The Fabulous 10s: The Rise of the Smart Phone

‘Chess U’- an iPhone Educational Chess Quiz Game

With the popularity of the iPhone in mind, my team has developed an instructional chess app called “Chess U”.  It’s available on iTunes.  I have worked with talented programmers from the USA, Australia, Taiwan, and Vietnam in this international effort.  My old college buddy Steve Follmer has all the needed technical contacts from his berth in Taiwan.

A Quiz in Progress

Video Preview

A video of the product can be found here.

The First Courses

The free Course is called Attack 101.    This is basically ten of my interesting games with numerous quiz checkpoints, for example vs. Grandmasters Petursson, Dzindzihashvili, Balinas, and others.

We also offer paid Courses ($0.99 a course, standard pricing fare for an iPhone) on Rook Endgames 101 and soon we will also offer Play Like Anand 101.   Many of the instructive Rook endgames examples I recreated (in some cases with some extra preliminary moves) from the very instructive book “Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual Volume 2.“

We will continue to introduce courses along the themes of openings, endgames, and famous players.   “Attack 101” will always be free and the paid content will continue merrily along at $0.99 per Course.  Each course contains numerous Lessons and Quiz checkpoints.  When the user “graduates” from a course, he or she can request a Diploma from the system.  The happy graduate receives the Dipoma with the course, date, and user information filled out.

Screenshot

Here’s a screenshot.  We want the app to be as simple as possible to operate.  Tap on right side of board to go forward a move; tap on left side of board to go back.

Chess U Screenshot

Future Plans

Besides the iPhone, we also want to populate the content onto the Web, for example via Facebook.  We also want to port to Android.  In the meantime, we’ll focus on increasing the number of Courses and fine-tuning existing Courses so that a significant user base can get a feel for it.  

Try it, It’s on iTunes

To download it for free, just click here.   GIve us your feedback after you’ve tried it out.

Try the free download and let us know what you think.

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