My two sons love chess and to let them have a chance in some kids tournaments I encourage them to do some chess problems from time to time. I started with the Manual of Chess Combinations 1a by Sergey Ivashchenko which is really a nice collection for kids, but unfortunately the problems get harder fast. So volume 1a is doable for a kid of about 900 - 1000 ELO (DWZ in Germany) but volume 1b is already very tough (three and four move combinations).
So I'm looking for alternatives. There are a lot of problem sets in the internet but most of them are not in the range I'm looking for. Polgars 5334 problems start with 300+ Mates in 1. Those were nice and solved in No Time, but after that already tricky Mate in 2 problems start.
Polgar's Problem #325, Mate in 2 |
So those problems surely teach nice skills but are not actually what I'm looking for.
One often recommended problem set especially for kids is one that a local coach (Paul Gaffron) assembled over the years. It is a collection called Tactics for School Chess. I started to look a volume 4 out of 12 and here it seems the difficulty is about right for my kids (especially for training of fast pattern recognition).
Now I'm faced with a different challenge. I have those books as hard cover only. To load them into my training GUI I need them in PGN format.
I have an idea how to do it at least semi-automated. Unfortunately the first step, namely turning a printed diagram into a FEN that the computer understands, is a manual step. But if I have a collection of FEN I hope I can enable my computer to do the rest of the work.
I'll give it a try.