New Chess.com Site for Kids => www.ChessKid.com !

I still prefer chess.com but I'll make an account for further feedback. As for now, I think that you should have some slightly advanced material as I do know some 2100+ rated 13 year olds here on chess.com.

Great Idea and so far I am impressed.  My kids will love it!

haha! trust me...it has not! :)

i know over 5 kids who are over 1700 CFC rated (most stronger then me!!) and they are all under 10

At this point the target audience of chesskid is NOT your young chess superstars. :) They will probably get more out of playing on chess.com directly with the more advanced training tools we offer here. ChessKid is aimed at those kids who play  the game more casually, or just want to learn how to play, get better, and have fun playing it with their friends/parents, and perhaps those who play it at their local chess clubs in school.

nice one

I just had a go at the tactics trainer and the first problem I got was a queen sac mate in 3 (and not an obvious sac)... I failed miserably. I thought these tactics would have been a little easier than the chess.com TT.

that's fine

Awesome homepage Erik! 

The idea for this site is great and I have signed up 2 of my students to test the site out.  We wanted to try to create a tournament for our club - is that an option that will become availible eventually?  Also, I have a Chess.com account - any thoughts about crossing over paying memberships from Chess.com so we do not have have double pay for both websites?  Thanks again for setting this up and our school club is very excited to see how we can incorperate it into what we already do.

I'll try it out with my kids.  Also, NM Zug's suggestion would be great on this site as well.  It's a nice feature another chess site does have.

The design is very good 

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but Little Chess partner could use a little work to be more suited to kids.  For example, it doesn't even announce check or checkmate that I can see.  My daughter did manage to beat it once (I didnt see it and have my doubts), so maybe the difficulty is OK, but an even easier level would be useful.  I only watched one game, but it did seem to be a lot stronger then 600, the starting rate.

Also, any site for kids should have bright colorful achievement badges or trophies.  For instance, beating Little Chess Partner at Easy should award a badge. 

The name selection choice thing didnt bother my daughter a whit, but I thought it was fairly weak.  I mean, why not let the kids pick from a menu of first & second words to combine, rather then scroll through seemingly random combinations that may not appeal. 

We will play around it with it more and try to give more feedback.  

Live chess is important.  The kids should be able to match with adults of the right rating, but chat just becomes disabled for that game.  Otherwise, there may not be enough opponents.

Play Chess Against the Computer crashes IE on Windows7

Thanks for all the feedback! Keep it coming. We're definitely reading all your comments and taking notes at this point. :) Fixing what we can as fast as we can.

Thank you and now on to refering a few sub 13ers..Nice work!

thanks! still looking for feedback - does the site make sense?? :P

It'll be nice to add some of the easy situations for them to play against the computer.  Lucena is a bit rought for starters :-).  Things like staircase mate and other very basic endgames would be great.

yes, overhaul of computer workout positions are coming very soon. just bother David if you want them even sooner. :)

haha, i'm working on it, Jay!!

i'm on the next page, so i can't remember poster names:

re: not reinventing the wheel, but just giving people a link to another site that explains the rules of chess. it doesn't make business sense for us to direct traffic to another site. i've already gone over the rules, and tried to couch them in a way that will be understandable for kids, along with some diagrams and examples they can click through. most likely we have access to better teachers than that other site anyway, so we can "reinvent the wheel" better, and that is definitely part of what we will provide on the site.

trophies and badges: yes, those will definitely be coming. thanks for the suggestion of getting one for beating the computer, that's a great idea.

for my part as well, thanks to everyone for the suggestions, and for going in and checking for bugs.

-david

edit: at the last moment it occurred to me: if you want the computer workout updated sooner, you should probably *not* bother david!