Trying out Chessly, honestly so far I really like it - has a few things I'd like to see improved though
I made the very unfortunate decision to start learning Chess like, right after Chessable went paid only which uh, yeah. Timing and all that. So at first I got recommended Lichess studies and so on to learn some stuff. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of really cool stuff there...but as a beginner, it's hard to tell which ones are good and which ones are really bad habits or not exactly trustworthy. The engine helps, but it can only do so much when it comes to commentary explaining reasoning behind things instead of just making moves.
So what I like the most about Chessly is that all the courses are made by the same person so there's a cohesion that is really helpful as a beginner. Otherwise there's things like, say, youtube videos alternating whether they recommend pushing the E3 or A3 pawn first when playing the Jobava system (...I also know that's probably not what a beginner should be playing, but in my defense I didn't know that until later haha).
So the sense of cohesion and progression is honestly really helpful in that regard since I can just focus on actually studying instead of like, trying to piece things together from different sources...especially since, again, beginner here - I don't know shit, so I got no idea how I'd go about discerning how accurate sources from a bunch of different places are haha.
Also really like the drills because I think they're great at getting me to commit some things to memory. Don't get me wrong, the theory matters more and all that, I get that part. But there's still some stuff that you have to memorize and the drills there are things I really, really like.
I do have some mild criticism though:
- Wish there was either an app (is there one and am I just not seeing it?) or that you could install the website as a Progressive Web App. Since Drills are among the things I like the most, I like being able to do it on my phone - and since screen space is sort of at a premium there, being able to reliably get rid of the browser tab and stuff would be wonderful.
- Interface related, it's a bit hard to know at a glance which variations you're currently studying and how they differ from the last line. They're labeled as "variation 1, variation 2, variation 3" and so on. Not a huge problem, but it means that you have to click through a lot of things until you know what changes in that variation, which can make it a little annoying when you want to go back to study a specific variation and have to basically click on all of them until you find the one you're looking for.
- Not something that affects me yet since, again, beginner and all, so I have a ton of content to make through still and this won't affect me for a while...but since it's a subscription platform, I think it would be cool to know when the "coming soon" stuff is. I know it's hard to commit to specific dates for that stuff though (also I might have missed a post on the website about dates)
Overall though, honestly really recommend it to people like me who are starting out and going "Okay, I want to get better, but also like fuck man it's hard knowing what to even study because that presupposes you know shit about the game."
Did the free trial and I'm getting a subscription on it because it's honestly just a cool time.