View from an UNchessable Parent Q&A 3 -- Useful Chess App - ChessKid.com
We've tried a few chess apps, but we always feel that ChessKid is the most suitable app for juniors. Although its name includes "kid," it is not only for beginners. Kobe still uses it every day, doing puzzles and advancing to the level of King. Believe it or not, even though her ACF and FIDE ratings are already above 1500, theoretically making her a semi-professional player, she doesn't always breeze through every challenge. So, we believe that this app can definitely cover the practice needs of most non-professional players.
What makes it suitable for junior players is not its difficulty level, but rather its curriculum design and communication style, which are more tailored to kids' learning habits and interests. It's more lively and engaging, helping children learn difficult and sometimes dull concepts in a fun environment without even realising it.
Below is the app user review written by Kobe two years ago, and you can also find Kobe's Chesskid username in Picture 2 if you want to add her as your friend and play with her or use the link: https://app.chesskid.com/14vfvUSxjWoqMkUK8
“I was attracted to chess when I found an Usborne chess book on my bookshelf - yes, my mum likes to buy various books even though she doesn't have interest in the topic, she just reckons that I would like to read it, she called it "don't be the ceiling of your kid's growth", which I much appreciated. I was intrigued when I saw the graphics of the book and the interesting ways the chess pieces moved. I wanted to learn how to play when I realised that chess could teach me more skills to become more intelligent. This is what started my journey in chess.
I started ChessKid when I realised that chess needs two people to play, and I can’t play by myself. I couldn’t play with anyone in the house because nobody could play chess. It was also very hard for us to always go to a chess club nearby because I was very busy. This resulted in my mum finding the app; she also later bought me a golden membership which allowed me to do unlimited puzzles, watch all videos and have animated avatars. (Here, I have to say I'm not going to sell the golden membership and have no financial benefits relationship with ChessKid -- by Rosa)
ChessKid has helped me play chess and was one of my major go-to websites. I have improved a lot at chess and I would like to share how I have used ChessKid to improve my chess abilities.
ChessKid has a wide range of puzzles to do. I suggest if you get the puzzle wrong, don’t skip it and give it another go until you get it, although if you are stuck, you can look at the answers and think about why this is the correct move instead of the ones that you made before. If you are stuck on a specific subject in chess, you can go onto the website and select that topic; it will come up with chess puzzles that help you with this topic by showing you what the main idea is and how to play against and with this topic.
The videos on ChessKid have also helped me. If you do the levels in the lessons section, it will help you a lot because it has a video attached to it so that you can learn about the topic and it will later test you on the subject that the level wants you to learn. In my opinion, you should do at least 2 or 3 levels a week so that you can accel quickly and learn more by having lessons on not only 1 topic. If you are stuck on one puzzle of the test, you shouldn’t look at the hints; you can continue to refer back to the videos and do some puzzles on the topic. If you are stuck and everything you try is wrong, you can look at the hints.
The bots are also good to play with. You should not turn on the coaching device unless you are doing it for fun because, in official tournaments, you can’t have someone telling you every move you have to play or what ideas you should try, so you should think and analyse by yourself. If you are a beginner, you should start with the bot, “Qwerty”, if you know how to play chess pretty well, then you can choose where you would like to begin. To improve this, you should try to beat the bot you are currently on. If you lose, don’t close out the game; look at each move of the game and figure out where you went wrong. If you win, play 3 more times, each on a different colour because you can’t always have the same opening played against you after you have won all the games without any takeback moves, move on to the next bot and do the same process until you can’t beat any more bots. When you can’t beat any more bots, do some more puzzles on the reason why you lost.
I like to play chess because it is a good activity for the mind. When you analyse it, you have to think about what the other person’s plan is and how to stop it; you also need to make plans for yourself to try to figure out how to checkmate the opponent and learn something from the game.
Chess sometimes has some hard bits to it; you need to learn to not care if you get beaten in a chess game. This is very hard because sometimes you feel that you don’t learn anything from a lost game and it starts to get frustrating. But the fun things about chess are that you can never always have a certain number of openings and you can get creative and start making different branches to a main opening.”
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