Notation vs Chess Coach

Notation is a chess coaching app that teaches you why — not just what. Every chess evaluation comes from Stockfish 18, running entirely on your device. Every pattern, weakness, and tactical motif is detected by hand-tuned on-device classifiers built on decades of coaching theory. The language model's only job is the last step: explaining what the analysis found, in plain English, like a coach sitting next to you. The chess is never generated. It's explained. THREE COACHING FRAMEWORKS Notation is the first chess app to operationalise multiple grandmaster-level coaching frameworks as deterministic measurement: • Dan Heisman's seven positional elements — Mobility, Vulnerability, Centre Control, Coordination, Speed, Time, Flexibility — measured per-position with super-GM baselines • Jeremy Silman's coaching emphasis frames — fifteen frames choosing what to teach at each moment • Jacob Aagaard's positional predicates — Where are the weaknesses? Which is the worst-placed piece? What's the opponent's plan? All computed on-device. All deterministic. The same principles human coaches have used for decades, encoded into classifiers that run before the language model ever sees the position. GAME REVIEW Every game gets a coherent on-device review — no API key needed, no internet, no cost. Template-driven narrative against the full coaching substrate. When you want depth, upgrade once with your own Anthropic or OpenAI API key, o ruse the On Device LLM with no additional costs and the richer review becomes the permanent artefact for that game. Nadia comments on at most six moments — only the ones worth learning from. PDF export of every review. PLAYER PROFILE Style axes — Aggression, Tactical Alertness, Positional Play, Endgame — derived from the substrate with confidence bands. The seven Heisman elements sit below as evidence. Full-screen iPad dashboard. PDF coaching report you could hand to a human coach. OPPONENT SCOUTING & MATCHUP REPORTS Scout reports surface the full eight-axis substrate on any opponent. How-to-play-against framing with concrete suggestions. Player-vs-opponent comparison across all axes with weakest-phase detection. SHADOW — YOUR CHESS TWIN Shadow learns how you play and saves checkpoints. Play yourself from six months ago. See how far you've come. Coming soon: calibrate Shadow to your real-life rivals by importing their games. PLAY ON YOUR PHYSICAL BOARD Pair with Chessnut Air, Pro, Go, Air+ and Move over Bluetooth. Notation tracks every move on real wood while Nadia coaches. PRIVACY BY DESIGN Stockfish on-device. All coaching classifiers on-device. Cohort baselines on-device. Optional cloud AI is bring-your-own-key — your Anthropic or OpenAI API key, your account, your data. We never see it. Leave the field blank and Notation works fully without it. IMPORT YOUR GAMES Connect Lichess or Chess.com. Import PGN files. Nadia analyses everything in the background. £2.99. One-off. No subscription. No ads. No tracking. Yours forever.

Chess Coach is your AI chess coach. Learn with guided chess courses, play bots or real people, solve chess puzzles, and understand every mistake in plain language. CHESS COURSES — LEARN IN ORDER Guided lessons across levels, from the rules to club play. You start with First Steps, learning how the pieces move, then move on to Beginner for tactics and openings, on to Intermediate for pawn structures, endgames and openings you learn from both sides, and on to Advanced for calculation and plans. Every lesson mixes theory, exercises and play on the board, and you don't move on until the position works. The first course is free. OPENING LAB Play your repertoire against an opponent who plays like a person, not like a flawless machine. Real positions and real mistakes — which is where an opening is actually learned. ENDGAME LAB The 100 chess endgames you must know, one by one: king and pawns, rook, queen, bishop and knight. Learn the technique with the position in front of you, then practise it with a different exercise every time — some you win, some you have to hold, just like in a real game. MIDDLEGAME LAB 25 pawn structures — the isolated queen's pawn, the Carlsbad, the hedgehog — each one explained the way a book would: what it is, who stands better and what each side should be trying. Then you name them in positions from real games, and the board marks the pawns that give it away. Every structure brings its own tactics, and a game you can play from it against a human-like opponent. DECISION TRAINER Read the position, calculate, decide: pick your move, play the line five moves ahead — yours and your opponent's — and ask why each move is played. PLAY BOTS — OFFLINE A roster of opponents from beginner all the way to grandmaster. Pick who you play, your colour and your pace: bullet, blitz, rapid, classical or no clock at all. Works without internet. PLAY CHESS ONLINE HU Chess, our own online play, with bullet, blitz, rapid and classical, your own rating and level-based matchmaking. Prefer Lichess? Connect your account and play there with your rating synced. YOUR AI CHESS COACH It reviews every move and tells you what happened: why it was strong, where it went wrong, what to play instead. It grades your moves and gives hints without spoiling the answer. And you can ask it anything about chess. Powered by Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, DeepSeek and Qwen, and it adapts to your level: — Beginner (800–1200): simple concepts and basic tactics — Intermediate (1200–1800): strategic ideas and positional play — Advanced (1800+): deep analysis and theory CHESS PUZZLES — STREAK, STORM & 30+ THEMES • Daily puzzle and a mix at your level • Streak: how many can you solve without missing? • Storm: three minutes against the clock • Over 30 themes: pin, fork, skewer, discovered attack, sacrifice, back-rank mate and more • Pawn, rook, bishop, knight and queen endgames • Your puzzle rating, so you can watch yourself improve OPENING TRAINER Hundreds of chess openings organized by ECO code, in three phases: learn with guided arrows, practise until you play it twice without errors, and master it through quizzes. Explore any opening in the Lichess database, with millions of games. REVIEW YOUR GAMES Import by PGN — paste, file or share — and your coach walks the game move by move, with evaluation and plain-language explanations of your mistakes. There's also a free analysis board for any position. YOUR PROGRESS, ON EVERY DEVICE Sign in and your courses, your games, your puzzles and your rating are saved and follow you from iPhone to iPad. Change phones and you don't start over. FLEXIBLE, NO SUBSCRIPTIONS • 5 free AI analyses to try the coach • Credit packs — buy only what you'll use • One-time Premium, plus BYOK with your own AI key No ads, no advertising trackers. Download Chess Coach and start today.