Chess University 2018 News and Roadmap - Prodigy Program Returns Soon!

Chess University Members:

Here's a comprehensive update from Chess University. Many of you have been patiently waiting for an update on various matters including the Prodigy Program, ChessVL, and more. Let's start with some new updates and then we'll move on to explanations.

NEWS

1. Chess University will launch a beginner training course middle of September 2018 aimed at chess players in the 400-899 Elo rating range. Think of this course as the "Step 2" for beginning players after our Intro To Chess Crash Course. The new training course will reinforce chess basics and prepare students for 900+ level learning. This means that Chess University now has a comprehensive curriculum for chess players rated 0-899.

2. The world's #1 online chess learning program and Chess University's flagship offering, the Prodigy Program, returns in October 2018. Under the revised format, the Prodigy Program will be available on-demand and 100% self-paced. Supplemental live lessons and office hours with coaches will be provided too. Kairav Joshi, the creator of the Prodigy Program, will also return as an instructor/coach for the rest of 2018.

3. Chess University will be launching a Young Scholars Program aimed at high-potential youth chess players. This program will feature weekly two-way voice classes in addition to our structured curriculum. Furthermore, we are working to organize our Admissions Department. Only youth with satisfactory academic background and a burning desire to improve at chess will be considered for enrollment.

4. The present ChessVL.com website will become the new headquarters for Chess University. The explanation for why we're changing tech suites is outlined later in this post. Course enrollments will eventually be synced between the two websites.

5. Chess University International is finally happening. We are launching with India first and will follow-up with courses for Spanish, German, and Russian speakers.

EXPLANATIONS

1. What happened to Prodigy Program?The Prodigy Program was conceptualized in 2014 and successfully offered for over three years. It was the best chess learning program the world had ever seen. For better or for worse, we never thought about the "business" consequences associated with the Prodigy Program. In fact, Chess University wasn't even a real entity when the Prodigy Program was started. Our only goal was to offer the BEST chess program ever. Period.

As years went by, we gained invaluable experience and data and learned that:
- We can only work so much per day without getting burned out.
- We had no branding, marketing, and advertising expertise.
- We were fully dependent on one marketing channel (you can probably guess what that is) and changes they made drastically impacted what we could do.
- Our program attracted students of all ages but most adults never had the time to commit to such an intense amount of training every month.
- We needed something that is self-paced and available on demand. We had to hit the breaks to undo our original mistake of ignoring the business consequences of the Prodigy Program. We had to figure out how to reach new students such that it would cost us less to acquire the student than what they would end up paying through course fees. Otherwise, we would be forced to shutdown our academy.

After a couple bad months, we managed to figure out certain things to regain stability. We can now offer the Prodigy Program again, albeit in a new format, such that students can still improve quickly and efficiently and we can spend enough time trying to acquire new students too.

2. Why is ChessVL.com replacing ChessUniversity.com?

ChessUniversity.com was a dream project. The purpose of this site was to automate student onboarding and give students great live classroom features. Unfortunately, our attempt to create a great classroom area for students was premature. What we wanted to create required tech budgets that exceeded our annual revenues. We couldn't do it. The half-complete site we had worked well for many purposes and I know many students loved the site. The problem was that the site couldn't scale and become slow as more users signed up and started using the site. By slow, I mean that many course pages wouldn't even open before loading for 10-15 seconds. This was unacceptable.

We decided to take an easy route (from the tech standpoint) and decided to test it out on a temporary domain name called ChessVL.com. We can't host live classrooms right within the website there but the site works very well and is scalable. ChessVL also has better course search features, author search tools, and simple, hassle-free checkout. ChessVL.com has all the core features that ChessUniversity.com had but without the additional headaches our old site gave us.

3. I bought some courses at ChessUniversity.com and ChessVL.com. Will I continue having access to both after the websites are merged?

The answer is, of course, yes. We cannot merge the sites until all ChessUniversity.com courses are available on ChessVL.com too.

4. Can I still purchase courses at ChessUniversity.com?

Yes, although the old website is slow, you may still purchase courses there such as past Prodigy Program packages. As mentioned earlier, when we merge the sites, we will save enrollment records so students don't need to worry about losing access to a course due to our upcoming tech changes.

5. Is Prodigy Program Lite Returning Too?

We offered Prodigy Program Lite in place of the actual Prodigy Program so that our original Prodigy Program students had something to look forward to from us each weekend. Our tuition fees for the "Lite" program were very low but we wanted to see whether it encouraged new students to hop on board. Unfortunately, there wasn't a sufficient impact on enrollment numbers to sustain the Lite program. Therefore, Prodigy Program Lite will not be offered in the near future. For those on a budget, we have many courses at ChessVL.com that are priced low (some as low as $10 or even $8). A low-cost Prodigy Program tier won't be offered because we cannot afford to compromise the quality of this program.

With that, we can wrap up this news announcement. We plan to continue enhancing Chess University to improve your chess learning experience and accelerate your improvement.

Best,

Kairav