Re: Learning and playing chess
You can learn a little of chess with the rules, but it's one of these games that gets more and more complex the more you play and understand and a lot of the more complex theory won't make sense until you understand the basics.
I personally enjoy chess and there was a point I played seriously, though my brother was british blind champion at one stage I just went along for kicks.
There are several programs that include chess guides and tutorials. Kchess advanced or elite from arc angles software are still around and possible to buy. The good thing about those is you get how to play chess from the computer as wel as lots of information.
Then as a free option there is Bg chess from spoonbill, which has extensive documentation and is of course free. Both of these also come with full graphics so you can play with sighted people, and Kchess even has the ability to save games in a standard format so you can send to people.
Shredder is the chess game on Ios, I've not tried it personally but I know it can play to a high standard, though understanding the board with vo could be interesting and I don't know if it teaches you how to play.
the big thing with chess as a blind person is understanding the board an the positions of all the pieces. I personally find I can't play with a computerized board I must review square by square sinse I have trouble retaining all the information, I prefer a tactile chess set physically in front of me. I've tried making the computers moves on a tactile board but it doesn't seem to work out, or I bodge it up somewhere along the line, so personally i prefer playing a human with a physical board.
That being said, your milage may vary, I do know people who play quite successfully just using a program.
I'd recommend personally finding a human to play against, maybe at a chess club or whatever or just trying a friend to learn the game, if not possible, then t ry getting BG chess challenge from spoonbill or trying one of the free Kchess games, both of which as I said will give you how to play information (though rather more comprehensive info on the Kchess program), and getting stuck in.
Hth.
As a rough guide,I'll try and give a summary of the basic rules.
Each player takes a turn to move (white goes first), and moves one piece each turn. Each player has 16 pieces. These include 8 pawns, a king, a queen, two knights, two bishops and two rooks (also called castles). At the beginning of the game, the pawns are on the second rank, the peaces on the first rank. The two castles are on the outer most squares, then the knights, bishops, and in the center two squares the king and queen, with the king on the left of center (E1 for white's king), and the queen on the right of center (D8 for black's queen).
When you move your peace onto the same square an opponent's piece is on, that piece is taken and i
s removed from the board.
The one exception is the King. You cannot take the King, but when you threaten a square your opponent's king is on, the king is said to be "in check" if the king cannot get out of check next move, ie, cannot move anywhere that isn't threatened by your peaces, that is checkmate and you win.
The peaces each move differently. The pawns are your most basic foot soldiers. they can each move forward only one square, accept on their first move when they move two squares. The kicker with pawns however is that they take diagonally, so if you have a pawn on E4, it is threatening f5 and d5, but not e5.
The castles can move any number of squares horizontally or vertically, the bishops can move any number of squares diagonally, while the queen combines the powers of a castle and a bishop and can move any number of squares in any direction. The king can move just one square in each direction.
the Knight has the unique propert
y of moving in angles, two squares forward and one sideways, or two sideways and one forward or back. For example, a knight on B1 can move to A3 or C3, the knight is also the only peace on the board that can jump over other peaces, including your own, so where as your castle on A1 couldn't move at all if there was a pawn on A2 in front of it, your knight on B1 can still move to the third rank no matter what is in the way.
There are a couple of other special rules about movement but those are the basics.
The reason I've been talking in terms of numbers and letters is that chess board notation works with ranks one to 8, and files a to h like a grid. So A1 is the bottom left hand corner where white's left rook is, A8 holds black's left rook etc. Usually moves are described with this notation in mind.
You'll also notice that sinse black plays facing white, when your playing as black, rank A will be on your right not your left and row 8 will be closest to you (this sounds more confusing than it is when your playing with an actual board).
Hope all this didn't put you off, but at least this should give an idea.
As I said, I've not played chess seriously for about 12 years, I've tried against computers but it just doesn't tend to work sinse I like a physical board, and though I've had a friendly game against friends once or twice it's certainly not as I was.
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