Publisher Description
Want to learn to play chess well in ten minutes a day, and have fun doing it? Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, the most popular chess commentator in the world, brings his award-winning teaching methods to the iPhone. Maurice s unique approach isolates, teaches, and trains for the individual skills that the game requires. Perfect your use of each piece, one at a time, as you learn to visualize the chessboard and forget trying to learn a bunch of rules at once, only to make frustrating simple mistakes. Maurice narrates 20 lessons designed to give the beginner a strong grounding in the basic rules and strategy about such topics as Openings, the Center and Material Value. But the core of his special method is the Skillbuilder section, where your abilities will grow so that good moves will come almost automatically. When you re not taking lessons or working on your skills, you can always test yourself in the puzzle section, with over 160 checkmate puzzles ranging from Easy to Difficult. Or, if you re up for a game, there are three levels of play designed to give the growing learner a chance to practice techniques against a reasonable opponent. Lessons 1. The Board 2. The Rook 3. The Bishop 4. The Queen 5. The Knight 6. The King 7. The Pawn 8. Check 9. Checkmate 10. Stalemate and Other Draws 11. The Center 12. The Opening 13. The Scholar s Mate 14. Material Value 15. Trades 16. After the Opening 17. Basic Checkmate Queen and Rook 18. Basic Checkmate Queen and King 19. The TRIP Method of Defense 20. Passed Pawns Hundreds of practice puzzles follow the lessons to help the learner perfect each principle. Skill Builders are fun activities in and of themselves. Beware of the Hard level. Maurice designed these to be super-challenging, even for him! 1. Pawn Mower 2. Escape 3. Quibs 4. Wolf 5. Attack 6. Mate is Fate 7. Invisible Piece 8. Square Biz 9. Knight Concentration A Help icon (?) gives an explanation at any point during an activity.
Requires iOS 4.3 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.