Chess School for Beginners

Written by GM Yury Razuvaev, well-known GM and one of Anatoly Karpov’s coaches in the period of 1973 -1978, this friendly interactive course is intended for both children and adult beginners. It is divided into 3 main sections:

Chess rules - Consisting of theoretical material and test exercises.
Development of intellectual abilities - The following themes are presented: Concentration, Attention, Imagination, Logic, Cunning, and Creativity.
Playing - To improve their chess knowledge, students can play instructive positions against the built-in playing programs Dragon and Crafty.

Features of the program include:

700 carefully chosen, and in many cases designed, examples to help the student.
There are numerous text and visual hints to help the student find the solution if they don’t at first.
Navigator, the part of School, presents a window which allows you to select a mode of your work (see Main Modes and other useful information on Navigator in Attachment).
Chess School generates the student’s ELO and statistics in easy-to-read bar graphs, based on their success rate with the exercises, helping them keep track of their progress.
It also keeps track of the time and score of each position for each student.
Ideal for schools and teachers with an unlimited number of individual student profiles allowed. For example, the Italian version is used in all Italian schools, and thousands of Italian children are learning to play chess working with this program.

No additional software is required.

Several languages are supported: English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Essential: IBM-compatible PC, 32 Mb RAM, Hard Disk 50 Mb of free disk space, VGA graphics, Windows 95/98/2000/NT/ME/XP/2003, CD-ROM.

Attachment

Main modes

“Chess game laws ” course	"Advancement of intellectual activity" course	"Playing" course
Chess board Chess pieces Initial position Pieces moves The role of the king. Check and mate Castling Mate in one move Stalemate Perpetual check Game notation The king and a piece vs. The lone king Etiquette rules during a game.	Exercises for attention stability Attention allocation Operation memory Imagination Logic Combinatorics Creative thinking	Mating the lone king Realization of the material advantage Playing starting from a given position

Study

The learning process is going from simplicity to more sophisticated objects. We start from the definitions of chess board and chess pieces, from the explanation of chess game laws and so on.

The upper line of the window presents: a pupil name, the title of the course, a current theme (sub-theme) title, an example number and a number of a current example in a current theme among the whole quantity of examples in a current theme (in brackets).

On the left a position on the chess board illustrates the explanatory text. Color markers emphasize the importanat points: white pieces and empty squares are marked by red, black pieces are marked by green, blue arrows show possible moves and directions of attack

Practice

Practice mode presents exercises for solving on a current theme. One exercise may contain several tasks. To solve the exercises, you should answer questions and find correct moves for problems. The complexity of the exercises is varied within the range 10-120 points.

2-4 various possible answers may be offered. You should select one of them by clicking the left mouse button on it.

One of the modes allows to set the quantity and the number of exercises for testing.

The left part of the window presents a list of themes for a current course. Theme window indicates whether to test by a current theme or by all themes together. To select a theme click on it with the left mouse button in the left window. A current theme will be marked with blue. You can check “New” checkbox in the Problems window then you will get only new problems which you have not tried to solve up to the current moment. If you check “All” then you can meet already known positions in a test. The Score window allows to select the complexicity of the exercises (from 10 to 120). Number of problems window presents a bar which allows to select the number of tasks for testing. The yellow number in the center of the window presents the number of promlems for a test, Max= – means the total number of problems in the course or in a current theme. Press “Solve the test ” to enter Test mode. If you quit the Test without making any moves then the results are not calculated. If you made at least one move then the test is considered to be solved. As soon as you've finished to solve the test, press “The end of the Test ” button to open a window which presents the results of the test.

Statistics

Displays various statistics on pupils work.

Practice

In the center of the window you see the list of themes for a current course. The blue color bar denotes a number of solved exercises while green color one presents the % of obtained points. If you click on a theme title in the left part of the window you'll get detailed information on the already solved exercises.
You can find information on the results of solving the exercise for any theme of a current course. Click a theme and an exercise. All the exercises which are being solved are marked with red ticks. Click the left mouse button on the example to see the solution of the exercise, the number of points received, a period of time taken for solving and getting penalty points.

Tests

This window presents the total information on all the tests. Move the “bar” to load any of previously solved exercises.

Pupils statistics

You can get statistics on pupils information: the total number of received points and the average percent of success in solving the exercises.