A level, with a reason.
Where they sit across five skills, and the evidence for it — which positions were solved, and how quickly.
Free · 8 minutes · No payment, no obligation
What is your child's real chess level?
Not “beginner” or “intermediate.” A specific report on what they see, what they miss, and the one skill that would move them fastest.
- Works on a phone
- Ages 6+
- Adults too
- Report is instant
Every academy offers a demo class. We offer a diagnosis — before you have spoken to anybody.
What you get
Four things, on screen, in about eight minutes
The specific gap.
Not “needs practice.” Which pattern was missed, in which position, and why that particular one matters.
A training plan.
What to work on for the next eight weeks, in order, in fortnight-sized steps you can actually follow at home.
A 20-minute call, if you want it.
With a coach who has already read the report before the call starts. Only if you press the button.
What the test measures
Five things. The fifth one is the one nobody else tests.
- 01Tactical recognitionWhether the common shapes — forks, pins, back-rank pictures — are stored as recognition rather than worked out from scratch each time.
- 02Calculation depthHow far ahead the line is followed before a move is committed to, and whether a second candidate move is compared at all.
- 03Decision quality under timeNot speed for its own sake. Whether the decision changes when the clock is visible.
- 04Endgame techniqueWhether the specific, teachable methods are known — the opposition, the rook against a passed pawn, the basic mates.
- 05Response to a mistakeWhat happens in the three moves after an error. This is measured from three situational questions, reported separately, and never mixed into the chess level.
The fifth one predicts improvement better than the other four. A child who recovers from a bad move gets stronger from every game they play. A child who spirals after one loses the next three moves as well — and that is where most of the damage in a junior game actually happens.
How it works
Four steps, and you can stop at any of them
01
Tell us the age and level
Six taps. No typing, and no email address.
02
Solve positions on a real board
Eight positions, tapped on a real board. A soft timer runs but it never fails you.
03
Get the report card on screen
Immediately, with the bars, the gap, and the eight-week plan.
04
Book a call, or don’t
The report is yours either way. Nothing happens unless you press the button.
Honestly, though
This is not a rating.
A FIDE or Chess.com rating comes from playing rated games against real opponents over months. This test does not produce one, and any tool that claims to give you a rating in eight minutes is guessing.
What this is, is a diagnostic. It tells you which skill to train next. Those are different questions — and the second one is the more useful of the two when what you are actually choosing is a coach.
The report appears on screen the moment you finish. Then it is yours.
Nothing is stored until you ask us to send the report
Transparency
How this test is scored
Published in full, because a diagnostic you cannot inspect is a sales tool wearing a lab coat.
Per skill. Four chess skills — board vision, tactical patterns, calculation and endgame technique — are each measured by two positions. Each correct answer scores five points out of ten, with one bonus point if it was found in under twenty seconds. An incorrect answer scores zero regardless of time, because a fast wrong answer is not better than a slow one.
Overall level. A weighted mean: tactics 30%, calculation 30%, board vision 20%, endgame 20%. Tactics and calculation carry more weight because they are what separate players at every level below tournament strength. The result maps to one of five levels — Just Starting, Learning the Board, Developing Improver, Confident Player, and Advanced / Tournament Ready.
Difficulty adapts. The first two screens set a starting band. Three correct answers in a row moves the test up a band; two wrong in a row moves it down. This is why two children can both be told they are Developing Improvers having answered different positions.
Behaviour is separate. The three situational questions produce a response-to-mistakes band — Resilient, Recovers slowly, Escalates, or Withdraws — which is reported on its own and never folded into the chess score. It describes a training need. It is not a judgement of the child, and it is not clinical language.
This is a chess assessment, not a psychological or educational evaluation. It describes what we observed in eight positions and three questions — nothing more.
FAQ
Before you start
Is it really free?
Yes. There is no payment step, no card, and no trial that turns into a subscription. The test is a lead magnet — that is exactly what it is, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. It works as a lead magnet only because the diagnosis in it is real.
Do I need to create an account?
No. You answer two questions before we ask for anything, and we ask for a name and a WhatsApp number only at the end, once the report is already generated. If you close the tab before that, nothing has been stored anywhere.
Can adults take it?
Yes. Choose “Myself” on the first screen and the positions adjust. Adults who play online at 800–1600 usually find the calculation section the most useful part of the report.
How is it scored?
Each of the four chess skills is measured by two positions and scored out of ten, with a small bonus for a correct answer found quickly. The overall level weights tactics and calculation at 30% each, and board vision and endgame at 20% each. The behaviour section is reported separately and never mixed into the chess level. The full method is written out below.
Will you call me if I don’t want a call?
No. One message with the report, and nothing else unless you ask. There is a button on the report to book a coach call — if you do not press it, you will not hear from us again.
Is this a psychological assessment of my child?
No, and the report says so on its face. It is a chess assessment. It describes what we observed in eight positions and three questions about how your child behaves at the board — nothing more, and nothing clinical.
How chess levels actually work
Most parents arrive at chess with one question — what level is my child? — and find that nobody gives a straight answer. Part of the reason is that “level” means at least three different things in chess, and they are not interchangeable.
Ratings measure results, not skill
A chess rating is a number derived from game results against other rated players. It goes up when you beat people rated higher than you and down when you lose to people rated lower. It is a measurement of outcomes over time, which means it is both reliable and slow: a rating cannot tell you anything until dozens of games have been played, and it cannot tell you why the games were lost.
This matters when you are choosing a coach, because “my child is 1100” describes a result, not a problem. Two children rated 1100 can be losing games for completely opposite reasons — one hangs pieces in good positions, the other calculates well but has never learned an endgame. They need different training. A rating cannot see that difference; a diagnostic can.
Why a 1200 online rating and a 1200 FIDE rating are not the same thing
FIDE ratings come from over-the-board tournaments with long time controls, arbiters and a rating floor. Chess.com and Lichess ratings come from a much larger and much more varied pool, in time controls that are often three or five minutes. The scales were never calibrated against each other. As a rough guide, a settled Chess.com rapid rating tends to sit a few hundred points above the same player’s eventual FIDE rating, and blitz ratings sit higher still — but the gap varies enormously by player and by pool, and anyone quoting an exact conversion is inventing precision.
The practical version for a parent: use the online rating to see whether your child is improving month to month, and ignore it entirely when comparing your child to somebody else’s.
What “intermediate” really means
It usually means nothing. Academies use beginner, intermediate and advanced as batch labels, and the boundaries move from academy to academy. A more useful set of questions: does the child see what is attacked before moving? Do they compare two moves or play the first one? Can they win a king-and-pawn endgame from the winning side? Do they know why they lost their last game?
Those four questions are answerable in a few minutes, and each one points at a specific piece of training. That is what this test is built to do — and it is why the report you get names one thing to work on rather than five. A report with five priorities has none.
If you would rather see the teaching before the diagnosis, the full 64Moves method is published openly, and the fees page lists every number we charge.
Related pages
Where to go next
Eight minutes from now, you will know more than a demo class would tell you.
No account · No payment · One report, and no call unless you ask