Coach Jay’s Chess Academy: The Fastest, Easiest Way to Learn Chess
Created by Coach Jay
The fastest, easiest, MOST FUN way to learn chess! From the coach who's taught over 35,000 kids to play chess in the past 23+ years.
You're never too young (or old!) to begin to reap the lifelong benefits that only chess can bring!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
We passed the $20,000 mark! Less than $5k from our first stretch goal!
over 6 years ago
– Tue, Oct 03, 2017 at 08:03:11 AM
Thank you everyone! We just passed $20,000 and we can't thank you enough!
We're pretty excited about our FIRST stretch goal--additional content and puzzles for every level of Coach Jay's Chess Academy. We've already been going through and picking material from some of the handouts we use in some of our classes and private lessons. There's a lot of GREAT stuff for every chess player, and hitting our stretch goal means that we can get better bulk printing prices and afford to include some of this extra material!
Here's what we have planned for the day! This afternoon, I'll be posting the last few videos from our free "Five Disciplines of Chess" lesson series. The videos were streamed on Kickstarter Live, so the video quality isn't the greatest, BUT these five videos are absolutely essential for any new chess player. They cover the basics of:
Checkmate
Defense
Strategy
Endgame
Tactics
Look for them later today! I hope this gives you an idea of Coach Jay's teach style (spoiler alert: he's pretty fantastic!), since our SECOND stretch goal is video lessons to go with all 7 belt levels--video lessons that are PROFESSIONALLY shot, rather than streamed off a laptop to Kickstarter Live using the built in microphone!
Please help us spread the word so we can reach these stretch goals!
We're just a couple of chess coaches and can't afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars advertising this Kickstarter campaign like the big guys you see at the top of Kickstarter. We rely almost entirely upon backers sharing our project with friends, family, parents, teachers and homeschool groups they know!
If you want some fun ways to share our project, here are a few images that you can share freely! Just make sure you include a link to our Kickstarter page when you do:
Finally, don't forget to connect with us on social media!
We love hearing from you and social media is often the fastest way to ask Coach Jay a question and get a quick answer! Click the buttons below to go right to our pages!
Thank you again and CHECK you later!
Kyle and Coach Jay
Free Lesson Replays - CHECKMATE and DEFENSE
over 6 years ago
– Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 05:35:22 PM
Many, many years ago, I began to structure my lessons and practice around what I call The Five Disciplines of Chess. It's been a great framework and ensures my students are becoming well-rounded chess players!
For example, in order to complete your White Belt, you need to complete the lessons and exercises from all Five Disciplines of Chess: Checkmate, Defense, Endgame, Strategy and Tactics. That means, if you're using Coach Jay's Chess Academy, you can't become a Black Belt in Checkmate... but lose every game because you're not even a White Belt in Defense!
Below are two of the lessons I taught recently on Kickstarter Live. I had a lot of fun doing these, and will be doing another livestream tomorrow night! It's a great chance for me to answer your questions, so send them in and I'll make sure to answer them on the live stream.
And Don't Forget to Connect to Us on Social Media!
We did it!!! Thank you SO much!
over 6 years ago
– Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 12:31:49 PM
We woke up this morning to see some happy news... we hit our goal of $18,000!
We are just BLOWN away by your support and so excited for all the kids who will soon have their lives changed by this game we love! We've wanted to make the Coach Jay curriculum available for awhile, but the costs of producing the material on a large scale has always been intimidating. Coming to Kickstarter is one of the best decisions we ever made, because:
Kickstarter is making it possible to teach kids chess that would NEVER have been able to walk into one of our classrooms!
It's given us the chance to talk to a whole bunch of parents and help them realize the life-changing benefits of chess
AND, it sure has been a lot of fun figuring out how to use some of these online tools--live streaming lessons? I had no idea how much fun that could be!
A Couple Quick Updates:
FIRST - Thank you to those of you who joined us during our live streamed lessons on Kickstarter Lives. I've already uploaded "The First Lesson I Teach My Students" and the "Checkmate" lesson on the Coach Jay's Chess Academy Facebook page, but I'll also be uploading those hear later today as an update.
SECOND - We've received a lot of great feedback asking for more lessons! We're going to try to find a way to do those more often. Between Coach Jay teaching 8-10 hours a day and Coach Kyle holding down his day job at NASA, it's tricky to coordinate, but we will definitely work on getting more lessons going soon!
THIRD - We're really excited about our Stretch Goals. If you've enjoyed our videos, please let other parents know about Coach Jay's Chess Academy on Kickstarter! Share the link and hopefully we'll be able to afford to get some PROFESSIONALLY SHOT videos made to accompany the Coach Jay's Chess Academy course.
Finally... thank you again!
There's no way to truly express our heartfelt gratitude. We love chess and we love kids and we're so appreciative that you've given us the opportunity to spread the joys of chess to your (and many other) children.
Of course, if you have ANY questions about Coach Jay's Chess Academy, chess in general or whether chess is right for your kids, send them in either on Kickstarter or on our Facebook page and I'll make sure to answer them on the stream!
If you want to keep track of what you're up to, make sure to connect with us on:
