One piece.
One rule at a time.
Nobody learns chess by being handed thirty-two pieces. Children meet one piece, play with only that piece, and add the next when the last one is obvious.
Planned Not playable yet. Listed so you can see where Zupelo is going, because an empty room is worse than an honest label.
White to move. What wins material?
Knight on f3, black queen on d4
Look at every piece that is not defended. Start there.
A sample, not a live game. Pelo hints and cheers — he never chats.
Five stages, three to eighteen
Not five difficulty settings. Each stage changes the reading level, the length of a round, how quickly Pelo offers a hint, and what the whole thing looks like.
Three decisions worth explaining
A mistake gets an explanation
The coach does not say "-2.4". It says which piece you stopped watching, and shows the same trap again two games later.
Bots that play badly on purpose
Twelve opponents, each genuinely beatable at its level. An engine that crushes a seven-year-old teaches nothing.
Friends only, always
Matches are with people a grown-up approved. There is no open lobby and no stranger who wants to chat.
What a child actually does
We did not build five hundred unrelated games. We built fifteen game types any subject can fill, which is why the twelfth academy costs a fraction of the first.
One piece puzzles
Just the rook. Just the knight. Then both.
Beat the bot
Twelve levels, and the first one is meant to lose.
Daily puzzle
The same position for everyone, every morning.
School tournaments
Your class, your club, a real ladder.
Most apps adapt the difficulty. Zupelo adapts everything else too.
The pitch of a question is the easy part. What changes underneath is which skill comes next, how it is explained, when a hint arrives, how long a session runs, and what a wrong answer is taken to mean.
Chess shares that engine with the other eleven. A day spent on chess keeps the same streak as a day spent anywhere else, because losing interest in one subject should never cost a child the habit.
How the engine picks🐚 One currency
Shells, earned for finishing and for coming back — never for being right. They cannot be bought and cannot be converted.
🔥 One streak
Any academy keeps it going. Miss a day and a streak save covers it, on every plan including free.
🔒 No leaderboard
There is no global ranking and no public profile. Comparison is with your own last week, or with friends a grown-up approved.
Every child learns differently.
Our AI learns how your child learns.
The other eleven academies