Forget smart bulbs and smart glasses, I’ve fallen in love with a smart chess set

It’s almost the end of the year, and that means it’s almost the start of 2026, when we’ll all make resolutions that we’re 100% going to stick to. But it also means time is running short on me to achieve one of my 2025 resolutions. Thankfully I have a gadget to help me out, and if you’re reading this story the day it’s posted you could get it at a discounted price.

My goal was to reach 1,000 ELO on Chess.com. I’m stuck in the 900s, but I’m now using a GoChess smart chessboard to train me, and you can too. The cheapest option, the GoChess Mini, is just $199.96 at Amazon (was ~~$249.95~~). The other designs are all are all $50-off at the official GoChess store as part of a lingering Cyber Monday deal, too.

These boards allow you to play against another player, or against an AI, and when you do you can optionally turn on AI assistance, which will help you find and learn the best moves – or simply highlight blunders so you can avoid playing them and seizing defeat from the jaws of victory. You can even set it up to play games remotely with other players in online challenges, and sync it with apps like Chess.com.

Chess.com (a rating I’ll only get if I can keep up a winning streak and lose less).

Generally chess is lost rather than won. What I mean by that is while white has a slight advantage, if games are played perfectly, experts believe they will always end in a draw. This doesn’t happen if one player makes a mistake and their opponent capitalizes on it, though. As such, the game is lost by whichever player made the last mistake.

My issue is I keep making that last mistake, which eventually snowballs into a defeat.

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I’ve been training with the board’s AI to help me spot mistakes in practice games, so I hopefully don’t repeat them in real games against players (I never use AI or other assistance against real people, that’s called cheating and what’s the point of cheating to reach my goal?).

(Image credit: Particula)

I set the board up, select the bot difficulty I want to play against, and modulate the level of aid I receive based on what I want from the game. Do I want full assistance to help me learn to navigate a confusing middle game that I’ve blundered in the past (‘blunder’ is used in chess to mean ‘mistake’), do I just want blunder warnings so I can remember why I should leave my knight where it is rather than shifting it absent-mindedly, or do I want zero help as I play a no-holds-barred practice game?

In this way the GoChess board is very useful, and while I’ve noticed the blunder detection isn’t always the most sophisticated, it’s very good at spotting the beginner mistakes I would usually make. Pros wanting to avoid the kind of errors that aren’t obvious for several turns may find the AI isn’t quite capable enough for their needs.

I also love that the board is a physical thing. I usually play my chess digitally, and the 3D manifestation makes it a lot easier to visualize the layout of the pieces.

All this isn’t to say the GoChess boards are perfect, however.

The pieces have magnets so the board can track them as they move, but every piece uses the same magnets – so if you put a knight in the bishop starting position the board won’t know to correct you. Piece-recognition can be a bit hit-or-miss for some boards, or so I’ve heard, so this isn’t the end of the world.

It can sometimes struggle to follow pieces accurately during captures if you move things too quickly too, forcing you to put things back to reset the move before it goes through. In time-controlled games (I play rapid games where each player only has 10 total minutes to make all their moves for the game), this can lose valuable time.

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Another frustration, albeit a manageable one, is that the chess bot AI is shown in the setup as strength levels from 1 to 32 rather than as an estimated ELO. After the game is over, the app will say the estimated ELO of the bot, and a help menu says that Level 1 is around 400 while Level 32 is around 3,000, but I would like it if I could adjust the AI strength to my required level without any trial and error.

Lastly, the GoChess boards are kinda pricey. Yes they have a lot of useful tech built-in, but I know that for many folks justifying a $250 – $350 chess set is tough when you can pick up a regular one for around a tenth of the price.

Thankfully that last problem has been helped by lingering Cyber Monday discounts, as all GoChess boards are $50 at its official website – and the cheapest GoChess Mini set is on Amazon for $199.96. If you’re after a gift for yourself or a chess-loving loved one this is a really solid option to consider while it’s still on sale.