Terms of Service

Effective Date: [FILL IN BEFORE PUBLISHING]
Last Updated: [FILL IN BEFORE PUBLISHING]

Welcome to Coachess. These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your access to and use of the Coachess platform, including the website at coachess.org, any related subdomains, applications, and services (collectively, the “Service”). The Service is operated by Coachess SRL, a Romanian limited liability company (societate cu răspundere limitată) with its registered office at [FILL IN REGISTERED ADDRESS], registered with the Romanian Trade Registry under number [FILL IN J40/... NUMBER] and tax identification code (CUI) [FILL IN CUI] (“Coachess,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).

By creating an account, clicking “Sign in,” or otherwise using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

For any questions about these Terms, contact us at contact@coachess.org.

Definitions

“Account” means your registered user account on the Service.
“Content” means all chess lessons, opening repertoires, exercises, annotations, explanations, board diagrams, audio, video, images, the Boris coach character, text, software, and any other materials made available through the Service.
“Free Tier” means the portion of the Service accessible without a paid subscription, as described in Section 3.
“PRO” or “Subscription” means a paid subscription granting access to the full Service as described in Section 3.
“User” or “you” means any person who accesses or uses the Service.
“User Data” means information you provide or that is generated through your use of the Service, including account information, chess games imported at your request, lesson progress, and rating test results. User Data is handled as described in our Privacy Policy.

Eligibility and Accounts

2.1 Age Requirement

You must be at least 16 years old to use the Service. If you are under 16, you may not create an Account or otherwise use the Service. By creating an Account you represent that you meet this age requirement.

2.2 Account Creation

The Service uses Google Sign-In for authentication. By signing in, you authorize us to receive your email address, name, and profile picture from Google as described in our Privacy Policy. You agree to provide accurate information and to keep it current.

2.3 One Account Per Person

Each Account is for a single individual. You may not share your Account, sell or transfer it, or allow multiple people to use it. We may suspend or terminate Accounts that violate this provision.

2.4 Account Security

You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your Account. If you believe your Account has been accessed without authorization, notify us at contact@coachess.org without delay.

2.5 Account Termination by You

You may delete your Account at any time by emailing contact@coachess.org. Upon deletion we will remove your personal data as described in our Privacy Policy, subject to limited retention for legal, accounting, and fraud-prevention purposes.

2.6 Account Termination by Us

We may suspend or terminate your Account if you materially violate these Terms, if we are required to do so by law, or if continued provision of the Service to you would expose us to legal or security risk. Where practical, we will give you advance notice and an opportunity to cure the violation. If your Account is terminated for cause, prepaid subscription fees for the remainder of the current billing period are non-refundable.

Free Tier, PRO Subscription, and Payment

3.1 Free Tier

Coachess offers a Free Tier that lets you evaluate the Service at no cost. The Free Tier currently includes access to the first two lessons of each opening system, a limited number of game diagnoses, a small daily training quota, and other introductory features. The exact Free Tier scope is set out on the Upgrade page and may change from time to time.

3.2 PRO Subscription

PRO is a paid subscription that unlocks the full Content library, unlimited game diagnosis, unlimited daily training, replay training, Boris's adaptive weekly training plan, and any other features listed as PRO on the Upgrade page.

When PRO becomes available for purchase, pricing will be displayed clearly on the Upgrade page before checkout. Pricing, billing intervals, included features, and taxes will be shown in the currency applicable to your billing address.

3.3 Billing

Payment is processed by Stripe, Inc. (or another PCI-DSS-compliant payment processor we designate). Coachess does not receive or store your full payment card number.

Monthly subscriptions are billed every month on the anniversary of your first charge.
Annual subscriptions are billed every twelve months on the anniversary of your first charge.

Your Subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period at the then-current price unless you cancel before the renewal date.

3.4 Price Changes

We may change Subscription prices. If we increase the price of your active Subscription, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email. The new price will apply to the next billing cycle after the notice period. If you do not agree to the new price you may cancel before it takes effect.

3.5 EU Right of Withdrawal (14 Days)

If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, you have a statutory right under EU Directive 2011/83/EU to withdraw from your first purchase of a Subscription within 14 days of the purchase date, without giving a reason. To exercise this right, send an unambiguous statement of withdrawal to contact@coachess.org before the 14-day period expires. We will refund the full purchase price using the same payment method within 14 days of receiving your withdrawal notice.

