Chess for total beginners
What you'll learn
- Make legal moves
- Annotate entire games
- Recognize check and checkmate
- Recognize tactics such as forking, skewering, and pinning
- Checkmate in winning endgames
- Employ good opening, midgame, and endgame strategies
- Advance a pawn to the back rank with king and pawn against king
- Gain the know-how and resources to continue advancing your chess skills
- Hear perspectives on chess from GMs and IMs
- Calculate several moves ahead
- Play and enjoy the game of chess!
Requirements
- A willingness to sit and think!
Description
Hi there! I'm Katie, and I've been playing chess since I was 4. I started competing in tournaments when I was 7, and at one point I was one of the top 100 women in the US. I haven't actively played since 2011, at which point my rating was 1850, but my love of chess still lingers and I think everyone should at least know how to play. This course goes beyond simply teaching how the pieces move. You'll build the foundation for continuing your chess career, if you so choose.
This course breaks down the game step-by-step, from teaching you the rules (how pieces move) to basic strategy (where to move your pieces) to how to improve (with practice positions and resources for learning more). If you watch all the videos and complete all the exercises, you’ll not only be able to play a game (the short-term goal); you’ll be able to continue learning and playing chess on your own. In a few weeks, you’ll probably be able to beat just about anyone off the street!
Besides instructional videos and exercises, this course also has interviews with the following amazing professional women chess players:
• WGM Jennifer Shahade
• WIM Karina Vazirova
...with more coming soon!
A one-time purchase will give you lifetime access to all the new content in the course. Hope you enjoy!
Who this course is for:
- Anyone who wants to learn how to play chess
- Anyone who wants to finally beat their grandpa
- Anyone who travels and wants to find a community wherever they go
Course content
- Preview02:41
- 02:34Interview with WIM Karina Vazirova: Why learn chess?
- Preview01:25
- 10 questionsWrite the name of the square
- 00:35Chess pieces
- 6 questionsWhich piece is it?
- 03:36Notating moves
- 6 questionsNotate the move (white side)
- 6 questionsNotate the move (black side)
- 01:53Notating a game
- 00:03Download notation sheets
Instructor
![Katie Kormanik](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.2 Instructor Rating
- 262 Reviews
- 6,375 Students
- 5 Courses
Hi! I love creating online courses and instructional materials on topics I love. So far, I've written a statistics textbook (Street-Smart Stats: A Friendly Introduction to Statistical Research Methods) and created an introductory chess course, a penmanship course, and an algebra course that focuses on topics that are essential in understanding calculus.
To actually pay the bills, I run an instructional design consulting firm, TURN THE WHEEL, that helps organizations create digital learning experiences for their clients, customers, and workforce. These courses have much larger budgets than the ones I make by myself. For one thing, we do professional video shoots rather than filming on my iPhone, as I've done for my own personal courses.
I love both creating my own courses--my side hobby--and working with big organizations. I love having the creative control to design curricula on topics I'm passionate about, and I love working with people to design courses that meet their needs (and learning a lot from the subject-matter experts with whom I collaborate).
Another side project is creating a mobile learning platform that anyone can use to both create and take courses directly from their phone. I'm hoping this will empower people all over the world who don't have computers to create learning materials that will benefit their local communities and beyond.
I'm really passionate about online learning, and am especially excited to see how VR and AR revolutionize the way we learn.
Thanks for reading!