Chesslang.com - #1 Platform for Chess Academies
FIVE MINUTES DEMO VIDEO OF CHESSLANG
Key Features of Chesslang
To create your virtual academy, go to the “Academy” section after logging in:
And then you will see the following screen:
- Name – enter the name of your academy here
- Short Name – it will be used as a prefix for creating students’ usernames
For example, if your short name is “abc” and if you have 5 students, they will have the following usernames: abc_1, abc_2, abc_3, abc_4 and abc_5.
Below is an example:
In the “Academy“, go to the “Groups” section to create and manage your student groups:
A group requires the following:
- Group Name
- Select Students
- Group Description
You can teach your students online with the “Session” feature.
1. Creating a Session
It is a simple, 3-step process:
- Give your session a name
- Select your students/groups
- Select “One to One” to teach an individual student, “One to Many” to teach multiple students simultaneously
Note:
- In “One to One“, videos are streamed from both the coach and the student (only for 1 participant)
- In “One to Many“, the coach video is streamed to all students, and only audio is streamed back from students
Finally, click “Begin” to create your session.
2. Students Joining the Session
After the coach begins a new session, students will be able to join the session (only if the coach has selected him/her when creating the session) by just entering the “Session” module:
Student is able to join the session by just clicking “Session” module after he/she logs in
And the coach see the status of students – who have joined and who have not joined – in the ‘Participants‘ tab as shown below:
1) Start Call
Click on the ‘Start Call’ button to join the call with your student(s): After clicking the button, the following pop-up will appear, asking for your permission to access your camera and your microphone: That’s it, once this is done your students will automatically be joined to the call. You can see how to “Allow” access to your Camera and Microphone in your browser as explained below.2) Allowing Access to Camera and Microphone
Make sure you “Allow” access to your Camera and Microphone in your browser. Click on the site information icon next to the address bar and allow access to your “Camera” and “Microphone”:3) Text Chat with Students
You can use the “Chat” tab to chat with your students while teaching them: Your students can see messages from you and other students in his/her “Chat” tab:If you are having a “Session” with your students and you want to refer to some materials (games and/or puzzles), you can use the “Reference” tab:
1) You can use the materials from the following: Problembase, Gamebase, Sharebox and Public:
2) You can also “Load Position” or “Load Game” from the reference material:
3) Your students won’t see this in their screen. They will only see the original chessboard used for the Session.
If you want to analyze the position/game with an engine, you can go to the “Engine” tab:
NOTE: Your students won’t see this.
You can also decide whether your students can make moves on the chessboard or not.
Click on the drop-down and select who can make moves – for both White and Black.
This is the coach’s screen
Students will be shown whether they can make moves or not
You will notice some buttons/icons below the chessboard during a Session:
You can find what each of them will do below:
1) Hide Move for Students
If you want to hide the moves of the game from your students during a session, you can click on the toggle button or press the ‘h’ key:
This is how it will look on the students’ side:
If you want to make the moves visible to them, click the button again or press the ‘h’ key again:
And the moves will be visible to students:
2) Draw Arrows
To draw arrows on the chessboard, press the ‘A’ key or click the button shown in the screenshot below:
After that, draw arrows on the chessboard:
Press the Escape key to clear the arrows.
3) Highlight Squares
To highlight squares on the chessboard, press the ‘S’ key or click the button shown in the screenshot below:
Now, you can highlight squares in 3 colours:
- Green – Click
- Yellow – Ctrl + Click
- Red – Alt + Click
Press the Escape key to clear the arrows.
4) Pawn Structure
You can view the pawn structure of any position by pressing the ‘P’ key or by clicking the button shown in the screenshot below:
Press the ‘P’ key or Escape key to view the original position.
5) Blind Mode
While teaching your students using the “Session”, you can also train their imagination/visualization skills using the “Blind Mode” (blindfold).
This is how it will look in the students’ board:
You can press the ‘B’ key or click the button again to toggle the “Blind Mode” option.
6) Allow Illegal Moves
You can allow illegal moves during “Session” using the “Toggle Illegal” option. This comes in handy when you want to teach a beginner/newbie how pieces move or when you want to play for only one colour to show a plan:
Press the ‘i’ key or click the button shown in the above screenshot to toggle this option.
Creating Exercises for Assignments
If you haven’t created any exercises, you will see the following in your “Assignment” page: Click on “Create” to create a new exercise.Give your exercise – a name, short description, level (Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced), a tag (for reference). After that click on “Add Problems”.
Choose problems from your “Problembase” or from “Public”.You can select problems individually or 10 at a time. Click “Done” and then “Submit” to create the exercise.
After creating exercises, you can assign them to your students. The first step is to choose the exercise by clicking on it and then click on “Assign”:
Then, the following should be done:
- Assign the exercise to individual students or a group
- Start date – The exercise will be visible to the student only from this date
- Deadline – The student will not be able to solve the exercise after this date. Leave the field blank to grant 10 days by default
This is how it will look for a student:
Your student will click “Solve” and start solving the problems.