Important: By starting to use the PRO features of the Service during the 14-day withdrawal period, you expressly consent to immediate performance of the Service and acknowledge that if you later withdraw, we may charge a proportional amount for the PRO access you actually used. If you want to preserve a full refund, do not use PRO features during the withdrawal period.

3.6 No Refunds After Withdrawal Period

After the 14-day EU withdrawal period (or immediately for users outside the EU), Subscription fees are non-refundable except where required by applicable law. You may cancel future renewals at any time (Section 3.7), but we do not provide pro-rated refunds for unused portions of a billing period.

3.7 Cancellation

You may cancel your Subscription at any time from your Account settings or by emailing contact@coachess.org. After cancellation:

You retain PRO access until the end of your current billing period.
Your Subscription will not renew, and you will not be charged again.
No partial refunds will be provided for the unused portion of the period.

3.8 Taxes

Prices are exclusive of applicable VAT and other taxes unless stated otherwise. Where required by law, we will collect VAT based on your billing country at the applicable rate and remit it to the relevant tax authority.

The Service and Content

4.1 Nature of the Service

Coachess is a live online service. Content on the Service may be added, modified, reorganized, or removed over time. Your Subscription provides access to the Service as it exists from time to time; it does not grant you a right to any specific lesson, opening repertoire, or feature in perpetuity.

4.2 Educational Purpose Only

The Content is provided for educational and entertainment purposes. Chess evaluations, engine analysis, ratings, and coaching suggestions are generated by automated systems (including the Stockfish chess engine and the Boris character) and reflect algorithmic output, not the personal advice of a titled chess coach. Your reliance on any Content is at your own risk.

4.3 Availability

We work to keep the Service available but we do not guarantee uninterrupted, error-free, or secure operation. The Service may be temporarily unavailable due to maintenance, updates, or circumstances outside our reasonable control.

4.4 Beta and Experimental Features

We may offer features labeled “beta,” “experimental,” or similar. Such features are provided as-is, may behave unexpectedly, and may be withdrawn at any time without notice.

Intellectual Property and License to You

5.1 Ownership

The Service and all Content, including the visual design, software, the Boris coach character, lesson text, arrows and highlights, audio and animations, and the selection and arrangement of opening repertoires, are owned by Coachess SRL or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark, database, and other intellectual property laws. “Coachess” and the Coachess logo are trademarks of Coachess SRL.

Individual chess moves and opening theory are not copyrightable in themselves, but the curated selection, annotations, explanations, exercises, and presentation on the Service are protected as original creative works and as a database.

5.2 License to You

Subject to these Terms and your payment of any applicable fees, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to access and use the Service and Content for your personal, non-commercial study and practice of chess.

5.3 Restrictions

This license does not permit you to, and you agree that you will not:

Copy, reproduce, republish, post, transmit, distribute, or publicly display any Content, except as strictly necessary for the personal use the Service is designed for;
Use the Service or any Content for commercial purposes, including reselling, licensing, or incorporating it into another product or service;
Use automated tools, scrapers, bots, crawlers, headless browsers, or similar technology to access the Service, extract data, or collect Content;
Bulk-download, mirror, cache beyond what your browser normally caches, or create a derivative database of the lessons, opening trees, annotations, or other Content;
Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or attempt to derive the source code, data structures, or training data of any part of the Service, including the Boris character and any AI models we use;
Use the Service or any Content to train, fine-tune, or otherwise develop any machine-learning model, chess engine, or chess product;
Circumvent, disable, or interfere with any access control, tier gate, rate limit, or security feature of the Service;
Impersonate any person or entity, or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity;
Use the Service in any way that is unlawful, fraudulent, or harmful, or that could damage, disable, or impair the Service for other users.

We reserve all rights not expressly granted. Any use of the Service outside the scope of this license is a material breach of these Terms and may be a violation of intellectual property and other laws.

5.4 Feedback

If you send us suggestions, ideas, or feedback about the Service, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that feedback for any purpose, including improving the Service, without obligation to you.

User Conduct

When using the Service, you agree not to:

Use the Service for any unlawful purpose or in violation of any applicable law;
Harass, abuse, threaten, or intimidate any person, including through any chat or messaging feature;
Upload or transmit any content that is defamatory, obscene, hateful, discriminatory, or otherwise objectionable;
Interfere with or disrupt the integrity or performance of the Service or the servers that host it;
Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service, other users' accounts, or the underlying systems;
Submit false, misleading, or fraudulent information, including during the game import flow;
Use the Service to send spam, unsolicited commercial communications, or malware.

