Change is good

Fiddled with the new layout tools at Blogger. I like the way it looks, but I'll have to brush up on my html to figure out where to stick a center tag for the banner.

I finally got my daughter to play through the first game of Chernev's Logical Chess Move by Move. I read and she moved pieces. She was surprising vocal, and saw that 7. d5 was better than the text 7. a4. (Until I get a PGN viewer back in action, just nod and roll with it).

I couldn't immediately refute the move, so we made a note and stuck it in Crafty once we finished with the game. It lead to a much more complicated position, which is likely why Chernev didn't delve into it- the point was to show how to take advantage of mistakes.

She had a good time and said if I continued to work with her reading from the book and playing timed games, she'd give another tournament a go. She, too, hasn't really played much chess in the last two years. Part of her attraction is doing what I do, and before suggesting we play through the game, I deliberately did some things she wanted to do.

We've tentatively decided to look at 3-4 games from the book per week. It took about an hour, but that included me reading from the introduction. Her attention definitely wavered towards the end, but that'll improve as we practice. She liked the chessKids site I showed her earlier in the evening, so she might take off on her own a little!