Exeter Chess Club Coaching Page

* A page for people interested in teaching and learning about chess
[whether they use Newtscape or not]

[Welcome]
Welcome to the Exeter Chess Club Coaching Page. Since 28th Nov 1995. There is a US mirror for selected items. [This is one of Anand's favourite links ;-)]

Below you will a collection of materials collected for use in Exeter Chess Club's coaching sessions, and other documents and links of interest. If it all seems a bit much to cope with at once I have composed a course of study for players at different levels {A} {B} {C} {D} (guide to levels/ratings). I offer this all free in the hope that people will send me their own favourite instructive games and examples.
To use this site you need to be able to read chess notation and sometimes to understand chess symbols. [There is a more detailed explanation of notation and more of the symbols available.] The odd three-character codes in the Canon and elsewhere (like [C40]) are the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings (ECO) reference codes, for which there is a listing by code, a listing of ECO codes with English variation names and an amazing comprehensive zip file on ftp of variation names sorted by ECO code.


*Contents:


[at_work]
DANGER: chessnut still at work.

* Latest changes (not including links, quotes or stories)...


{class}
The secret arts of castling {C/D}
Winning Drawn Endgames {C}/{all}
Practical Tactics {C} {D} {all?} 20 Jan
Four choices in the opening {C} 7 Jan 97
Weak Pawns {C} {B} 7 Jan 97
The Modern Italian Game {B} 7 Jan 97
Chess and psychology {all}, 30 July
Do you know how to write your own handouts? Or do you just want to print out mine? 10th July
There are now text-only versions of all the .html files; they have the same name "file.html" with the extension ".txt", i.e. "file.html.txt".
HOME | EXETER CC | COACHING | CANON | BOOKS | LINKS | QUOTES | E-MAIL
Handouts: General | Tactics | Strategy | Openings | Endings | Techie

* Comments and contributions

You can send me comments and games at

[D.Regis@exeter.ac.uk]
but please read the notes below!

* Exeter Chess Club Canonical Chess Games and Positions.

Here is an index to 500 chess games {all}, a personal collection of good examples developed through a discussion group at Exeter Chess Club . It is, as you might expect, rather derivative, but hopefully there are some examples you haven't seen before. The index is about 70K, and has separate sections on tactical patterns and opening traps {D}, guidelines for opening play and example openings {C} {D}, model attacking games {D} and attacking techniques {C} {D}, defensive play {B} {C}, positional themes {B} {C} and planning {B}, the endgame {all}, the psychology {all} of chess, and personal style {all}.

If you want to download the complete canon in PGN format, you can have it complete, without diagrams or vanilla (no variations, comments, flavourings or preservatives). If you can read ChessBase itself, the main file and index are also provided.


HOME | EXETER CC | COACHING | CANON | BOOKS | LINKS | QUOTES | E-MAIL
Handouts: General | Tactics | Strategy | Openings | Endings | Techie

* Examples of handouts

The point of collecting all those games was to put them in handouts to go with presentations to children and adults. There are many more games in the canon than are included in the handouts below, particularly on attacking techniques and analysis and errors.

N.B.
The example games used in the openings handouts are kept in a separate database.

[Do you know how to edit/print out the handouts?]
[If you would like to make your own chess pages, see the third part of the techie bit.]

I have composed a course of study for players at different levels.

Here are some HTML versions of the finished handouts:


HOME | EXETER CC | COACHING | CANON | BOOKS | LINKS | QUOTES | E-MAIL
Handouts: General | Tactics | Strategy | Openings | Endings | Techie

* Credits

Particular thanks to Andy Duplain, who wrote CBASCII (which has a homepage: see also Techie bit), and without whom I would never have got started. Thanks also to anyone who has ever responded to an appeal for games on the rec.games.chess newsgroups, particularly Roy Blackmer (Petrosian-Peters), the kind chessplayer who sent me Tatai-Korchnoi (sorry I lost your name), Christoph Pfrommer for Tarrasch-Teichmann, several folk who sent me the Montreal 1979 games, Jon Perry for pointing out lots of embarrassing typos, Dave Oppendal for a couple of IQP games, Jason Luchan for identifying both the misattribution and the true identity of an imposter Alekhine-Nimzo game...

...and thanks to folk for their comments on the pre-release version, particularly jud, Steve Rix, David Hayes, ...

$ * A list of books I have used and other book recommendations.


[p] [r] [n] [b] [q] [k] (no more chess) [K] [Q] [B] [N] [R] [P]
Unenhanced for Netscape: i.e. no frames, huge graphics, jiggling GIFs, JavaScript, Java applets, FONT adjustments, clickable maps, garish backgrounds, or any other unnecessary bandwidth-wasting devices which make using a proprietary graphical browser more slow and more unpleasant than using a text-only browser. These all seem to me
  1. to celebrate form over content
  2. to be opposed to the original idea of HTML/WWW, and in any event
  3. make browsing a pain: nothing more irritating than zipping into a new site with LYNX to meet:
    "You will need a frames-enabled browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 or Netscape Navigator 3 to use this site"
    If you are a Web author please bear in mind speeding surfers with image loading turned OFF, LYNX users, blind users of screenreaders, 286 DOS machines in schools and in the developing world, etc., etc.. Please use ALT= elements in image tags, and provide information in text as well as graphics.

[I suppose I should plead guilty to one charge of BLINK, and to playing with BORDER when using tables.]
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