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Site Reviews
Reviewed by
David
Surratt
June 23, 2002
Jim Mitch has created both an entertaining, instructive
website and a series of engaging training materials. Writing under the
pseudonym Professor Chester Nuhmentz (rhymes with "chess tournaments") Jr.,
these materials target the scholastic crowd (K-7). Mitch started
writing chess instructional material when he coached his kid's school chess
team, and says both the site content and the commercially available training
materials "...can help players to work on fundamental skills at an appropriate
degree of difficulty. They're adaptable to many styles of chess instruction,
and are flexible enough to use just about anytime, anywhere."
Major sections include the Chess Training Materials,
Stories, Free Material, and Online Quizzes, among others. I found the
boards on the quiz page difficult to view, and the font used for the
solutions too small, although the content is very age and skill level
appropriate.
"Tales From the Diary of King Gustafson" uses a fanciful
tale of knights, castles, and such, to tell a chess story. The story
illustrations include "maps of the
battlefield" which actually are snippets of a chessboard. Next
installment due to be posted June 24th.
Free downloads include scoresheets (½-blank, for recording
your game, ½ classic game, e.g. Zukertort-Anderssen Breslau 1865), a 1-page
summary of chess tips, homework (tactical puzzles), and a set of Morphy
games with quizzes about the moves.
Exercise books (these are available
commercially; check his web site for more details & ordering info) are
written for six different skill levels (Pawn through King). The
chess exercises in Level 1 are intended for students who already know how
chessmen move and how they make captures; understand basic chess concepts
such a check, checkmate, stalemate, and castling; have played at least a few
full games of chess; and are familiar with the basic idea of how squares on
a chessboard can be identified by using letters and numbers.
The exercises in Level 1 help students to practice
these skills: recognizing key patterns -- checks, checkmates, stalemates,
pins, forks, skewers; using a king and rook to give checkmate;
identifying strong and weak opening moves; distinguishing between
checkmate, stalemate (or neither!); systematically looking for the three
ways to get out of check; and using basic chess notation skills.
Higher level materials work on skills such as visualization, identifying
features of opening positions, basic tactics, and responding calmly to
checks.
All of the Level 1 training materials have been picked up by
the USCF, and are available at their site. The rest of the training
materials are available through the Professor Chess site. Due to the
quality of material available, this site is an excellent resource for the
scholastic coach, as well as fun for the budding Bobby Fischer.
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