Chessable – The Woodpecker Method

On Monday 24th September we will release a Quality Chess book in what for us is a new format: Chessable. In case you are not familiar with Chessable, I offer a couple of extra links: the first about Chessable and the next about the science behind their methods.

My summary: Chessable offers chess courses that are accessible online, and uses a technique based on “spaced-repetition”.

When we decided to experiment by putting one Quality Chess book on Chessable, we needed to decide which book. So, learning and improving using repetition: does that suggest any recent Quality Chess book?

The Woodpecker Method will be available on Chessable from Monday 24th September. The normal Chessable price will be the same as our book, though I would suggest keeping an eye out for an introductory sale price, which is a Chessable tradition.

If this experiment is a success, then we may try other QC books in Chessable format.

19 thoughts on “Chessable – The Woodpecker Method”

  1. Great idea! I was actually talking to the founder of Chessable last month and possible future directions for Chessable. I mentioned the outstanding quality of QC books and he said they were already in talks for this with you guys- great to see this idea come to fruition!

  2. Great news. Will you publish “only” the book on Chessable or will you make use of the opporttunity to add multimedia content, for example Axel explaining the method in a video?

  3. This is tremendous! I plan to do the rest of my cycles via chessable and provide a review of the pros/cons of each method (book vs. chessable vs. forward chess – although I only have the FC sample).

  4. It’s good to try these things, but if I look at the website of Chessable they seem to have an especially large marketing department :-). As far as I can see Chess position trainer works more or less in the same way, but with less hype – so I wouldn’t call this a revolution.

  5. A good decision, I think :). It helps for training, and for some exercices books (specially the woodpecker) that can be a good option. I know it could be complex, but it would be fair to offer a special discount if you already have bought the paper book.

  6. Ray :
    It’s good to try these things, but if I look at the website of Chessable they seem to have an especially large marketing department :-). As far as I can see Chess position trainer works more or less in the same way, but with less hype – so I wouldn’t call this a revolution.

    It’s interesting you got that impression. I believe they essentially just have 1 guy who does social media as their “marketing department” and I doubt it is a full-time position.

    I tried using CPT before chessable existed and had trouble actually doing the training. Chessable is much more fun and has a lighter user interface so it is just simple and easy to pop on, do some training, and then pop off from any computer or even my phone. And there is a lot of very high quality material you can purchase that you can then start training. For instance, imagine taking Dvoretsky’s endgame manual and putting into CPT on your own – what a nightmare!

  7. I got the chessable version of the woodpecker book today and have been very happy with it for working through the problems. It allows me to work through the problems much more quickly even than on the FC version, and I like the repetition aspect when I make an error. (Fortunately only two so far now on my fifth time through the easy problems.)

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