How We Review Chess Courses

Every review on ChessCourseFinder is currently based on public information only. Nobody here has taken the courses we cover, so we compare what sellers publish about content, level, length, price and refunds, add attributed third-party opinion, and tell you what we could not confirm.

What the test-depth labels mean

Each review and comparison carries a "Test depth" line near the top, so you know what stands behind it before you read on. There are three possible labels:

Label	What it means	Pages using it today
Public information only	Based on the seller's published pages, pricing, refund terms and attributed third-party opinion. No access to the paid course or plan.	All of them
Sample lesson only	We used a free preview or sample lesson and recorded what we saw. The rest of the page is public information.	None yet
Account tested	We had paid access, used the course or plan over a stated period, and recorded what we did.	None yet

Pages labelled "Public information only" also end with a section explaining what a real test would measure, wherever one is planned. We will not change a label until the work behind it has been done.

What we look at for each course

We judge a course on whether it fits a particular player, using what can be checked from outside:

Level: the seller's stated rating range, if it publishes one, and whether the content description supports it.
Content: what topics, lines or skills the course says it covers, and what it leaves out.
Format: video, interactive drills, spaced repetition, books or live sessions.
Size: listed hours, videos or lines. Listed length is not the same as the time it takes to learn the material.
Author: the teacher's title and record as the seller states it.
Price and access: list price, sale price if shown, subscription or one-off, and whether access lasts.
Refund terms: what the seller's policy says, including exclusions.
Age: the publication or update date, if it is shown.

When a good free alternative exists, we name it. See how to choose a chess course for how to apply these criteria yourself.

How we date and label facts

Prices, refund terms and features change, so every one we state carries a checked date and is linked to where it came from. We sort facts by how we obtained them, and we say so on the page when the evidence is weak:

Read directly: we opened the seller's own page on the date given.
Search listing only: the seller's page could not be opened by our tools, so we saw the information only in search results. These are marked on the page.
Conflicting or unconfirmed: sources disagree or we could not confirm a detail. We show the disagreement or say it is unknown rather than picking the more convenient number.

Some sellers block automated page reads or build pages in a way our tools cannot read. We do not work around those blocks, which is why you will see gaps. Before buying, always confirm the price and refund terms on the seller's checkout page. The price and refund tracker collects the dated figures in one place.

Our aim is to recheck prices and refund terms monthly and to re-read sellers' terms each quarter. Changes that affect a recommendation go in the corrections and updates log.

How we treat opinions and seller claims

Third-party opinions are named, labelled as opinion and accompanied by any conflict of interest we can see, such as referral links or free access. Forum posts are anecdotes and we present them that way. Seller claims about rating gains or outcomes are reported only as seller claims, and testimonials do not count as evidence. Our guide to spotting biased chess course reviews shows how we think about this.

Recommendations are based on fit for a stated player: rating band, available time, goal and budget. We do not give scores or star ratings, because public information cannot support them. A recommendation means the published evidence makes the course a sensible choice for that player, and every pick comes with its downsides.

We do not rank courses by commission. Sellers cannot pay for a position, and free options are listed first wherever they do the job. How affiliate links work here is on the affiliate disclosure page.

How the course finder works

The chess course finder asks for your rating band, weekly study time, goal and budget, then applies published rules to our catalogue of dated course information. It shows a free option first and gives the reason for each suggestion. It runs on the catalogue data described above, so it inherits the same limits: it matches what sellers publish and does not measure teaching quality.

What we have not done

Being clear about this matters more than sounding authoritative:

We have not measured anyone's rating improvement from any course.
We have not tested refund requests. Refund information comes from sellers' published policies only.
Nobody with a chess title reviews this site. See about this site.
We cannot judge teaching quality, explanations or errors in a course from outside it.

When any of this changes, the pages concerned will say what was done, by whom and when.