Who builds Blackbox Chess
I'm David Campbell, and I build and run Blackbox Chess on my own.
I've played on Chess.com since 2020, as an adult trying to get better. Before I built this site I was stuck below my peak of 1250. Every piece of advice I found was some version of "don't blunder" or "train your endgames". None of it was wrong, but none of it told me what to work on next. I wanted something that looked at my own games and showed me which mistake was really costing me, and what to practice. That's what Blackbox Chess does. As of November 2026 I'm rated 1380.
Before Blackbox Chess, I was a martial arts coach. Coaching taught me how people learn, and that's why Blackbox Chess focuses on one specific mistake at a time.
What you can count on
- I read every email. Write to blackboxchess@gmail.com and it comes to me, not a support queue.
- A report that looks wrong gets looked at fast, usually within a day or two.
- Nothing invented. Every mistake in your report comes from Stockfish's evaluation of your own games.