Back when we first launched Puddletown, we had no idea we’d one day run 36+ webinars for chess players across the world. We just wanted to bring more people into our growing community – and maybe make it a little easier for beginners to level up.
Fast forward to today, and webinars have become one of our favorite tools for teaching, building community, and celebrating big milestones.
How It Started
Our very first webinar in August 2022 was a simple “Welcome to Puddletown” session. No frills – just a chance to meet the team, talk about our mission, and answer questions from new families.
A few weeks later, we invited Carissa Yip, a popular and incredibly strong U.S. player, to host a special session. The turnout was amazing. That gave us the idea to keep experimenting.
Next came a girls-only webinar focused on helping more girls feel confident in tournament settings. While those first few sessions were cool, something still felt… off. The energy was great, but to our surprise they didn’t hit the nerve with our audience as we’d expected.
That’s when we tried an experiment.
Teaching What We Knew Best
Instead of always relying on guest speakers, we realized something kind of intuitive in hindsight: the most popular webinars were the ones we taught ourselves.
I ran one of the first “Opening Principles” webinars, followed by a super helpful session on endgames. When that worked well, we started taking turns. Over time, it became a tradition – every month, one of us founders would lead a new chess masterclass on a topic we knew well.
Eventually, Neev joined the teaching lineup too, and now we rotate regularly.
Some of the most popular sessions so far:
- “How to Get to 1000 Rating” – A special 90-minute seminar packed with real strategies, mindset tips, and practice routines. Easily our most viewed webinar.
- “Opening to Endgame Essentials” – A broad but detailed training that covered the full lifecycle of a chess game. This one marked the $50,000 donated milestone, so it was a big celebration too.
- Mini-series like “Tactical Vision” or “Checkmate Patterns” led by founders in 2- or 3-part installments
We discovered that the more specific or practical the webinar topic, the better the engagement. And the best part? The sessions helped us improve too – every time we had to teach a concept, we ended up understanding it better ourselves.
What It Looks Like Today
- We run monthly webinars, each focused on a niche tactical or strategic concept (though sometimes there are broader ones, usually to celebrate our major milestones)
- Topics range from basics like “Opening Traps” to advanced ideas like “Calculation Under Pressure”
- Sessions are 60–90 minutes long and include live examples, Q&A, and sometimes puzzle challenges
- Webinars are hosted on Zoom and open to anyone in the Puddletown community (and beyond!)
- We rotate presenters among the founders so each person builds their teaching and presentation skills
- In the last couple of months we also started sharing detailed answers to the questions posed during webinar sign-ups. Here is an example of detailed answers to all your questions from the 2025 June webinar: https://puddletownchess.org/learnings/june-webinar-recap-your-top-chess-questions-answered/
Most of our past webinars are also available on YouTube!
👉 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaNisHji-5frrgREtKIH4wGkkxTaolxrJ
You can also check out the full list of past seminars here:
👉 https://puddletownchess.org/seminars/
Webinars started as a small experiment. Now they’re one of the coolest ways we connect with our community, celebrate our growth, and give back to players at every level. Every single month.
Whether you’re new to chess or already a tournament regular, there’s probably a webinar in our archive just for you.
