I have been contacted by the mother of a 10 year old who is nuts about chess. He plays informally all the time. He has never been a US Chess member. The family runs a year round adventure camp in a remote rural setting. The boy plays against other campers, but due to where they live he has few other opportunities for OTB play. He has never read a chess book, nor had any instruction. He is completely self taught. What websites might be good for this youngster to get some good instruction? Thank you.
Funny, when I read this, there was an ad for chesskid.com right beneath it.
Just google “Free Chess Content” and you will get quite a list of chess content that is available via the internet. Depending on the level of the 10 year old you may want high-end advanced material, or beginner pointers. Of course just playing online can be helpful for the kid as well.
Larry S. Cohen
I’d recommend Chess King Training as a starting point. There’s the Chess King 2017. I bought the cheapest version. They have a section on the website for Convekta software. They’re running a super sale on Peshka stuff for a couple more days, which is from Convekta. That being said, I’d actually recommend (aside from the cheapest version of Chess King 2017, which is NOT peshka), is in the regular Convekta section, is the Chess Training Package for Beginners. If you can download it, it comes with the Peshka 2.0 interface. The DVD versions come in Peshka 1.0. (I’m under the assumption most people download the software nowadays and the DVD’s sit around in stock.)
There’s a dizzying array of software lessons for the Peshka interface, but they give a rough idea what level each lesson package is by way of an ELO spread. I suppose 1500 would be average. I suppose anybody under 800 would be a rank beginner and 800 to 1200 would a beginner with some basic principles mastered. My very first rating was 1140 when I played my first rated games in the miltary. -I was stationed at Fort Hood at the time.
They do sell a chess program called Dinosaur Chess on the Chess King Training website. Not familiar with it, but I think it’s target audience is 8 and under. Although one can go pretty far with self study, I’d really recommend trying to find someone with some chess knowledge, not a paid coach, but just some skilled player that could come and play with your son on a regular basis and take in under his or her wing.
In any event, you don’t really need too much for self study stuff for your son. I think the beginners stuff would more than suffice for a spell, but if he gets too good with that stuff, the next group package would be Total Chess Tactics IV.
I used to recommend Chessmaster but that software has been abandoned for years now. 
I hesitate to recommend any paid software to be honest, but I do use the Peshka stuff and like it. And yes, in some of the stuff, like mate-in-ones, they have like 70,000 problems, which is massive overkill. I doubt anybody is insane enough to try and solve all those. That being said, some of the other lessons have merely a few hundred problems, which is still a LOT.
One software they DON’T have, but I requested was for chess compositions, the stuff that’s been generated since the mid 1800’s by clever chess composers. Chess compositions are really for a different thread and well beyond the subject of this thread. :mrgreen:
I’ve used several of the Peshka courses over the years and they are generally very good. I also have Chess Assistant 17 (I think I started with CA 10) which I like in some ways more than the Chessbase 11 that I have. I would also highly recommend their tactical program CT-ART 4.0 which is also available for Android smartphone or tablets.
That said, Convekta products, including CA17 and Aquarium 2016, have tended to be glitchy of late running on Windows10 operating systems. CA 17 and Aquarium 2016 would not run properly on my laptop with Windows 10 upgraded from Windows 8. Convekta told me the problem was with Microsoft and that they were waiting for Microsoft to do something. Last week I bought a new laptop running Windows 10. CA17 And Aquarium are running fine on it, but still won’t run properly on the laptop with 8 to 10 Windows operating system. Russian software companies may have problems down the road if tensions between the US and Russia don’t abate.
I didn’t want to quote so much, but I just bought Chess King 2017 and haven’t had a chance to dig into yet, so I’ll post if it has glitches or bugs. So far the Peshka on Windows 10 seems fine though. Haven’t had any issues so far.
I have an early Version of Chess King and never had a problem with it or CT-ART 4.0. It appears that the present problem lies with Microsoft’s upgrade to Windows 10 from whatever version of Windows 8 I had on my computer when it “upgraded” to 10. My older laptop running Windows 7 never has a problem with any Convekta software.