English Chess Forum

See http://www.insidermedia.com/insider/sou ... n-platform

John Upham wrote:See http://www.insidermedia.com/insider/sou ... n-platform

I'll save Sir Roger time and effort determining if the person behind this is worthy by

https://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=448680

and

http://www.ecfgrading.org.uk/new/player ... de=302498C

Coming from nowhere to 160 either vindicates the training method he is seeking funds to develop, that he's a talented player or both. It's relevant information.

Roger de Coverly wrote:Coming from nowhere to 160 either vindicates the training method he is seeking funds to develop, that he's a talented player or both. It's relevant information.

What is your required grade / rating for a chess person to be credible?

John Upham wrote: What is your required grade / rating for a chess person to be credible?

in the context of someone marketing a chess improvement process, being above average would be a minimum requirement. 140 plus then. Perhaps it's also the playing record, that he plays in FIDE rated Opens, admittedly with only modest success.

I saw this on Seedrs. Adam Raoof is listed as an adviser.

It looked overpriced to me and as of today they have raised just £7k of the £150k they are looking for, but I'm going to keep an eye on it just in case.

Hi Roger, John,

John, thanks for sharing my crowdfunding campaign https://www.seedrs.com/chessable

I wanted to take a moment to reply to this thread. I played my first OTB game last year, as Adam Raoof the organiser in London will confirm.

I started learning chess as the article says around three years ago and I blogged my progress so that can be found on the web. I was rated around 1100 online for a good time; I was pretty poor. I learnt how to move when I was a kid.

I kept my method private for a while until I had some "evidence" to show the chess community. This is how IM John Bartholomew got on board. I'd love to have made more progress myself but this last year has been about helping other people learn (improving Chessable) and finishing my Master's dissertation. This is why I haven't played another Congress in the last few months, but I will. I will hopefully be able to increase my ECF and FIDE grade soon when I have more time. I do understand that is the ultimate measurement by which any method will be considered.

Since IM John Bartholomew saw the positives of the method and got on board others, have also started to appreciate it. Very recently IM Christof Sielecki got on board. GM Alex Colovic blogged his opinion (unrequested) about our method recently: http://www.alexcolovic.com/2016/09/ches ... ition.html

I've also had interest from GM Dlugy and GM Leitao to publish their work on chess openings on the site. GM Colovic now also wants to release his repertoire soon.

This interview with now USCF Master Prof. Tim Mcgrew is also worth mentioning: https://www.chessable.com/blog/2016/07/ ... ss-master/

While we do not claim we already have the method perfectly figured out, we do have a strong commitment to continue innovating and find things that improve learning by objective measures, in concrete, grade improvements. This is why we are seeking investment, to continue working for the benefit of chess learning and education.

I believe that thanks to my background and the team we have assembled, we will get there. My background in Educational Psychology, Computer Science and a Video Games Company definitely allow me to give this a good go. Over 10,000 users, many of which are now paying customers are backing us to make it work.

Thanks again for starting this thread.

All my best wishes
David Kramaley
CEO of Chessable

Roger de Coverly wrote:Coming from nowhere to 160 either vindicates the training method he is seeking funds to develop, that he's a talented player or both.

Or that he put a lot of work in or any two of the three or all of them.


The fundamental premise is correct, of course: many* traditional chess books have a negligible educational value and simply would be accepted learning resources in many* other fields. That said, it’s probably also true that many* chess books are neither written nor purchased with educational value in mind.





* that’s being generous. I think "most" would be more accurate.

Jonathan Bryant wrote: Or that he put a lot of work in or any two of the three or all of them.

It a coach's cliché that players up to 2000 or maybe even 2200 spend far too much time on opening theory.

It would be interesting to see them proved wrong.

There are examples where people knew the theoretical moves from memory of a complex line for perhaps 12 moves, only to get it completely wrong on the 13th. If you concentrate on knowing the typical tactics and squares where pieces should live, that keeps you out of that danger. You have to avoid the irrational to play in that style unless your knowledge takes you to a totally won or drawn position.

Simon Brown wrote:It looked overpriced to me

My thoughts as well on reading that they value the business at more than £1.15M (£150K being 13% of the equity).

Hi Simon, Ian,

I am happy to justify the valuation to serious investors who have considered it when looking closely at the value proposition (business plan, contracts, financials, etc). Would be even happier to do so in person if anyone is ever around in London, Bristol or Swindon (for a chat and a game of chess!).

I just logged on to write that if anyone at all is wondering what happened to the campaign, I explain so here: https://www.chessable.com/blog/2016/10/ ... gn-part-i/

Regarding the old argument whether to study openings or not, that has been going on for a long long time. Many people study the openings and we are simply giving them the tools to do so better.

Cheers
David

David, I'm a serious investor, but I prefer to pay today's real price to tomorrow's aspirational price. If you can show me that your business today is worth over £1m I would be surprised. I didn't bother looking any further on Seedrs for that reason.

Dear Simon,

Apologies for the late response, I had been busy preparing our re-launch on Crowdcube https://www.crowdcube.com/chessable/

I am happy to justify our reasoning to anyone seriously considering investment. I prefer to do such endeavours via phone call or in person as it is easier to address any concerns and explain any private details of our business plan that I hope remain as confidential as possible.

We also have two events in London that John and I will attend and you are most welcome to come to one of them to meet us and ask the questions that concern you.

As I explain on Crowdcube everyone has a different point of view and therefore valuation a new tech start up is a very subjective exercise with varied opinions. There is an information asymmetry which I have to endeavour to close without jeopardising certain parts of our business. We have offers at lower valuations and any serious investor who can afford a single investment is free to negotiate with us.

The valuation on Crowdcube is comparable to what other offers on the crowdfunding market are achieving, and when comparing our plan, our execution and our team to other successfully funded crowdfunding campaigns I firmly believe we have an attractive proposition. Of course, investors are also receiving over 50% of their cash back from HMRC as we are SEIS pre-approved. I say a bit more about this here: https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/che ... ons/bgdmeq

I'd be happy to discuss further if you require.

Thanks and all my best wishes
David
PS.- If any serious investor can convince a crowdfunding campaign to lower their valuation, it applies to all other investors on the campaign as well, they automatically get upgraded to more shares.

It's an excellent looking platform.

Hi, English Chess Forum!

I just wanted to pop on here because we discussed Chessable's funding requirements on the forum a few months ago.

I wanted to thank Simon Brown, a member here for his counsel which combined with a lot of other work we have done has led to us finalising a round of funding. We've raised nearly £100k and plan to put it to great use to keep delivering features, and content Chessable members love (some of which surely must be hidden somewhere among the English Chess ranks ).

Does anyone know any full-stack chess playing web developers looking for work in the South West area? (thought I'd ask!)

https://www.chessable.com/blog/2017/04/ ... d-funding/

Cheers
David