or 15|10, chosen when you set the board up, or no clock at all for games played across days. The clock only starts once the second player is actually seated, and it flags exactly like a real tournament: run out and the game is lost on time.

Open the game and the clock will have hit zero on their side — a Claim win on time button appears. ChessIt has no server ticking away in the background, so somebody has to look at the board for the flag to fall. Either player can claim it.

Tap Enable on the move-alerts card in Friends and your phone buzzes when your opponent moves. On iPhone this only works if you opened ChessIt from the Home Screen icon rather than a Safari tab.

Friends → Remove next to their name — they can no longer challenge you, immediately. It then appears in a Removed strip with an ↩ undo remove button, because a tap in the wrong place should not cost you a friendship permanently.

No. There is no chat, no comments, no emoji reactions and no profile text anywhere in ChessIt — not for friends, not for coaches, not for anyone. The board is the only thing two people share.

Press the gold ▶ Start today’s training button on Today and work down the scoresheet: puzzles → a lesson → a game → a calculation drill (or the endgame gym on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays). It is picked for you from what you have been getting wrong. If you only have five minutes, do the puzzles.

From a verified library of over two thousand positions spanning 400 to 3000 strength, picked near your rating with a bias toward the patterns you have recently missed. Every single one has been checked by Stockfish before shipping, so the answer is never debatable. Missed puzzles return the next day — that is the repetition, not a punishment.

Puzzles is the daily set at your level, with hints. Puzzle Rush is three minutes and three strikes for speed and recall — one wrong move ends that puzzle, and your best score lands on Rivals. The Woodpecker is one fixed personal set solved over and over in timed cycles, faster each round, until the patterns fire on sight. Rush tests recognition; the Woodpecker builds it.

The most valuable button in the app. Once your games have been reviewed, it serves you the actual positions from your own games where you went wrong. Clear them every time they appear.

Curated endgames you must convert against a perfect defender: wins you have to actually win (the coach stops you the moment the win slips), draws you have to hold for 24 moves, and The Grind — uncomfortable positions to survive against a stronger bot. This is where technique gets built rather than talked about.

Just Play. Pick how hard, pick a colour, pick rated or friendly, go — no plan, no prompts. Friendly games leave your rating alone. The coach still quietly reviews the game afterwards, so even your fun games make tomorrow’s training sharper.

Openings in the sidebar (or the opening explorer, which works without signing in). Play moves on the board and it shows you what strong players actually chose from that exact position, how often, and how those games finished — plus the opening’s real name. It answers a different question from the engine: not “what is best” but “what is normal”, which is how you find out whether your idea is a real opening or something nobody has tried.

Because no master game in the library reached that position — you have left known theory. That is not a mistake; it happens in every real game, usually sooner than people expect. It is the point where memory stops helping and you have to actually think, which is what the engine and the coach are for.

Learn → Opening trainer: the Italian and London as White, the Caro-Kann and Queen’s Gambit Declined as Black. It varies its replies between runs the way real opponents do, and corrects you the moment you leave the book.

Yes — every explanation in the app comes from your coach, so name it in Settings or from the prompt on Today. Owl, Rook, Professor Pawn, anything. It is the same coach every day, and it only changes who is talking: Stockfish still does all the judging underneath.

Because it is meant to be. You are being asked to see moves without moving pieces, and visualisation is the single muscle that separates a 1200 from an 1800. One drill a day, even a failed one, is the whole exercise.

The speaker chip in the row of chips at the top of Today. It remembers your choice on that device.

Yes — My Games, enter your username, import. Open each imported game once and Stockfish analyses it and mines your recurring mistakes, which then reshape your puzzles and your coach’s advice. If you are already strong online, linking also recalibrates your rating here in one step.

Every finished game is reviewed automatically, but the engine waits while another game is live so a bot never feels slow. Finish or leave your current game, wait a minute, and check My Games again. Analysis runs in your own browser, so keep the tab open while it works.

Yes. In any review, hit 🔍 Analyse from here: the board unlocks, you play either side, ← takes moves back, every position gets a live evaluation and a best-move hint, and Engine moves makes Stockfish answer you. Wander as far off the game as you like.

It is the same kind of number — a FIDE-style Elo — but not the same scale as any particular site. Chess.com rapid, Lichess blitz and an over-the-board FIDE rating all disagree with each other too. Link an online account and ChessIt pulls your rating most of the way toward it, so the number stops being a surprise.

You played a friendly rather than a rated game — that is the toggle in Just Play. Puzzles also move your rating far less than games do, by design.

Your phase. Each has a rating target and a focus, and you promote by reaching the target and beating that phase’s boss bot. It is the map: Pawn is “stop hanging pieces”, Queen is “play like a strong club player”.

A named bot that gates promotion. When your rating gets near the phase target, the scoresheet starts sending you at it. Beat the boss and hit the target and you promote.

Progress — your rating curve, a skill profile by motif, your badges, and what your games say to work on next. The weekly report lands on Today each Monday and compares this week to last: what you fixed, and what is still bleeding.

An opt-in weekly leaderboard — XP, streaks, ratings, puzzles and Rush scores against everyone else who opted in. Claim a username in Settings to appear; only that handle is ever shown. It resets on Monday.

Yes. Placement reaches 2600, the puzzle library runs to 3000, review depth increases with your rating, and the rating maths switches to a K-factor of 10 above 2400 the way FIDE does. The endgame gym and the Woodpecker are titled-player training methods, not beginner ones.

There is no messaging in ChessIt at all — no chat, no comments, no reactions, no profile text, no way to send a child a single word. That is not a setting you have to find; there is no code that could do it.

No. There is no player list, no search, no matchmaking pool, and no way to browse who is online. A challenge from somebody your child has not played creates nothing and notifies nobody. The only route to a new opponent is an invite link a friend deliberately sent.

An email address for sign-in, a display name, and chess data — ratings, games, puzzle results. No address, no phone number, no age, no photographs, no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs. Full detail on the terms and privacy page.

Settings → Delete account. It goes immediately — there is no email to write and no retention trick.

Use the contact page; it reaches a real person, not a queue. If a child is at risk, contact your local authorities first — we are a small family project, not an emergency service.

A dad and his son. ChessIt started as a training app for one fourteen-year-old and got shared with his friends. That is also why safety is not a feature here — it is the constraint everything else is built inside. The full policy.

Use the email and password option instead — same account, same features. This usually happens when the site was opened inside another app’s browser (Instagram, WhatsApp); opening chessit.app in Safari directly also fixes it.

Use the reset link on the sign-in page. If the email does not arrive within a few minutes, check spam — and if you originally signed in with Google there is no password to reset, so use the Google button.

Handles are three to fifteen characters, lowercase letters, numbers and underscores only, and each one can be held by one person. If it is refused, somebody already has it. You can change yours later in Settings.

Three things to check: you tapped Enable on the move-alerts card, your browser was allowed to send notifications when it asked, and — on iPhone — you opened ChessIt from the Home Screen icon rather than a Safari tab. iOS does not deliver web notifications to ordinary tabs.

Turn on Young learner mode in Settings: bigger buttons, simpler words, a calmer navigation bar, and a Read to me speaker on every instruction. Turn it off any time — nothing is lost either way.

Stockfish runs inside your browser, so an old phone with many tabs open will feel it. Close the other tabs and reload. If a page is genuinely stuck, reloading never loses progress — everything is saved as you go.

No. Real Board reads a photo of a physical position for casual games, analysis and study on your own board. Using it for help against a live opponent, here or anywhere else, is cheating. Shoot from directly above with White nearest you.

Tell us. Several things in this app exist because one of Rayan’s friends said the old version was annoying, so this genuinely works.