Imported Chess Games

Coachess offers a feature that lets you import your own chess games from third-party platforms such as Lichess and Chess.com, for the purpose of analyzing your play and generating a personalized diagnostic report. By using this feature:

You represent and warrant that you have the right to import the games you request — typically because they are your own public games played under your own account;
You authorize Coachess to retrieve the games from the relevant platform, store the resulting PGN data on our servers, and process it with chess engine and pattern-detection software to generate your report;
You acknowledge that imported games may contain metadata such as opponent handles, ratings, timestamps, and comments, and that this metadata will be stored alongside the game data;
You may request deletion of imported games at any time by emailing contact@coachess.org.

We use imported games solely to provide the Service to you. We do not sell imported games to third parties and we do not use them to train machine-learning models.

Privacy and Data Protection

Your privacy is important to us. Our Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect, why we collect it, how we use it, who we share it with, and your rights under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other applicable laws. The Privacy Policy is part of these Terms, and by using the Service you acknowledge it.

Third-Party Services and Links

The Service relies on or links to third-party services, including Google (for sign-in), Stripe (for future payment processing), Lichess and Chess.com (for game imports), Anthropic (for Boris's language model when that feature ships), and self-hosted analytics. Your use of those services is governed by their respective terms and privacy policies. Coachess is not responsible for third-party services except to the extent required by law.

10.

Disclaimers

The Service and all Content are provided “as is” and “as available” without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, that the Content will be accurate or complete, or that using the Service will improve your chess rating. Chess improvement depends on many factors outside our control.

This section does not limit any mandatory statutory rights you may have as a consumer under applicable law, including under EU consumer protection law.

11.

Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Coachess SRL and its owners, officers, employees, agents, and contractors shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages — including loss of profits, loss of data, loss of goodwill, or business interruption — arising out of or related to your use of, or inability to use, the Service, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Our total aggregate liability for any claim arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service shall not exceed the greater of (a) the total amount you paid to Coachess in the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) fifty euros (EUR 50).

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for (i) death or personal injury caused by our negligence, (ii) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or (iii) any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law. If you are a consumer in the European Union, mandatory statutory rights under EU and Romanian consumer law continue to apply notwithstanding this section.

12.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Coachess SRL and its owners, officers, employees, and agents from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and reasonable expenses (including legal fees) arising out of or related to (a) your breach of these Terms, (b) your violation of any law or the rights of any third party, or (c) your misuse of the Service.

13.

Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email and by posting a notice on the Service at least 30 days before the changes take effect, unless the changes are required by law or relate to a new feature, in which case a shorter notice period may apply. Your continued use of the Service after the changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree, you may cancel your Subscription and delete your Account before the changes take effect.

Entity changes. If Coachess SRL merges with, is acquired by, or transfers the Service to another legal entity, these Terms and the Privacy Policy will continue to apply to your use of the Service, and we will notify you of the change at least 30 days in advance where practicable.

14.

Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Romania, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, this choice of law does not deprive you of the mandatory protections of the consumer protection laws of your country of residence.

Any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms or the Service that cannot be resolved amicably within 30 days of written notice shall be submitted to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent courts of Romania, except that consumers resident in the European Union may also bring proceedings in the courts of their country of residence.

The European Commission provides a platform for online dispute resolution available at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr. We are not obligated and do not currently participate in alternative dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.

15.

General Provisions

15.1 Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Cookie Notice, constitute the entire agreement between you and Coachess regarding the Service and supersede any prior agreements.

15.2 Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, that provision shall be enforced to the maximum extent permitted, and the remaining provisions shall continue in full force and effect.

15.3 No Waiver

Our failure to enforce any provision of these Terms is not a waiver of that provision or of any other provision.

15.4 Assignment

You may not assign or transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets.

15.5 Contact

For any questions about these Terms, contact us at:

Coachess SRL
[FILL IN REGISTERED ADDRESS]
Romania
Email: contact@coachess.org

“Rules are like pawn structure. Boring, yes. Necessary, absolutely. Break them, and very quickly you have no position left to defend.”

— Boris Shakhmatinskiy, Grandmaster