Ryan Shaw Capstone

Student Name:

Ryan Shaw


In school mentor’s name:

Mr. Baird


Topic Summary:

The goal of this project was to research and create a way to teach people how to play chess and to understand chess strategy.



Project Abstract:

The inspiration of my capstone is my love for chess and my love of playing games like chess. Games like this help me with developing my problem solving skills, so that I can use these skills in real life applications. When I realized this, I wanted to help other people who might not have the same experience. I decided I was going to research and take a study of how quickly people improve at playing chess with an ELO scoring system, so that I could actually graph and use the data, then use that information to create a comprehensive website so that anyone could learn how to play chess and learn how to use simple problem solving strategies.

Capstone:
http://ryanshawcapstone.weebly.com

Annotated Bibliography:

1. "World Chess Federation - FIDE." World Chess Federation - FIDE. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.


This is a resource that will help me significantly in the coming weeks. It is a very popular, and much visited website that many chess players visit to research chess and to play online chess. This will help me get an idea of how to teach people chess and how to accurately gauge a person’s chess abillity.


2."E.I.01A. Laws of Chess." World Chess Federation. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.

This source will help me explain chess to those who have a larger than average understanding of chess and the mechanics. It will fall under advanced categories on the website, and I learned more about chess and why some of the mechanics are there inside of the game, by looking at these rules and their explanations.


3. "Chess.com." Chesscom RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.

This is a list of chess openings, some famous, some advanced, used by the top chess players in the world. These players used the techniques that are described in detail in this web page to describe the amount of thought and the process of the moves and openings by taking the reader through the moves one by one. A very useful tool to show to beginners and show them how thoughtful and interesting chess can be.


4. "Chess.com." How to Play Chess: Rules & Basics -. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.

This is a source that could help me a large amount with teaching people how to play chess. While I have an understanding about how the game is played, I don’t know how to teach a beginner as well as someone like my mentor, Mr. Baird, a chess teacher. I need more resources like this one that will help me understand how to teach people how to play chess.


5. "Chess.com." Advanced: Strategy. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.

These are examples of strategies used in chess games, not just openings, but also thoughtful uses of detailed chess strategies. Each of these strategies could be something simple that could help a beginner, or it could help a person that has an advanced understanding of chess, or someone tha


6. "5 Year Old Teaches 2 Year Old to Play Chess." YouTube. YouTube, 08 Dec. 2008. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.

This source is a youtube video that shows a 5 year old describing how to play chess and how to use the pieces to a 2 year old. Then he describes how to play the game. While I thought this wouldn’t be useful at first, I quickly realized that this is a useful video to show how easily one can learn chess, and learn how to play it. The resource will help me find the perfect way to teach a new player how to play the game.


7. "Lecture Notes." Lecture Notes in Game Theory. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.

Game theory is still an important part of my project and this is a list of lectures, a few of which I have watched, describing the approaches to game theory, and what game theory means. I can easily find use in this source by showing a few lectures as introductions to intermediate players and as a way to show players how important it is to understand the game and how game theory works with chess and what that means.


8. "Get Your Elo Rating Here!" The Automated Chess Rating Utility. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.

"Cognitive Ability Test." RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.

These are two sources that have the possibility to estimate or score a person’s chess playing ability. There are a few different ways to do this, but the first one of these sources estimates a person’s ability by giving them a few example chess problems, where the player describes the correct way to proceed to check mate. While this is happening, the computer keeps track of how the person is doing, and at the end, gives them an estimated ELO based on their answers. The second source is one that tests cognitive ability. While the first source was an estimation, this is an actual test, and I can use both to see if there is a correlation between chess and brain function, or at least the scores of the two.


9."HTML." W3Schools Online Web Tutorials. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.

Since I will be coding my website, I will need to frequently use resources to finish programming the website, and to accurately code, I need a reference guide. This is a guide I’ve used in the past to accurately code and code with a lot of efficiency. I’ll be using this citation to guide myself through coding the website, which will be a helpful resource in showing new players how to play.


10. "Improve Your Chess." How to Improve at Chess. Top 10 Reasons for Stagnation. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.

This is an online chess school that has the ability to teach people about chess in a different manner than I’ve seen before. Using this site, I can teach the new players how to play in a way that I hadn’t before realized and I can now accurately use to teach new players. While teaching chess before this, I would’ve used the same techniques as the other sites, I can now incorporate these new techniques in teaching chess to new players and advanced players alike.


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