After assigning problems to your students, you can keep track of them by going to the “Assigned” section:
And then click on any assigned exercise to see who solved them and their stats – total time spent, total attempts for each problem they have solved:
If your student(s) have not yet started the assignment, you will see “YET-TO-START”:
You can conduct internal tournaments within your academy with our “Tournaments” feature and let your students play among themselves:
After getting into the “Tournaments” tab, you will see the list of your current, upcoming, and past tournaments.
Click on the “Create Tournament” button at the top left to get started:
Creating a tournament is a 3-step process: entering the tournament details, the tournament schedule, and selecting the participants.
1. Details
This section asks for the basic tournament details such as:
- Tournament name – for eg: Monthly Blitz Tournament – Jan 2020
- Description (optional) – you can give a short description for your tournament if needed. You can use text formatting, embed links, and even use the listing (bulleted/numbered) to mention the tournament rules or schedule.
- Choose date – select the Start Date and End Date of the tournament
- Choose start time – the time when the first round of the tournament starts
- Timezone – this comes in handy if your academy has students from different places of the world and you want to specify a common timezone
- Time Control and Increment
- Number of rounds
- Game type – Standard, Book Opening, Custom FEN
Game types:
- Standard – standard format
- Book Opening – choose initial position (for all rounds) from a list of book openings
- Custom FEN – paste a FEN or setup a position on the board for your custom initial position (for all rounds)
2. Schedule
This is where you set the schedule of the tournament rounds. The schedule will be auto-generated based on the given Time-control, Start Date, andEnd Date of the tournament. If you want to edit the schedule, click on the “Edit” button in the ‘Action’ column.
3. Participants
The final step in the process of tournament creation is to select the participants. You can select students either individually or in groups.
Only the players selected here will see the tournament on their screens and will be able to join the tournament.
That’s it, click “Create” to create the tournament!
After creating a tournament (see how to create a tournament here – LINK), you will see the following pop-up in the tournament page:
As mentioned above, the students will be able to join the tournament ONLY AFTER you click ‘Start Tournament‘.
What will my students see until I click ‘Start Tournament’?
Until you start the tournament by clicking ‘Start Tournament‘, your student will be notified by a pop-up saying that the tournament is yet to be started. They will see the following pop-up when they come to the tournament page:
Therefore, until you start the tournament by clicking ‘Start Tournament‘, the ‘Join‘ option will be disabled for the students.
TIP: We recommend that you start the tournament and let the students join a few minutes before you want to start the tournament. This way, the chances of students joining the tournament way before the games actually start and then being ‘absent’ is very less. So ask your students to come online, start the tournament, let them join, and start the games. 🙂
After I click ‘Start Tournament’, how do my students join?
Once you click ‘Start Tournament‘, students will see a pop-up on their screens which will say that the tournament has started and they can join, as shown below:
Finalize the players and start the tournament games
After the students have joined the tournament, you can proceed by clicking ‘Finalize Players‘. By doing so, only those students who have joined the tournament (with status ‘JOINED’) will be able to play the tournament. Therefore, the students who have NOT joined will NOT be able to play the tournament.
So in the above example, students Peter Nelson and Amira Robin (username 7 and 8) will not be able to play the tournament once ‘Finalize Players‘ is clicked.
Publishing Pairings and Starting Rounds
Once the players are finalized, click on the button ‘Publish Round 1 pairings‘ to publish pairings for the first round. Once published, the students will be able to see the pairings on their side as well.
Once the pairings are published, you and your students can see them in the ‘Pairings and Results‘ tab as shown below:
By clicking ‘Start Round 1‘, the games for the first round will be started. The same procedure is followed for the subsequent rounds as well.
Inside a tournament, you will see the following tabs:
- Details
- Players
- Pairings and Results
- Rankings
- Live Games
- Chat
All these are explained below:
1. Details
If you want to see the tournament details at any point, you can go to the “Details” tab. It will show the basic details of the tournament (which were provided while creating the tournament) – time control, rounds, duration, and the schedule.
2. Players
If you want to see the status of the students you have invited for a tournament, you can see that in the”Players” tab. If the student has accepted your invitation and joined the tournament, his/her status will be “JOINED“. It will be “INVITED” otherwise.
3. Pairings and Results
You can see the results (live) of the tournament round games in the “Pairings and Results” tab.
Along with the result, the “Type” also says about the type of result, i.e. whether the player has lost on time or won by checkmate or resigned or the game is drawn by mutual agreement between the players.
