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Chess Square Trainer - a game to learn chess square notation

tl;dr I built a game that highlights squares and asks you to name them, fast.

Context: this was my “vibe coding” experiment before I knew this term. I used GPTo1 and Cursor+Claude 3.5.

👉 Play here: https://chess-square-trainer.eddiesmo.com

My high score is 21 :)

Why?

A basic chess skill is knowing square notation (e4, f6, etc) and I wanted to train it so I can easily follow chess videos and books.

But I only found apps that train you one way: they show you a square name and ask you to click it on the board.

I wanted to also train the other way - an app that highlights a square and asks you to name it. (Our brain learns best with both methods).

I didn’t find it, so - I built it!

🎮 Features

  • Clean interface with instant feedback, for people who enjoy blitz ;)
  • Designed for desktop (keyboard!) but works great on mobile
  • Train as White or Black
  • Detailed feedback at the end of rounds
  • Tracks your high scores

Shared on Reddit

I published this minigame to /r/chess.

Quote from a user:

Score after 1st try: 5

Score after 3rd try: 8 Score after 6th try: 16

Seems to work 👍

Even more than seeing my score go up, it was really cool feeling my understanding grow so quickly! By just the 3rd game, I was able to intuit a few coordinates instead of stopping to count. By the 6th game, I was doing this more than half the time!