Chess: Winning Your First Game
Like Duolingo, but for Chess: Winning Your First Game. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Rules of Engagement and Tactics and Finishing. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Key ideas in Chess: Winning Your First Game
- Checkmate is the only way to end the game
- Pawns cannot capture pieces directly in front of them
- The King is never actually removed from the board
- Pawns only capture on the forward-left or forward-right diagonals
- Losing the King outweighs any material advantage
- A blocked Pawn is stuck until the square in front is cleared or a diagonal capture is available
- The absolute priority of the King's safety over all other pieces
- The unique directional rules for Pawn movement versus capturing
- Bishops are restricted to diagonal paths
- Rooks control horizontal ranks and vertical files
- Long-range pieces can move across the entire board in one turn if the path is clear
- Knights are the only pieces that do not need a clear path to their destination
- Knights can jump over both friendly and enemy pieces
- Castling moves the King away from the exposed center of the board
- The specific movement patterns of long-range pieces
- Castling develops a Rook by moving it toward the center
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Chess: Winning Your First Game the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
If an enemy piece is standing directly in front of your Pawn, what can your Pawn do to it?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where Chess: Winning Your First Game takes you
Go from moving your first pawn to delivering a satisfying checkmate. Learn the essential strategies that turn a board of wooden pieces into a battlefield you can control.
- 1
The Rules of Engagement
- The Goal and the Army
- The Battle for the Center
- 2
Tactics and Finishing
- Thinking One Step Ahead
- Closing the Trap
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
Chess: Winning Your First Game is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start Chess: Winning Your First Game today.
Download Tomo, search Chess: Winning Your First Game, and play your first lesson in under a minute.