4. Rankings
You can see the rankings/standings after each round in the “Rankings” tab:
5. Live Games
You can watch the games of all rounds live in the “Live games” tab:
6. Chat
You and your students (participants) can also chat and have some fun in the “Chat” tab:
1. Edit Result
If you want to edit the result of a tournament game for some reasons, you can do so by clicking the ‘Edit‘ option shown in the ‘Action‘ column:
When clicked ‘Edit‘, you will be able to choose between the following results: 1-0 (White wins), 0-1 (Black wins), 0.5-0.5 (Draw):
After changing the result, click ‘OK‘ to confirm. And you will see the result type saying ‘UPDATED_BY_COACH‘:
2. Replay Game
If you want a particular game to be played again by the players for some reasons, you can do that with the ‘Replay‘ option shown in the ‘Action‘ column.
What does ‘Replay’ do?
Replay lets you to ‘Restart Game’ from its last position (where it was left off).
This can be handy, for instance, when one of the players, unfortunately, lost on time from a winning position because his/her internet connection went off. To get a fair result of the game, you can ‘Replay’ the game from its last position:
Not only can you restart the game from its last position, you can also set the clock time again for both players. It can be a standard, common time for both players or you may even set the time each player had when the game previously ended. And finally, you can click ‘OK‘ for the game to begin.
In the above image, we can see that the game has been restarted and the time started running for Black since it was Black’s turn in the game’s final position.
The games of each round can be viewed by clicking the ‘View‘ link shown in the “Game” column:
When clicked the ‘View‘ link, the game will be opened in the “Board” feature (learn about ‘Board‘):
The “Board” feature is the way to go to load a quick chessboard, which you can use to feed a new game or setup a position:
In the “Board”, you can do the following:
- Promote Variation
- Delete Variation
- Add Comment
1. Promote Variation
To promote a variation, right click on it and click “Promote variation”:
2. Delete Variation
To delete a variation, right click on it and click “Delete variation”:
3. Add Comment
To add a comment after a move, right click on the move and click “Add Comment”:
The “Sharebox” helps you to collaborate with your students – you can share games/databases with them:
Upload PGN to your Sharebox
You can upload games/databases to your “Sharebox” by clicking the “Upload PGN” button:
After selecting the PGN file from your device, give a name to the database and click “Upload”:
1) Share Games with Students
To share a database with your students:
- Click on the database you wish to share
- Click “Share” button at the top
- Select the student/group you wish to share the database to
- Click “Share” again to confirm
2) See Games Shared by Your Students
The games/databases that are shared with you will appear under “Shared With Me” tab:
1) Preview Game
To preview a game from your “Sharebox”, simply click on the database name and then the game you wish to preview:
2) Analyze Game with Engine
You can analyze the games in “Sharebox” with our in-built engine, Stockfish 9. While you are previewing a game, go to the “Analyze” tab and click the “Analyze” button:
It will show all the mistakes, blunders and inaccuracies – you can click the “+” icon to see that variation.
Apart from sharing games within your academy (collaborating with “Sharebox”), you can also share the games to the public.
When you make a game “Public”, a unique URL will be generated for that game. You can share the URL/link to everyone; ANYONE with the link can view the game.
If you want to make a game “Private”, click the button again to toggle.
If you want to use your own problems to give assignments to your students, you can upload them to the “Problembase”:
Creating/Uploading problems to your “Problembase” follows the steps similar to “Gamebase” – click here. All you have to do is to choose files from your computer and upload them. It’s that simple!
How Problembase works?
The problems that you upload to your “Problembase” can be used to give assignments to your students. Click here to see how.
You and your students can play games (online) within your academy in the “Game Area”:
Once you are in the “Game Area”, you will see the list of users who are online. Click “Invite” to invite them for a game.
To invite someone (online user) for a game:
- You have to click the “Invite” option
- Select the preferences – your colour and time control
This is how the other person will see the invitation:
Once they click “Accept Invite”, the game will be commenced immediately.
The draw offer works similar to invitation for a game; i.e. when a player clicks “Ask Draw” during a game, the opponent player will see a pop-up at the top-right. If he/she clicks “Accept Draw”, the game will be drawn:
Your students can improve their visualization skills by playing blindfold chess with our “Blindbot”:
Playing a New Blindbot Game
- There are 3 levels of difficulty – Easy, Medium and Hard.
- You can also play against the “Blindbot” from a different starting position either by setting up the pieces on the board or pasting the FEN.
- You can choose the colour you will play with (“You Play”).
- Also, you can also decide who will play first with the option “To Play”.
- Finally, click “OK” to start the game.
While playing against the Blindbot, you can click the “Reveal Position” button to see the pieces on the board.
You can then visualize the position. Once you are ready, you can click on “Hide Position” to hide the pieces again.
The “Reports” section shows you a complete report of your students’ performance – total assignments given, total assignments attempted, average attempts, average time taken per problem and so much more.
You can view the all-time report or for the last week/month. Below is a sample report: