Improving the drill section

In my opinion the drill section on chess.com is great. You can study endgames, checkmates, mastergames etc. It's really helpfull to improve your chess skills. Also a nice side effect is gaining lots of Elo-points.

My focus for this topic is mainly on the endgame section.

Furthermore I watched many, many video tutorials on this site in the lesson section and on youtube. At this point I want to recomment some of the content creators:

• chessnetwork- beginner to master
• hanging pawns- chess endgames
• Gothamchess- Endgames
• Andrea Botez is also lately doing some endgame studies on twitch and youtube.

I really enjoy this content.

In addition to that a book recommendation is Jeremy Silman: SILMAN'S COMPLETE ENDGAME COURSE.

In his book he is categorizing different endgames for players in the 1000-2400 ELO section.

Now my suggestion for improving the drill section is following:

• Categorize the endgames by difficulty in ELO (the Q+K vs K endgame is quite basic and should be repertoire of every beginner(ELO 1000) in contrast to that the endgame of B+N+K vs K is far more difficult (maybe 1800))
• Guidance through the drills (Make a connection to the video/lesson section. Show with a video how every drill is solved by a professional player.)
• Improve some of the drills (In my experience so far some of the drills I am missing the ideas. It's ridiculous to solve some of the drills against the AI. For example the philidor endgame (K+R+P vs K+R) is always a draw by Threefold repetition for me.(after 3moves) And by doing that I don't learn anything. Another example is the B(wrong colored)+K+P(on the rim) vs K+P. I could never take the enemy pawn because then the engine says i am blundering.
• Show the lines to solve the drill for an better overall view

For me, the drills are frustrating and bordering on worthless as a standalone section.  After the first few easy ones, there is very little explanation for the underlying principle that one should apply.  Several of them seem impossible without the player seeking out independent material for guidance (i.e., books, articles, and web content not provided by chess.com).

But my main frustration is the omnipresent chess computer telling me immediately when I've made a bad move.  Or worse, the computer itself hinting me to make bad moves.  Seriously, it will lead me into draws and stalemates and sometimes even recommend a move only to tell me that it was a mistake after I've followed its recommendation.

The drills are designed for practice, not learning. Lessons are to learn the concepts.

I totally agree. Therefore I would rate every drill. So everyone can seek the right drill for their skill level. For instance the master games section is kinda wortless for me. I would recommend this only for titled players. Because winning against the AI by a slight positional advantage (Evaluation bar less than 1) seems far more impossible for an intermediate player. On the other hand some of the other drills are really fun. I would say the best drills were 2B+K and B+N+K. I learnt the concept of shielding and boxing the enemy king. Practicing this drills over and over again, I could memorizing and adapt to the concept.

On the other hand defending with a rook and bishop against a queen is also a very useful exercise as you can see in my latest game (defending section)

I totally agree with the proposal here. I’ve been trying the pawn endgame drills. They’re virtually impossible to solve without guidance, and the computer, more often than not, gives the *wrong* guidance: either by playing imperfectly, or by suggesting moves as “best” or “excellent” when they clearly lead to a draw. 

I’m really surprised that Stockfish isn’t given the tablebases (it is totally capable of using the syzygy tables, in the Help section it even says it does, but clearly that’s not true). As an example, check this drill: https://www.chess.com/drills/practice/king-and-pawn-endgame-active-king. There’s only one good first move. But even if you make the wrong one (let’s say, Kc5), it says it’s “best”. What’s worse, you don’t get punished by best counter play (sometimes the engine correctly finds Kh6, which is a draw, sometimes it plays Kf6, which is a win for white). The gameplay on mobile is even worse, it looks like the prediction is totally random.

This should be trivial to fix and will add to the usefulness of those drills, which currently only make some sense to play if you have the Syzygy tables open (like this one for that blundering engine move https://syzygy-tables.info/?fen=8/5p2/5kp1/2K5/5PP1/8/8/8_w_-_-_0_1).