Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by herenow
This thread has been helpful to me. DD really enjoyed chess, until she didn't. I think her first tournament was too competitive for her. There is a chess club at her new school which sounds appropriate, but she hasn't tried it. Since I don't really play chess, I'm of no help for her. Are there online games she could play? What would you suggest to help a child get more confident?

Windows Vista (and Windows 7?) comes with a program Chess Titans that plays on levels from 1 to 10. Even a novice should be able to win against level 1 sometimes. ChessMaster software also has many playing levels.

A chess player needs to master certain skills, such as being able to mate with king and rook vs. king. She should solve lots of checkmates and other puzzles, from a book such as "Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games" by Laszlo Polgar and Bruce Pandolfini.
Another great way to practice chess skills is a puzzle called Mentagy, it was created by a chess instructor: Mentagy

"A Mind-Expanding Strategy Puzzle

This puzzle was created with the idea of helping my chess students, whose ages range from 6 to 15, understand certain concepts about choosing a chess move. When solving this puzzle you frequently encounter situations where you have several choices. In chess we refer to these choices as Candidate Moves. The term Candidate Move was popularized by the Russian author Alexander Kotov in his book: Think Like a Grandmaster. The methods used for determining the right choice in this puzzle are similar to the methods used for determining the best candidate move in a chess position"