Duolingo Seeks To Benefit From Growing Worldwide Interest In Chess

Duolingo, the online platform that has provided free language lessons for more than a decade, has recently added chess to its repertoire. It seeks to benefit from the continually expanding worldwide interest in the royal game that we love.

Chess Added To Duolingo

Not content with offering courses in 42 languages as well as courses in math and music, Duolingo added chess earlier this year.

Why is Duolingo just now adding chess? “I was wrong about chess,” admitted Luis von Ahn, the CEO and co-founder of Duolingo, recently on social media.

I was wrong about chess.
—Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of Duolingo

Duolingo’s Chess Team Expands

However, von Ahn has been observing the exploding worldwide interest in the game of chess and wants to capitalize on this surge of interest as well as engage with the growing community that enjoys chess online. A year ago Duolingo started building a chess component with just two employees, a designer and a product manager. They were neither engineers nor chess players.

Now Duolingo has 20 people on its team, and it claims that it has drawn in millions of people to learn chess on its platform. “It’s our fastest-growing course,” von Ahn said.

It's our fastest-growing course.
—Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of Duolingo

Duolingo Learns To Appreciate Chess

A recent convert to appreciating the game of chess, von Ahn acknowledged, “Chess is educational. It teaches foundational skills for STEM learning: logic, strategy, and pattern recognition.” Perhaps von Ahn learned to appreciate chess during Duolingo’s recent partnership with Chess.com.

In late 2023, Chess.com announced a partnership with Duolingo that has since ended. During the partnership, multilingual bots featuring Duolingo’s entertaining characters (Oscar, Junior, Zari, Lily, and Duo the owl itself) were added to Chess.com. Because the partnership has ended, these bots are no longer available.

Review

After playing chess with Oscar and completing several chess lessons on Duolingo, I have a few observations. By the way, I’m very familiar with Duolingo; earlier this year I completed lessons for 2,000 consecutive days (and the streak continues).

Benefit Of Learning Chess On Duolingo

Duolingo states that it uses AI to adapt to a user’s skill level and learning pace, and it reports that it adjusts the difficulty and repetition as needed. However, I cannot confirm that any significant adjustment in difficulty was made after I completed many lessons (puzzles) without mistakes.

Chess Disadvantages Of Duolingo

Chess on Duolingo is still in its infancy. The puzzles are simplistic, and the lessons lack the depth that most chess players are looking for. Games can be played against only Oscar, Duolingo’s virtual chess coach, and only with a time control of 20 minutes (too slow for players who prefer blitz).

The games are also very disappointing. When I play Oscar, he either blunders carelessly or plays at a very high skill level, so he’s not a good opponent until Duolingo can match a user’s skill level better (as it markets the course). As Duolingo makes further progress, which includes permitting users to play against each other (a feature being added soon), games may become enjoyable.

Recommendation For A Friend

What should you suggest if a friend wants to consider learning on Duolingo? The strength of Duolingo is its language learning courses. If you are not a beginning chess player, then Duolingo’s chess course is not for you, much like native speakers wouldn’t use Duolingo for their own languages. A serious chess player is better suited to learn on Chess.com and take advantage of its extensive content.

Have you completed any chess lessons or played any games on Duolingo? If you have, please post about your experiences in the comments.