You may know Duolingo as an overbearing language teacher who (hoo?) may or may not have your family locked in a basement somewhere, depending on how well tomorrow’s Spanish lesson goes. In recent years, Duolingo has broadened its teachings, inviting newbies to learn maths, music, and cooking. Now it’s getting into chess.
Checkmate, pal
Or rather, teaching chess. Duolingo is introducing a fully-fledged chess course, suitable for complete novices who might need help learning how the knight moves, to more advanced players looking to refine their skills. Once you’ve got the basics down and a couple of puzzles under your belt, learners face off in a proper match (or “mini matches”) against Oscar, who serves as the chessmaster for this course.
“[Chess is] one of those things that… any age group can learn… but then also something that takes the 10,000-hour theory to really master,” said Edwin Bodge, a senior product manager with Duolingo. “We thought it would fit with the Duolingo medium really well.”
While the course caters to any skill level, Duolingo certainly seems to be honing in on newcomers to the game, going so far as to start the lesson at a1 on the board. Progression doesn’t exactly mimic the app’s regular language and maths lessons, but it all carries the same game-y feel to them, and promotes progression with the same leaderboard-type structure.
You’ll first choose a course based on your personal ELO rating, something you’ll need to determine beforehand, by playing a couple of rounds on either Chess.com or Lichess. An ELO rating is the most accurate representation of your current level (other than entering over-the-board tournaments, of course).
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Arguably, the only downside is Duolingo’s lack of explanation when it comes to teaching the game of chess. Sure, it can teach you the moves and explain how one might checkmate their opponent, but when it comes time to provide a reason for a specific move, like it would do on a Duolingo Max subscription when studying Spanish, it’ll struggle. It’s far more difficult to explain a computer’s reasoning in chess, considering the number of potential moves.
“We want to get better at fuller explanations,” Siegel said. “There is some mix of AI and model training that we’re hoping to use to better explain why a certain move is wrong.”
To take part, you’ll need to be enrolled in the app’s beta programme on iOS, with a full launch slated for mid-May. The company didn’t provide a solid release for Android devices, with a vague plan to release it (and more languages, naturally) somewhere down the line.
Whether Duolinog will continue to expand its offerings, specifically around other games, remains to be seen. Speaking with The Verge, the company’s staff software engineer Sammi Siegel said, “while we don’t have any plans to share right now, I think we’re just seeing how this launch goes and then we’ll go from there.” We’d be willing to bet our teammates wouldn’t say no to a few Rocket League lessons, Duo.
