Chess Tutorials

On the Exeter Chess Club Coaching Page there is excellent material for people interested in teaching and learning about chess. It is intended for players at different levels: minor (class D), intermediate (class C), major (class B), and county (class A) players. There are very nice Exeter Chess Club Coaching Handouts of which some are composed to a course of study.

This page is derived from Benedict's Index to the material (full index). It offers links to the HTML originals as well as nicely typeset PDFs for better readability and printout. The original HTML material was converted to Latex by a Perl program ( Perl 6 KB ) , hand edited, and converted to PDF by pdflatex.

Many thanks to Dr. David Regis for permission to publish his material here. If you have found typesetting errors or improved or corrected the Latex or even converted some of the material yourself, please send me a mail to mail@Franosch.org .

Class D (ELO: 1200-1399)

General Advice

Chess notation ( PDF 55 KB , TeX 3 KB )
Top 10 tips for Juniors ( PDF 88 KB , TeX 11 KB )
Posters for a Junior Club ( PDF 114 KB , TeX 8 KB )
An ABC of chess ( PDF 126 KB , TeX 14 KB )
Mini Chess Games

Opening

General Opening advice ( PDF 58 KB , TeX 8 KB )
Choosing an opening repertoire ( PDF 106 KB , TeX 19 KB )
The Ideas behind some Chess openings
No more Old Stodge!
Endgame Openings
The Italian Game
Playing the Italian Game with White (The Italian Game for beginners) ( PDF 218 KB , TeX 78 KB )
Playing Black after 1. e4 ( PDF 188 KB , TeX 60 KB )
Playing Black after 1. d4
Playing 1. d2-d4 at junior level ( PDF 128 KB , TeX 39 KB )
Playing Black against 1. d4: the Dutch Stonewall ( PDF 121 KB , TeX 13 KB )
A minor openings survey

Middlegame/Tactics

General Middlegame advice ( PDF 130 KB , TeX 26 KB )
Attacking the castled King
Upon the Pin
Tactical test

Strategy

General rules for the attack ( PDF 34 KB , TeX 3 KB )
Lessons from Paul Morphy ( PDF 83 KB , TeX 4 KB )
Knight outposts ( PDF 103 KB , TeX 8 KB )
Bishops and things ( PDF 137 KB , TeX 20 KB )
The Fianchetto
Rooks on ranks and files ( PDF 104 KB , TeX 9 KB )
Kings and Queens ( PDF 87 KB , TeX 9 KB )

Endgame

General Endgame advice ( PDF 51 KB , TeX 4 KB )
Essential checkmates ( PDF 99 KB , TeX 9 KB )
Queen against Pawn
Mate with Two Bishops
Exchanging into King and Pawn endings ( PDF 98 KB , TeX 10 KB )
Rook and Pawn Endings: the theory ( PDF 161 KB , TeX 45 KB )
Example Rook Endings

Class C (ELO: 1400-1599)

General Advice

Strategy and Tactics
Semi-Open Games with 1.e4

Opening

Gambit Play
The secret arts of castling
Tales of the Unexpected
Playing White against odd Black lines
Playing Black against 1. d4
the Petroff Defence for Beginners
Playing White with 1.e4 against Black's other choices
Four choices in the opening
Steve Martinson on openings
the Colle System
Lessons in Philidor's Defence
The French Defence for Beginners
Ideas behind the French Defence
An Introduction to the King's Indian Attack
Ryan Ripley on the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit
The Doctor on the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit Part I
The Doctor on the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit Part II (5)
Gary Lane's book on the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit Part II
Custer's Last Stand

Middlegame/Tactics

Strategy

The Very Slow King's-side attack
The Queen's-side attack
Simple Chess
Lessons from Capablanca
Lessons from Bobby Fischer
Two weaknesses
Opposite-coloured Bishops
Weak Pawns
Pawn formations
Pawn mobility

Endgame

Bishop Endings
Opposite-coloured Bishops

Class B (ELO: 1600-1799)

General Advice

Opening

Closed Games with 1.d4 d5
Four choices in the opening
The Hypermodern Approach
Playing Black against odd 1.e4 Openings
The Ruy Lopez
Ruy Lopez Exchange Variation
The Ideas behind the King's Gambit
Variations of the King's Gambit
The Modern Italian Game
An Introduction to the Sicilian Defence
Five Sicilians from Club Play (4)
Beating the Anti-Indians
The Modern Defence

Middlegame/Tactics

Strategy

Capablanca: the ultimate attacking player
Meat and potatoes: three phases of a tough game
Towards Simpler Chess
Lessons from Rubinstein
Lessons from Lasker
Lessons from Tal
Planning
Weak Squares
The Isolated Queen's Pawn in the Queen's Gambit Accepted

Endgame

A Capablanca Ending
Double Bishop Endings

Class A ELO: (1800 - 1999)

General Advice

Endgame

All Levels

General Advice

A Chess Glossary
Cool Tips
Steinitz' theory
Chess with Attitude

Middlegame/Tactics

Solving Tactical Problems
Practical Tactics
Practical Tactics 2
Problems and Studies
The Art of Analysis
Tactics quotes
Gene Thompsons Tactic quotes
Notes on the blunders
Counting the blunders
All the blunderful games

Strategy

Contempt for Pawns
Assess Your Chess
How to lose at chess
Lessons from a Simul. (1995)
Differences at a Simul
What makes a difference?
Swindle your way to success
Club games
Five Sicilians from Club Play
Clock control
The Development of Chess Style
How do chessplayers think?
Chess and psychology
Chess Quotes
Stories
Excuses for Losing
David Bronstein
Luck in Chess
Trawled from the 'net

Endgame

Winning drawn endgames

Chess Programs

An excellent free open source chess program for position analysis and opening studies is Scid, which is part of many Linux distributions. A database of about 500000 master games is here ( Tar GZip 48 MB ) .

Last modified 2008-04-17 by webmaster@Franosch.org .

Chess Tutorials

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