chess class · chess lessons · chess teacher · Group Lessons · Online Academy · online chess lessons · online class schedule · signing up for lessons · trial classes ·Mar 31, 2025

How To Sign Up For Online Chess Lessons

Online chess lessons can be a great way for kids to improve their gameplay, get personalized feedback from seasoned instructors and make new friends from across the country. Silver Knights’ online Chess Academy offers weekly classes, tournaments and bonus activities for students of all ages and skill levels, from total beginners to titled players.

Your child will love our chess classes, and you'll love how easy it is for your family to take part. We offer a wide range of convenient lesson times that can fit into even the busiest of schedules. Our program management team is always available by email to help you with any aspect of Academy membership. That starts with a simple signup process aimed at placing your child in an appropriate group.

So how can you sign your child up for an online class? Let’s walk through the process:

Commitment-free trial classes
Joining the Academy program
Signing up for weekly lessons
Rescheduling missed classes
Scheduling bonus events

Registering Your Child for a Trial Chess Class

An online chess class in progress, where students are responding to a prompt to make the best move for black.

Our classes give students a chance to engage with an experienced coach and other chess kids through fun, interactive lessons and games.

Since 2020, Silver Knights' online Academy has taught students from all 50 states and more than 40 countries across six contintents. Regardless of playing level or location, our Academy offers children a place to interact with other kids and dip their toes into the ever-growing world of online chess.

Children learn in different ways, and while online classes typically suit most learning styles, digital classrooms are not necessarily the best fit for every kid. If you’re not sure whether or not online lessons are right for your child, a trial class is a great way to try out the format without having to commit to a membership. Silver Knights offers hour-long group classes every weeknight for just $5. In each session, students have the opportunity to solve puzzles, learn new skills and play chess against other kids.

Interested in giving one a go? Sign up for a trial class.

Joining the Chess Academy Program

Once you’ve decided to sign up for a membership, we’ll send you a link to schedule an introductory meeting with a member of our online team, where you’ll learn about the ins and outs of the program and how to use our website. Based on their chess experience, new students are sorted into one of our eight class levels:

Pawns: brand new chess players
Knights: beginners who have mastered piece movement
Bishops: beginners who have mastered basics like check, checkmate, castling, and piece values
Rooks: intermediate players who are comfortable with tactics, piece defense, and simple checkmating patterns like the two-rook or king and queen checkmate
Queens: intermediate students who have mastered opening principles, defense of the Scholar’s mate, and are confident with discoveries, removal of the guard, and checkmating with a king and rook
Kings 1: advanced students with ChessKid ratings between 1300-1550
Kings 2: advanced students with ChessKid ratings above 1550
Elite: competitive tournament players with established USCF ratings above 1400

During the introductory meeting, we can help you choose the most suitable starting level based on your child’s current chess ability. Alternatively, you may schedule a 30-minute assessment with one of our coaches, who will evaluate your child’s knowledge and recommend an appropriate starting point.

As your child progresses through the curriculum, their coach will observe their gameplay and mastery of the lesson material and advance them to the next level as soon as they’re ready.

Scheduling Weekly Chess Classes

Our online Academy was designed with ease in mind. Unlike other after-school activity providers or sports teams that make parents jump through hoops to meet registration deadlines and work around limited meeting times, Silver Knights offers month-to-month memberships, rolling registration, and plenty of class times throughout the week to keep things as painless as possible for parents. Classes run year round, including the summer, and are only interrupted for major US public holidays.

Once your child has been registered for a membership and sorted into the appropriate level for their skillset, you can start signing them up for weekly classes. Elite level students are assigned to one particular class time during the introductory process, but students in our other seven levels can choose from a wide range of class times every week. Each of our eight levels is offered at least once every weekday, with most levels being offered multiple times a day, and our most popular levels–Knights, Bishops, Rooks, Queens, and Kings–on Saturdays as well. For example, here’s a look at the options for Rooks level classes in an average week:

A schedule showing all Rooks level classes in a sample week. Seventeen classes are available.

We offer more than two dozen Rooks classes each week.

The full schedule of online chess class times is available for you to consider. All levels are shown by default, but you can view one level at a time by selecting the name of the level from the drop down box above the upper left-hand corner of the calendar.

To book a class, log into the members area of our website and select “Academy Class Scheduling” from the landing page. A table containing levels Pawns through Kings2 will appear. If your family has a favorite instructor, you can view that coach’s weekly availability by clicking the “Coach Schedules” link above the table. Otherwise, click on your child’s level from the table in the center of your screen, which will open a scheduling calendar. Select any particular day to see the class times on offer:

A calendar showing all the available Rooks classes on Wednesday, March 12, 2025. Options are available at 11:00am, 4:00pm, 5:00pm, 6:00pm, and 8:00pm.

While browsing the calendar, you can also view a schedule for each level’s lesson content in the box to the left of the screen.

Our curriculum is designed to rotate weekly, so we recommend sticking with the same class time each week to ensure your child doesn’t see the same lesson twice in a row. If you can’t make your usual class, though, feel free to sign your child up for any available class in their level. Once you’ve selected your chosen class time, fill out the brief form that appears. Then click “Schedule Event” and you’re good to go!

As part of our effort to make Academy membership as easy as possible, we hardly ever cancel classes. If the regularly scheduled instructor for a particular class time is unavailable for any reason, another instructor will fill in, keeping things consistent and disruption-free for students and their families.

Rescheduling Missed Chess Classes

We get it–life happens. Between illnesses, last-minute emergencies, and scheduling mix-ups, sometimes students aren’t able to attend a class they’ve registered for. If your child misses a class, simply sign them up for another time slot that week, or feel free to register for two classes the following week if that works better for your family’s schedule. No stress, no fees, no penalties.

For families who want to retain their memberships but will not be able to attend classes for an extended period–perhaps a two-week vacation over the summer, or a particular month where other obligations make attending classes too difficult–we offer temporary membership pauses so you don’t have to pay for the time you’re missing. To arrange a pause, send us an email at online@chessacademy.com.

Joining Bonus Activities

Silver Knights offers a range of bonus activities throughout the week, like Tactics Tuesdays (essentially extra lessons on the coach’s choice of topic), a Wednesday night book club and several weekly tournaments. Unlike our regular classes, these events are joined live and do not require scheduling or advance registration. To participate, click “Bonus Lessons/Tournament Calendar” from the members landing page. A list of events will be displayed in your local time:

A list of three bonus events hosted by our online Academy Program. Two Tactics Tuesday classes and a Wednesday evening Book Club are shown.

These are only a few of our weekly bonus lessons. To see what else we're offering this week, take a look at the full chess calendar.

Click “Join Here” a few minutes before the start of the event to be brought to its Chessable classroom. No registration necessary!

Conclusion

Whether your child is a total beginner or a tournament champion, our online Academy has something to offer them. Here's what parents of some of our current students had to say about their experience with the program:

"Class always exceeds our expectations. My son is very fond of his coach and looks forward to seeing him every week. He says he is fun to learn from and feels like a friend is teaching him."

"We really appreciate the coach's positive and professional style, how he conducts the lessons, and especially the puzzle and game analysis. The analysis has been so helpful for my child. He has won first place in multiple ChessKid tournaments since he started these lessons."

Think our online Academy sounds like a good fit for your kid? Sign up for a risk-free trial class or membership.