Questions people ask first

ChessPillar is a personal chess improvement and preparation workspace for ambitious adult players. It chooses your next step, teaches one idea, has you prove it on the board, makes you hold it against Stockfish, and brings it back weeks later before you forget it.

It is a plan with a board under it. It is not a puzzle feed, a video library or a chatbot.

Adults who play online and want a plan instead of another pile of material. The first audience is players around 1400 and above on Chess.com, and the curriculum runs from a first game to 2400.

The curriculum page shows exactly which Levels are playable today. Fundamentals stay available at every rating.

Anyone who wants an unlimited puzzle feed, a video library to browse, or a chatbot to talk chess with. ChessPillar tells you what to do next. If you would rather choose freely every day, the plan will feel like a constraint.

If your part of the curriculum is not built yet, Today says so plainly and does not serve you work below your level.

A puzzle site gives you positions and a course gives you chapters. Neither decides what you should do today, checks that an idea stuck, or brings it back before it fades. ChessPillar does those three things around one curriculum, and ties them to your own games.

Next to a coach, it is there every day and every verdict comes from rules code or Stockfish. It does not replace a person who watches you play and talks it through with you. No plan includes personal coaching.

As a plan, yes. As a pastime, no. A puzzle tells you there is a tactic before you look. A game never does. ChessPillar has puzzles, but the plan chooses which ones, mixes the themes so the answer is not given away, and includes positions where nothing is wrong, because noticing that is a skill too.

As much as you have. At setup you say how much time you have each week, and your weekly plan is shaped to fit it. Today then hands you one step at a time, so a short session still moves you forward.

Miss a day or a week and nothing resets. Your reviews wait until you are back.

Nobody can honestly promise you rating points, and ChessPillar does not. What changes is how you train: one clear next step, proof that you can use an idea before it counts as learned, reviews before you forget it, and your own games turned into practice.

Whether that moves your rating depends on the work and on you. The Path shows plainly what you can now do that you could not before.

The early Levels are built for it. Hanging a piece is rarely missing knowledge. It is a check that never became a habit. Levels such as Stop Hanging Pieces and Defended Isn’t Safe drill that check on boards where nothing is labelled, some where nothing is wrong at all, and the review ladder brings it back until it holds.

When your own games show the same leak, Today schedules practice for it.

Each Level teaches one skill and sets a bar for proving it. Everything you do is saved as it happened and counted across six kinds of evidence: spotting the idea, calculating it, using it in a harder position, holding it in a Fight, remembering it weeks later, and finding it in your own games.

On your Path each Level shows two marks: how much you have finished and how much you have proved. They move separately. Rules code, Stockfish and your saved attempts decide, and no AI does.

Once you prove a skill, it comes back on a new board after 1, 3, 7, 16, 35 and 70 days. What is due is worked out when you open the app, so nothing pings you. A due review marks the Level on your Path. It never resets your progress.

Twelve bands of 200 points each, from 0 to 2400, grouped into six Acts. Each band holds a few worlds, and each world is a short run of Levels that ends in a Boss: a test with no hints and no labels. The curriculum page lists all of them and marks which Levels are playable.

Yes. Enter a Lichess username, or paste or upload a PGN, and the games arrive in My Games or go straight into Game Review. Your games also feed the repertoire trainer, which compares what you played with what you prepared.

For Chess.com games, export them as a PGN and import the file. Automatic Chess.com sync is not part of the offer yet.

Stockfish, the same build in three places: in your browser during a Fight, in the checks every published answer passes before it ships, and in game analysis. A lesson does not ship until the rules code and the engine agree with its author. Where a theoretical endgame is small enough to be solved, a tablebase answers.

No. Your daily step comes from fixed rules: what is due, what is open, what is weak, from your saved attempts and the date. Rules code, Stockfish or an endgame tablebase check every answer on the server, and the same answer always gets the same verdict.

Where an explanation is written by a language model, it is written only when you ask, from the position, the moves and the engine’s own readings. It never grades a move, schedules a review or decides what you have mastered. Without one, there is no language model in the product.

No review by a grandmaster or other expert is claimed. Rules code and Stockfish check every accepted answer. ChessPillar records engine checked, editor reviewed and expert reviewed as separate states, and describes a lesson as expert reviewed only when a review of that lesson is on record.

Nothing while the closed beta runs. Pro is free during the beta. Billing is not active yet, so nothing is charged today and there is no checkout to reach.

Free has no card and no time limit. Beta accounts keep the access they were granted and are told before anything changes.

A 14-day Pro trial is planned: no card, with a clear expiry, for an early group of testers. It is not active yet.

When a paid plan exists, from your account settings, in one step, with no retention screen. A cancelled subscription keeps working until the end of the paid period, and everything you made stays yours on the free tier.

ChessPillar is in closed early access. Sign up with the address your invite was sent to.

With an email and password, or with Google, Discord or GitHub. Your ChessPillar account is separate from Lichess and Chess.com. They are used only to fetch the games you choose to import.

Your email, your setup answers, your attempts and your imported games are stored so the plan can be written for you. They are not sold and not used to train machine-learning models. Every attempt is kept as it happened, because your progress is recalculated from it.

You can export everything, or delete your account and everything in it, yourself from Settings. The privacy page has the detail.

Any modern browser, on a phone, a tablet or a computer. There are no app-store apps at launch. Stockfish runs on your own device, so there is no wait on a server between moves. When a Fight ends, the server checks the result again from the game record.

It is a responsive website and you can add it to your home screen. Testing on real phones is part of the launch checklist and is not finished, so expect rough edges on a phone until it is.

It is built toward WCAG 2.2 AA. Board states carry a cue that is not colour alone, everything is reachable from the keyboard with a visible focus ring, touch targets are at least 44 pixels, and animation follows your reduced-motion setting. Automated checks do not prove conformance, and a gap is treated as a bug.

English is the main language. A Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian option is planned and will be offered when its text has been reviewed. Chess notation is never translated.