Chess960 Universität

After writing about chess960 for more than two years I don't know how I could have overlooked a major source of instruction, but so I have. The page Chess Tigers Universität (no translation required, I trust) has lots of links to chess960 instruction mixed in with instruction for Traditionelles Schach (ditto). The lessons are all in German, but with access to Google Language Tools and minimal understanding of the language (which is what I have) the material is there to be perused.

I've written about Chess Tigers before -- use the search box in the right sidebar to find specific posts -- and even if you've never heard about them, you've certainly heard about their annual event Chess Classic Mainz (CCM), where one of the regular participants is World Champion Anand. The lessons date from 2004, and using the explanation at the top of the page, 'Jeder der unten angegebenen Kurse besteht aus 40 Lektionen...' (Google Translate : 'Each of the following courses consists of 40 lessons ...'), we learn that the materials available here are just samples ('Inhalt, Lektion 1, Lektion 2' = 'Content, Lesson 1, Lesson 2').

Some of the lessons are classified by IPS (e.g. 'IPS 1800' for 2004), which is defined in the lessons as 'Individual Player Strength', and which undoubtedly corresponds to the Elo ratings of traditional chess. I poked around the sample lessons, liked what I saw, and will present a snippet in my next post.