Chess for Beginners

If you live in the South Florida area, the Miami International Chess Academy is offering group lessons with IM Blas Lugo at reasonable rates . Check out their website for more info.

Chessok, has made available online an opening tree search. You can now receive detailed statistics on all opening moves carefully classified and stored in their opening database.

In a previous post I had promised to compile and post the most instructive games in ChessBase format. I haven’t been able to get around to compiling all of the games, so I am posting a PDF file containing a list of these Educational Chess Games based broken down by themes.

Chess Tempo is a new online tactics site, it is still in testing, but it is definetly worth a visit. It is similar to the Chess Tactics Server, but you do not have the time penalties CTS has, so you can think about the position a bit longer.

Download your free copy of Chessbase Light 2007!

Anyone have any advice on how to go about training for a tournament? This would be my first tournament and it would be great to get tips on how to go about preparing for it. The tournament is 1 month away and this would be my first experience in tournament play.

A couple of questions I have are:

• As an unrated player should I enter the Open or U1400 class? (I estimate my playing strength to be approx. 1500 ELO)?
• What should I focus on during my preparation?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Chess Improvement for Beginners

Time and cost can sometimes make it impossible for an enthusiastic student of chess to hire a chess coach. I have, through trial and error, began devising a training curriculum to be used by me and others. This plan is in no way meant to take the place of a competent chess coach, but hopefully it will aid those who are unable to hire one.

In the next series of posts I will describe how the curriculum has come to be as well as my experience in using the plan. In creating this chess improvement plan, I have researched book and online content focusing on chess improvement and education. I have also made it as generic as possible so that it may be used not just by me but by others including children. I have much to learn both about chess and learning about chess, but the exercise of writing about it will not only assist me in mastering both of these elements, but will allow me to share my experiences with others so that they might benefit as well.

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Hone your tactical skills using the online Chess Tactics Server. It is a race against the clock when solving over 28,803 chess problems with various degrees of difficulty. Not only do you improve your tactical skills, but you also get rated for solving the puzzles.