Jeffrey Ashton

A lot of the readers have an important tournament coming up next weekend. The Texas State Championship held in downtown Houston. During this week I will concentrate on posting extra work for those participating in the event. Mark Dvoretsky who is arguably the world's most famous chess trainer recommends tactical practice on the days prior to a chess tournament. He even suggests completing some moderately easy excercises the day of the tournament to warm up. This is comparable to a musician practicing scales on the day of a recital. If you complete these puzzles, please email the answers to jeffreyashton@gmail.com. I will list the names of everyone who completes this successfully (unless you ask me not to list it). Click here for the puzzles and good luck!

Good luck to everyone playing in the Susan Polgar All Girls tournament in Corpus Christi this weekend. I know at least 8 who are going and I sincerely hope they all do very well.

I have never seen this game until this week. I find it to be very instructional and entertaining. This game does a very good job of illustrating the attack on a castled King, when both sides castle in opposite directions. In this game Plaskett does a great job of punishing Iskov for playing a strange opening. Iskov-Plaskett: The "Can-Opener" Activity #1.5 By the way, I recently discovered that the java chess program and this overall site works better with Internet Explorer than Mozilla Firefox.

I teach many of my students to play the Dragon or "Accelerated Dragon". This is a very good study aid for those who play the opening. It mainly focuses on learning the ideas and the general setup. Activity # 1.4 Accelerated Dragon Interactive Lesson   Broken Link :( 

I will put up more worksheets like this as homework for students. Please give me any feedback as I am still in the experimentation process. Activity # 1.3 Click here for the "Loose Pieces Drop Off" worksheet. Rating Level: 0-1400 The answers are listed under the "comments". I will do this with all of my puzzles and online worksheets.

Activity # 1.2 Black to play, mate in 2. For the answer, look under "Comments" Difficulty: 0-1400 Please post your answer under "comments" or email jeff@jeffreyashton.com if you think you know the answer

Hi everyone. This is my first post. I plan on putting up various homework items and material for extra training. Feedback is greatly appreciated. I just made a sample "newsletter". I hope you enjoy! Activity # 1.1 Ruy Lopez Exchange (Rating: 0-1000)