Hi JBDad,
We're going through a chess phase lately too. DS started playing checkers last summer and became pretty good at a surprisingly fast pace. Still, I thought that chess would be a stretch. He was interested, though, and about a month or two ago I got the Fritz and Chesster software (highly recommended!). He has made good progress, knows how all the pieces move, can set up the board, and can play legal games. (I even watched him capture en passant once.) Still, I confess that some of my gravest doubts about him come when we're playing chess. I'm constantly thinking, "No, not that move!", and wondering whether he's really as smart as I thought he was.
One big issue is that in general the whole strategy thing seems to elude him. I had the hardest time, for example, getting him to focus on winning control of the central squares during the opening. He just seemed to want to move pieces at random, even when I tried to get him to think about the central squares. Also, once the game is going his strategy seems to consist in taking whatever pieces he can whenever it doesn't involve losing something worth more. (I confess, though, my own strategy in the middle game isn't much more sophisticated.) The wonder of the software, though, is that at certain levels this is a winning strategy. We'll see if the whole chess thing sticks. But despite these odd frustrations, so far he seems pretty smitten.
BB
