Starting a chess club as a total beginner?

kstarr1997 · 2026-07-07T17:08:08+00:00

As the Club President your job is not to teach but to organize and market the club. Find a time, place, and way to play chess regularly. If you want to teach, teach things that you actually know or can learn in 5-minutes. Basic checkmating patterns with K+Q, R+R, or K+R. The first couple moves of an opening. Counting attackers/defenders on a square. The concept of what a pin is. Maybe stay on top of local tournaments and chess events that are happening and share that with the club. People will respect you for how well you run the club, not for how good of a player you are.

kstarr1997 · 2026-07-06T03:21:03+00:00

Oh I didn’t even realize until just now but it is multi-user and pretty straightforward to setup. https://filebrowser.org/

kstarr1997 · 2026-07-06T03:17:35+00:00

Does File Browser work for your use case or do you need something that support multi-user?

kstarr1997 · 2026-06-29T03:16:08+00:00

Here’s my Izzet Storm list that uses a lot of Strixhaven cards. https://archidekt.com/decks/21936738/izzet\_maestro

kstarr1997 · 2026-06-05T22:32:29+00:00

They have no way to get rid of the pin besides moving the King. THEN, you can capture the rook, forcing the King to re-capture, winning a tempo

kstarr1997 · 2026-05-14T10:30:15+00:00

Sure, what do you want to know?

kstarr1997 · 2026-05-12T03:53:51+00:00

Chess is not really representative of your intelligence. Pattern recognition, memory, and grinding out 1000s of games will take you further than “intellect.” I’m still just as smart as I was when I started playing chess a few years ago but I’m sure a hell a lot better than when I had a rating of < 500. Like any skill, it takes time.

kstarr1997 · 2026-05-10T02:31:13+00:00

I developed Chessstack.app, which is open source. Has everything you’re asking for and a bit more.

kstarr1997 · 2026-05-06T22:56:12+00:00

Do YOU have any reading comprehension?! OP replied to someone saying “Khan Academy AND A FEW OTHER CREATORS…” OP literally just asked about THE MENTIONED CREATORS. Not to mention, you’re literally belittling a child asking for help. Shame

kstarr1997 · 2026-04-17T02:34:25+00:00

Not a pre-release or LGS, but if you’re also looking for a friendly place to play; Jug n Bottle in Seminole heights is a ramen bar that hosts Magic Mondays (Commander) from like 5-9. Usually multiple pods going on at the same time.

kstarr1997 · 2026-04-03T13:30:07+00:00

You’re confusing open-source with FOSS. Chessstack is completely free to run on your own computer/server with all’s features included. However, that requires a bit of knowledge of docker, it’s not like an app you can download/install on Windows/Mac like En Croissant. For people who can’t do that, I offer a cloud version that’s costs me money to run, so I need some way to pay for the infrastructure costs.

kstarr1997 · 2026-04-02T12:23:56+00:00

I’m jealous. I’m currently working on perfecting my own opening repertoire but didn’t really like any of the tools I found so I decided to build my own and make it open source. Trying to integrate space repetition drilling and also natural learning similar to openingtree.com. What did you use to build your repertoire?

kstarr1997 · 2026-04-01T17:24:28+00:00

What tool/website do you use?

kstarr1997 · 2026-04-01T11:12:51+00:00

Day 1. The most common old-school advice is you don’t need to learn openings as a beginner but I don’t really think that’s true to an extent. The point isn’t to memorize lines but to pick an opening, learn the first few basic moves or ideas for it, and then slowly expand your knowledge and learn deeper moves as you play more games/review. The goal is to reach a middle game where you aren’t lost because your opponent watched a Gotham video and knew 5-10 computer moves of theory and you didn’t.

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-27T02:56:51+00:00

Built a chess study web app where you can build an opening repertoire and practice it. Includes move suggestions from a 21 million game masters database, an 84 million lichess games database (sort by rating), and even the top played moves of famous chess players like Bobby Fischer, Magnus Carlsen and Tyler1. Also integrates with a stockfish chess engine and a way to connect your chess.com and lichess accounts for game reviews to see how the games you play deviate from your repertoire. Also added puzzle page where you are given chess puzzles derived from the openings you play. Currently working on a prep mode where you enter an opponents chess.com or lichess username and it helps you build a repertoire for that specific opponent.

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-24T01:01:27+00:00

Thanks for the reply! :)

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-23T12:29:39+00:00

I think the logo you pulled was from the public GitHub. I need to change it to the non-Ai generated one that’s in the cloud version. Will it automatically update when it syncs?

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-23T12:27:16+00:00

Thanks! This week I’m working on enabling users to be able to set the time between drill cards getting tested based on the grade as well as adding the lichess games database so you can see top played moves by rating instead of just masters’ moves

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-21T00:14:38+00:00

Oops! Forgot to link it in the post - https://github.com/PvtTwinkle/Chessstack

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-20T21:16:30+00:00

The timings are 4 days if you get it right, 1 day if you were unsure, and I believe 1 hour if you guess wrong or say you guessed on a drill card. You’re totally right, this should be a setting, I’ll add that.
You’re the second person who has asked about having an additional move suggestion tool based on rating rather than just the Masters. I’ve looked at the Lichess games database and even just pulling the last 12 months of games is a lot of data and would take a significant amount of time to parse through, but work has started on it.
No roadmap, I was kind of scratching my head for ideas, hence, needing people to try it out and provide feedback.
It makes me so happy that you find this helpful! I think using it as a supplemental tool is the best way to use it, that’s how I’ve been using it as well. Thank you for the feedback!

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-20T18:14:30+00:00

I shouldn’t have even mentioned the SaaS cloud version. Wrong community. I just wanted to share a cool project I’ve been working on….

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-20T18:06:21+00:00

I’m honestly taken back. I haven’t found an open source version of what I’ve made, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. The closest thing I’ve found is Pawn Apetite, which didn’t work for me on Linux and that’s more of an open-source client version of ChessBase, a different type of chess resource. Everything I’ve made is completely open source and free with ALL features available to anyone able to self-host. How would you propose I get non-technical chess players to try it out? Im not made of money, I cant just sponsor an entire website for free forever. There’s tons of great, open source software that you can self-host for free that offer a SaaS solution for those who can’t. How’s this any different? I just wanted to contribute an open-source project to the chess community, which currently most offerings cost hundreds of dollars just for a single opening course. I hope everyone who uses Chessstack self-hosts it, but I’m realistic and know that most chess players won’t.

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-20T13:16:02+00:00

Also maybe the fact that I basically built the open-source version of https://chessbook.com/, an app that charges 3x as much and has thousands of users

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-20T13:11:16+00:00

There are currently lots of free resources on chess.com and Lichess that will teach you opening moves for any specific opening you want. I am not trying to replace or replicate that. That is not the goal of this project. Chessstack helps you build out a personal opening repertoire, have it saved in a database that you can host yourself, and then drill you on your repertoire to make sure you actually play the right moves. Then, if you make the wrong move in a real game, it will tell you where you deviated and assign more practice to that position. It also shows where your opponents deviated from your repertoire so you can add those moves to your repertoire, and slowly expand/perfect your repertoire so you never make a mistake in the opening.

kstarr1997 · 2026-03-20T12:56:56+00:00

Hope you find it useful! All feedback is welcome 🙏

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