I am the Dad of an inmate and forwarding inquiries from my son. He just recently participated in an “prison tournament” structured by pod winners playing other pods until eventually two men played against each other. The opponent to my son Charles was transferred during the tournament so it was called a draw. He’s collected various information and wishes to start a Chess Club for his facility. They have many eager students of the game playing at or around the Master level. What they need is a structured curriculum to commence training. Time and books they have. What they don’t have is a specific hourly, daily, weekly training program as well as other training techiques. Can anyone help? He also inquires as to "what is a 5 minute training game and how does it work? Thanks to any and all posts.
Prison chess curriculum? Hmm…this would be a reasonable start. The goal would be to actively SOLVE the material rather than passively read it. Three hours/day is plenty.
Studying & understanding the following books in roughly this sequence couldn’t be bad. Like most curricula, this one is slightly idiosyncratic. But I think that any prisoner who mastered the advanced beginner material would become a very strong amateur player.
The books at the end of the list take much longer to read than the intermediate books.
BEGINNER
Pelts & Alburt, Comprehensive Chess Course, Vol. 1
ADVANCED BEGINNER
Pelts & Alburt, Comprehensive Chess Course, Vol. 2
Palatnik & Alburt, Chess Tactics for the Tournament Player
Palatnik & Alburt, The King in Jeopardy
Chandler‚ How to Beat Your Dad at Chess
Chandler‚ Chess Tactics for Kids (both Chandler books are excellent for adults, too)
Reinfeld, One Thousand and One Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations
Reinfeld, 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate
Nunn‚ Learn Chess Tactics (this book goes from super-easy to rather hard, quickly)
Lasker, Common Sense in Chess
Sam Collins, Understanding the Chess Openings
Averbakh‚ Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge
Euwe & Meiden, Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur
any book in Seirawan’s Winning Chess… series
INTERMEDIATE
Burgess, Mammoth Book of the World’s Greatest Chess Games
Kaufman, The Chess Advantage in Black and White
INTERMEDIATE TO ADVANCED
Golombek, Capablanca’s Best Games of Chess
Kmoch, Rubinstein’s Chess Masterpieces
Alekhine, My Best Games of Chess, 1908-1937
Keres, Dreispringerspiel bis Köningsgambit (it’s dated & it’s in German, but it’s still the best intro to tactical chess openings after 1.e4 e5)
Bronstein, Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953
Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal
Polugaevsky, The Sicilian Labyrinth (2 vols.)
Levenfish & Smyslov, Rook Endings
any book by Mednis
Pachman, Complete Chess Strategy
Nimzowitsch, My System
Nimzowitsch, Chess Praxis
Müller & Lamprecht, Fundamental Chess Endings
Vukovic, The Art of Attack in Chess
Shereshevsky, Endgame Strategy
Shirov, Fire on Board
OPENINGS REFERENCE
Nunn, Nunn’s Chess Openings
FOR EVERYONE
New in Chess magazine (back issues can be bought on eBay)
Chess Life
There can be extremely strong players with gaps in their knowledge: my advice would be to read the advanced beginner books before the more advanced books.
Would be nice to have a couple more beginners’ books.
The self-described “masters” are likely to be two or three classes weaker–which is still extremely strong. Even masters benefit from reading beginners’ books–it’s good to practice pattern recognition, as being able to recognize typical patterns QUICKLY improves one’s play rapidly.
Reasonable allocation of time:
1/3 reading the above curriculum
1/3 playing games with other prisoners AND RECORDING THE GAME
1/3 studying games one has played–alone and/or with other players–and looking for improvements to one’s own play. We can all learn from our past mistakes and endeavor not to repeat them… 