ChessKid: New Features Update

ChessKid.com, the scholastic extension of Chess.com, has added a flurry of new features in the last few months. Several new members of the programming team have been hard at work delivering the kinds of fun learning features that kids, coaches, and parents want!

Our programming team's typical day...

Here's what's new on ChessKid!

• Live tournaments! This was our most requested feature, so ChessKid hired one programmer, locked him in a room for six months, and only let him out when it was done. Don't worry, we gave him as many candy bars and passed pawns as he wanted. Coaches can now create their own tournaments and set the time control, number of rounds, ratings of players, and more customizations!

• Tournament Tuesdays! Weekly five-round tournaments on Tuesdays at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Pacific for all ChessKids!
• Playing out endgame mistakes! Who doesn't like a second chance? Now when a ChessKid fails to win a won ending, or fails to hold a drawn one, she can immediately try the final moves again against the computer. (And that's in addition to the 63 pre-loaded "Computer Workouts" already on the site.)
• Levels now up to King 69! Even Chess.com doesn't have a "leveling up" system (although it is coming soon!). "Levels" on ChessKid tie together all the content in a progressive way. When a ChessKid watches a video, he answers questions in the accompanying lesson, then is allowed to advance. Here are the last few levels we released:

• Vision trainer! Just a fun way for kids to learn the names of squares and get used to focusing while a clock is ticking. Yes, Chess.com has this too.
• "Capture the Stars"! On either our iOS or Android app, ChessKids can now learn basics of chess by learning how the pieces move by gobbling up stars on the chessboard!

Enjoy the new features! Oh, you can now buy multi-year gold (unlimited) memberships (two or three years) at a discount on ChessKid! 

If you have any questions about features or gold memberships, please email [email protected], or just throw a tomato at us on our Facebook page (we'd prefer the email!).