Chess for Kids (and dummies like dads)
epilogue
epilogue at allstream.net
Mon Aug 2 10:36:43 PDT 2004
On Mon, 02 Aug 2004 12:24:53 -0500
Damon Butler <damon at hddesign.com> wrote:
> > As a BSD user, I can't help you. As a chess player, I will comment
> > that there's a certain learning curve involved, and playing against
> > random moves isn't going to advance you far along it. I've never known
> > anyone to become even moderately facile at chess without getting their
> > head pounded in on a regular basis. If you or your son's ego isn't up
> > to that, OSB(Other Sports Beckon). ;)
>
> Point well taken. ;-) But...
> It's not that either of us mind losing per se. What I've discovered that
> gnuchess and crafty are orders of magnitude stronger than the old
> program we used to play against.
>
> Say you want to learn to play tennis. You're just beginning. Who should
> you begin challenging in order to improve your game and enjoy yourself
> while doing it? Andy Roddick or the friend who's been taking
> intermediate tennis lessons through the city rec dept? In this analogy,
> the standard chess engines are Andy Roddicks and our old program was the
> intermediate friend.
>
> My son is just not gonna learn that much nor enjoy himself much playing
> against Andy Roddick. I don't want his first serious foray into computer
> chess to be *that* intimidating or demoralizing.
>
> > That said, the MOST frustrating part of learning chess is usually
> > tactical, not strategic (inadvertently throwing away pieces).
>
> That's it exactly.
>
> > There are a
> > number of good web/Java based free chess games on the net - have you
> > tried any of them? Many will show possible moves, blink to indicate
> > pieces at risk, etc.
>
> That sounds great! Do you have any suggestions off hand? I thought my
> searches were pretty exhaustive, but I didn't come up with anything like
> what you're talking about.
if you haven't already tried it, visit sf.net and plug 'chess' into the
search window. it will probably return a bunch of programs, including some
which are java based.
fwiw, i thought that gnuchess had level settings. are you certain that
even level 1 is too difficult for your needs?
> --Damon
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