Recently, I got into chess.
I’m not very good at it—my rating is around 600 on chess.com. I’ve also started watching more chess content like GothamChess on YouTube and the chess.com streams on Twitch.
If you’ve ever watched chess content, or if you’re a more serious player than I am, you’ve probably noticed that commentators exclusively use square coordinates to describe moves and board positions. (How else would they do it, right?) The problem is, I don’t know the coordinates that well, which makes the content a bit less enjoyable for me. So, I figured I should spend some time learning them.
I also realized I couldn’t be the only one who’s ever wanted to do this, so I googled what tools exist to help. I quickly stumbled upon Chess.com’s Vision trainer and a similar tool from Lichess.
They’re really well done, but I felt like they were a step ahead of where a complete beginner like me needed to start. After a few sessions, I churned—it didn’t keep me engaged enough. I also had a slightly different idea in mind for how best to teach and learn the squares.
Since the idea kept bugging me—and I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else until I at least prototyped it—I decided to spend a week building it.
What made the idea even harder to ignore was that I found a domain name I thought was pretty clever: chess2.app (read: Chess².app = Chess Square App).
After the first day, I managed to implement the core gameplay loop, and it felt surprisingly fun. I caught myself playing it while I was building it, so I decided to finish the initial scope and launch the app. So I did.
The Initial Scope
I wanted to start from the very beginning.
- I wanted something super intuitive—no walls of text explaining mechanics.
- I wanted learning to feel like playing a game.
And after about a week of working on it before and after my day job, I reached a point that felt like a completed milestone:
9 difficulty levels, starting from showing all square names on every field, then gradually removing visual hints—first only side coordinates, then nothing at all.
To make the levels more engaging, I added a countdown timer after the intro stages. Users need to find 10 squares within a time limit to unlock the next level.
If you’re a chess noob like me, you might not have realized that the coordinates are static, regardless of which color you’re playing. That means a1 is always the bottom-left square for White, but it’s the top-right square for Black.
So, each level of difficulty has 4 variations:
- Played from White’s perspective
- Played from Black’s perspective
- Played from a random perspective
- Played from a random perspective with added time pressure
I had a bunch more ideas on how to improve the game, but at this point, my brain finally felt some relief—I had reached a “good enough” state.
Working in Product Management for most of my adult life, I’ve developed a strong urge to seek external validation—to see if what I build is useful to others. I told myself I wouldn’t be afraid to show off what I built, even if it’s not “perfect” in my eyes.
I don’t know how much longer I’ll be this into chess, so I’m not super motivated to keep building chess2.app just for myself. Before I spend months perfecting something no one (maybe not even me) would use, I want to see if others find value in it too.
The Launch Plan
Here’s the rough plan I came up with:
Phase 1: Free web app to collect feedback
- Launch the app on chess2.app as a free game
- Write a Reddit post in relevant subreddits
- Write a blog post (like this one) to practice writing
- Post on Hacker News
- Share chess2.app in technical communities (I built it with Flutter, hosted it on Netlify, and used Cursor to develop it)
- Wait for feedback
Phase 2: Launch mobile apps
If anyone finds the app useful (my threshold is low—even a few hundred users would be enough), I’ll:
- Launch it on iOS and Android
- Add app store links to chess2.app
Phase 3: Extend the scope
Right now, the game only teaches square coordinates. A big missing piece is teaching piece movement and chess concepts like capturing, checkmate, stalemate, etc.
I also have ideas for more fun features, like:
- A leaderboard
- The ability to challenge friends
- Game modes with more variety
These are way more complex than just square recognition, so I’d need a base of active users to stay motivated for this phase.
Phase 4: Monetization
If the project goes anywhere, I might try to cover the hosting and App Store fees by:
- Making the mobile app a paid download (probably $0.99) while keeping chess2.app free
- Adding some ads to both the web and mobile versions
- Introducing a subscription to remove ads/unlock premium features
Even if it goes nowhere, building this was already a net positive investment:
- I built and launched something
- I learned a lot
- I wrote this blog post
If you’ve read this far—wow. Thank you. Know that you’re appreciated by a random nerd from a random Central European country.
Cheers!
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