Enjoying the lessons overall. I’ve had the same promotion error but it sounds like this is known. I’ve also had the same move-too-early lesson breaking error and had to step through the lesson manually. Also, I have had similar errors if I don’t clear the board prior to starting a lesson.
A smaller problem I found while bug testing (I like trying to break things!) is that if, when prompted to set up the board a certain way, you instead put a couple wrong pieces in, as long as squares are filled the lesson will move on. As the board can tell what pieces are where by lighting up with different colors it seems like a potentially easy fix to make the lesson move on ONLY when all the right pieces are in the right positions, not just any pieces in the right positions. Hope that makes sense.
The deflection video started same as other lessons but required me to press play after each move to continue. It was a little annoying and a little helpful as it let me study the board between moves.
It really does make a big difference in the chessup 1 board if your phone is on the power side or not. Usually blue tooth is not so weak 16 inches apart but I couldn’t get the lessons to advance when the phone was not closer to the power side of the board.
I just did my first lesson (Intermediate: deflection). Before I state my two recommendations, I wanted to say how much I love this feature! I have spent more money/time than I would like to admit on apps and lessons to learn chess. This is already the best one ever. I’m kinesthetic and auditory learner so this is perfect.
Now the two recommendations:
When starting the lesson I had the board state already set up for a regular game. When she started teaching and I could see the board state I attempted to move the pieces into the corresponding board state. This effectively broke the lesson. The lights weren’t lighting up properly and even when completing the proper move I had to manually press play for the lesson to continue. Luckily I figured I was the problem for not having the board cleared at the start of the lesson. My recommendation is to run a board check to see if there are pieces on the board before starting the lesson.
If there was some kind of indicator to let you know on the app that you have already completed a lesson. Like a checkmark so you know what lessons you have done and yet to do.
P.S. My wife doesn’t like chess, but I was so excited after trying the lesson I got her to try the very first lesson for beginners. She loved it! I was shocked and so glad because she has never liked anything chess related. So thank you @Jeff and the rest of the team!
First 2 lessons worked well,
Then on the 3rd lesson (on openings) after setting up the board and starting the lesson, the black knight square on G8 kept flashing green and suddennly the board disconnected and needed to restart. Weirdly, after restarting, it had to install the 3.0 update again.
I was stuck on this screen for some time before it reset on it’s own (I was about to hard reset beforehand)
Open the chessup app, turn on the board, clear off the pieces and press learn on the app. Then choose a lesson from the top of the app. Keep the phone near the board (on the side of the power switch) and you follow along with the voice on the app.
I don’t know what to tell you except that there was no excerpt that informed me to clear the board. By the by as I stated in my reply, I started at the intermediate level and not beginner’s. That is why I suggested a pop up or internal systems check to issue pop up.
At the time of the post I had completed all the intermediate level with no indicators. Looking back now at the app, half of the lessons I completed have check marks but they others do not.
Hi Drydda, are you on Apple or Android? I am on Apple and each of the lessons state to remove the pieces first and completed lessons are marked with a tick - maybe it shows differently on Android. I agree with you that the lessons are an awesome addition.
Connect the board via Bluetooth in the app. Go to the learn tab. Select the lesson you wanna do (make sure your board is not set up) and it should start the lesson. Then just listen to the instructions and look at the board.
I just did a few lessons, three of them were the intermediate end game lessons on Android. At the beginning of each lesson it says please clear the board. Once I cleared the board of pieces, it then told me to set up the position for the lesson.
Just updated the board to 3.0.0. Although I haven’t tried the lessons yet, I did find a couple bugs I thought I’d mention:
While playing 2 player OTB, I was unable to take back the most recent
move. The square would simply flash the pink/purple color. I’m pretty sure this was a feature before v3, so I’m not sure what happened there.
Also while playing 2 player OTB - I was playing as white with no AI assistance, and had set black to have advanced level assistance. A couple times within the first few moves, white was given the hint assist instead of black. Almost like the board miscounted who’s turn it was or something (though the turn was still on the correct player, just the assistance was on the wrong one). I even restarted the game, and made SURE white had no assist, and the exact same thing happened again. I assume this was introduced in the update, since part of 3.0.0 was AI assist related - “Fixed OTB+AI assistance after playing a board-editor game”.
Finally, while restarting the board due to one of the aforementioned bugs, the h8 square started rapidly flashing all colors. Restarting the board again fixed this though.
Hopefully all that made sense. I can’t wait to try a lesson out!
The lesson demonstrating queen captures placed a black pawn on d8. That would never be possible. I am hoping this feature is greatly expanded, maybe incorporating lessons from chess.com I am really enjoying the board.
I have done multiple lessons on Android and get absolutely no message to clear the board beforehand. Simply asks me to setup the pieces regardless of what’s already on the board.
