Or, I did four months of Duolingo Chess so you don’t have to.
I have a long ass streak on Duolingo. This involves doing it, every day. Am I learning? Mi español es un poco bueno, posiblemente…o posiblemente no. But I am not here today to discuss Spanish, I am here to talk Chess. Part of having a long ass streak is that sometimes I want a break. I find its actually useful to let it sort of sink in, then when I go back, it helps reinforce if I have learned anything, or if I have just been memorizing recent lessons. Some.breaks involve doing other languages (Japanese, Norwegian, Klingon, for like 1 day). For a while I did the mediocre piano and math courses.
Recently, they added Chess to the Android version, so I started doing that.
I should add, I am, kind of terrible at Chess. I like the idea of Chess, I know the fundamentals of Chess, but I am pretty bad at the whole, “few moves ahead” or even noticing that some Bishop is waiting in the wings to murder my Queen if I take that Knight. Which is kind of odd because honestly, in most other spaces, I am pretty good at “seeing the outcomes”. I am also, very very non competitive and hate playing games against other people because it makes me feel bad for losing and feel shitting for winning.
Anyway, I figure, maybe if I do the Duolingo Chess courses, I might get, a little better.
I am, not sure its helped. Granted, I tested out of “Part 1” and I am only on “Part 3” out of, I think seven parts.
But I really don’t feel like I am really learning anything, and I really think a lot of it is the structure of the course. I actually came across someone else’s blog post recently that echos most of my same complaints.
Probably the biggest is the vagueness of it all. All of the Chess courses are presented by the character Oscar. He is the sort of, older man with dark hair and a mustache. I want to call him the “Spanish dude”, except he is only really Spanish because he is in the Spanish course. But then, I would not really call say, Lily or Zari, the Spanish Chicas.
Anyway, sometimes Oscar gives hints as to what is expected in the lesson. “Try to see if your Bishop can shake things up.” That sort of thing. It lets you know you should focus on your bishop.
Except then a few puzzles in, it suddenly expects you to be using your Rook or Queen. And Oscar just says something goofy like “I love these puzzles.” The goal is not always clear either. Am I supposed to try to checkmate? Take a Queen or Rook? I have no idea.
This would be less of an issue if it wasn’t for the stupid energy system. You get like, 25 energy each day. Each mistake costs an energy. So you if you sort of, probe for what its looking for, you just burn energy. After two failures, it just tells you.
And it does not tell you why you would want to do some of the moves. Like, the checkmate ones, on sure, you won the game. But sometimes its just “take this knight” and OK, but why, why is that beneficial. And why did I sacrifice a Rook for that Knight? I mean, that’s another one I want to understand, sometimes it engages in these elaborate back and forth movements where I lose what feels like valuable pieces for no real gains.
Some explanation of what might come next would be great.
Something else that I feel might really help us some sort of, like a shaded color mapping of coverage maybe? And maybe the ability to move pieces and see how it changes before committing to an answer. I am not sure how it would work exactly but maybe say, yellow shading on squares that is always present or shows up if you select an opponent piece, to help visualize gaps in the defense. And the same for your pieces, maybe a different color. Like if I could pick up and place my queen, and see “OK, she is now red because that Bishop can take her, but if I place her here, its good, and she is attacking that Knight.
I get that isn’t “real chess”, but this isn’t playing chess. Its LEARNING chess. Make it clear, for learning chess, the potential consequences. Maybe don’t do it on every puzzle or lesson, but especially when introducing concepts.
And for that matter, when introducing them, make it clear the goal. “Look.how if we move the Bishop here, it checks the King and forces the King to move to a vulnerable position with less escape options.”
That sort of thing.
Also, so far, the game almost entirely focuses on attacks, and very little on “how to escape this type of attack.”. Which is another place that more explanation, and the color markings might help. Give me something like “My Queen is attacking your king, but notice how if you move here (or block this way), it opens up this space to escape because if the Queen presses the attack, she is exposed to your Rook.”
Actually try to teach me Oscar my man.
The puzzles also feel weirdly specific. There are essentially infinite Chess moves, and boy I will sure be prepared if I land in this one specific scenario where somehow we all have pawns and I have this Bishop in just the right place.
And even when the game (finally) showed some more specific opening sequences, during the full matches, they never become useful.
The full matches are another thing. It has some sort of ranking for you, the player, based on win/loss. But it seems meaningless for actual play. You can rise to a rank, often easily. But the system feels deliberately rigged to prevent rising too quickly. Like it will let you attack the queen with a bare open Pawn one match, something it could easily defend, but it doesn’t, and you take the Queen easily. But then next match, because you crossed that magic invisible “top tier” its running Grand Master maneuvers where the Queen is essentially teleporting around the board snatching every piece up then it checkmates you.
Because it doesn’t want you to get higher than X rank yet.
I want to take a moment before wrapping up to address the Capture Craze puzzles, and how terrible they are. Essentially, you get 1-2, maybe more later, pieces, usually a Queen and another Rook, Knight or Bishop. The opponent also gets pieces, usually random, everything except the King. They spawn, randomly on the board. Within a time limit, you back.and forth move pieces, trying to earn points capturing pieces.
It is, nothing like real chess.
And its often almost cheaper than the full match nonsense I already talked about. It will spawn pieces for itself perfectly placed to take your piece most of the time. When it gets a Queen its extremely aggressive and essentially impossible to take. Most of the round amounts to, capture as many Rooks and Queens (both worth the most points), while your spare piece just gets taken over and over.
Its Chess, but its also nothing like Chess. There is no real strategy, its just move quick and take as much as you can and hope you don’t lose too much in the process or you fail the lesson. Its terrible, I hate them. Not because I lose them, I often do not lose them, but because they just, don’t actually teach anything about Chess.
Anyway, I almost want to keep going and finish the course, but I also feel like its a complete waste of time so I will probably go back to Spanish again. I will probably look into using a proper Chess app like Lichess instead.
