Chess Dojo Review (6/10)

Chess Dojo is basically a website that gives you a Training Plan based on your rating. It uses a universal conversion system which places you in a cohort. Each cohort has their own training plan, but cohorts that are close to each other have very similar training plans. It is based on 3 principles.

1. A chess player should have a structured training plan that holds them accountable.
2. You need to play longer time controls and then analyze them.
3. Plus-Minus-Equal - You need to have someone above you to look up to (a coach), someone at your level to train with, and someone below you to explain things to.

So here is how this article will be structured:

1. How does Chess Dojo follow these principles?
   1. Training Plan
   2. Games
   3. Plus-Minus-Equal
2. What do I think of it?

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Principle #1 - The Training Plan (5/10)

The training plan is a set of goals that you should complete while in that cohort. However, it is not specific (daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals). There is also "Non-Dojo Tasks," which are things that you can do that don't correspond with a goal in the Training Plan. They are the same for all cohorts: Rapid, Blitz, Tactics, Books, Openings, and Chess Media. This is basically to log the time you spend on Chess each day. However, there is nowhere to log endgame study, so I have to do it under Openings. This also generates a heatmap and a pie chart to show how much time you spend on Chess and where you spend your time respectively. I wish they had a ratio for Playing, Studying, and Solving though. I also wish that half of the Training Plan was available to free users, but over half is only for members.

Principle #2 - Playing + Analyzing Longer Time Controls (9/10)

This principle is upheld super well. There is a task in all of the Training Plan for playing and analyzing games; there is a special symbol on the heatmap for days you play classical, and there is recommended time controls for all cohorts. These tasks make sure you play the same amount and analyze the same amount. However, I was initially confused and only chose to analyze games that I thought had a lot of "educational value," but it soon got cleared up that I had to analyze all classical games that I played. Because of this, only some of my classical games got analyzed, and that is my only free task left. Additionally, their game annotator has so many great features that Lichess does not.

Principle #3 - Plus-Minus-Equal (0/10)

ChessDojo does not adhere to this principle at all. While they have clubs, the only benefit of joining one is an inner-club leaderboard. They have a "Newsfeed" where you can see when people's ratings move up a cohort ("Graduations") or when someone logs a task. Even though you can comment on those, there is no community on the site itself. It requires you to create a Discord account, and the Discord community did not have a training partner for me. There is no way to find a training partner.

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My Thoughts (6/10)

While overall, it is a great new website that has features no other website has, and it has helped me stay accountable to train chess every day (even inspiring me to create a Training Plan for myself that was for more detailed, it has several false promises.