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lem you’d like to solve.
Problems 1-31 are mate-in-two
problems, which means White
can force mate in two moves.
There may or may not be other
ways to win, but you’re looking
for the two moves that will result
in checkmate. Most of the time,
the first of these moves is the
hardest to find. Problem 32 is a
mate-in-three.
If you can’t find the solution,
make King Arthur show you the
correct moves to a problem by
setting his level to 73, and then
pressing the MOVE key.
8.3 Opening book train-
er: learning book open-
ings the easy way, with
King Arthur’s help
One of the most stunning
innovations of King Arthur is his
special ability to teach you
“book openings.” Book open-
ings are the beginning patterns
of moves that have been worked
out by chess masters over the
centuries as the best ways to
begin a game. Previously, play-
ers had to spend tedious hours
searching out lines of play from
hard-to-follow columns in
books.
This practice required a confus-
ing process of looking back and
ENGLISH
Start with the basic king-and-
pawns mini-game. Press > until
your display looks like the dia-
gram below.
Make your first move. Your
object, as in regular chess, is to
checkmate the king. Normally,
this means both sides will try to
force a pawn through to the
other side of the board safely to
promote it to a queen. You’ll
learn lots of principles, tricks,
and traps in this training mode
that will win you many full-
fledged chess games!
The mating-practice
positions
To win at chess, you have to
know how to checkmate! Just
knowing that you have enough
material to mate doesn’t earn
you the point. King Arthur’s
mating-practice exercises will
make sure you know the tech-
niques.
After pressing MODE until
“TrAIn” appears, again press >
until you come to positions
without pawns and with the
Black king in the middle of the
board. These are the mate-train-
ing positions. The three different
mate-training positions give
White, besides his king, either
two bishops, two rooks, or the
queen. These are excellent exer-
cises, used by the greatest chess
teachers in the world. In all three
positions you can force mate in a
number of ways. Work on these
mate-training exercises until you
can mate Black efficiently.
8.2
Mate-problem training
You can further hone your
checkmating skills and have fun
at the same time by solving the
32 separate problems available
on King Arthur. At the start of a
game, press MODE until
“MATE”
is displayed. Then
press > or < to select the prob-
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ENGLISH
wdwdkdwd
0p0p0p0p
wdwdwdwd
dwdwdwdw
wdwdwdwd
dwdwdwdw
P)P)P)P)
dwdwIwdw
All of these training modes can be made
even more effective by combining them with other
teaching features of King Arthur:
Ask for a HINT any time it’s your move.
Get King Arthur’s position score.
(See section 3.8.)
Switch sides when you want to practice from
the Black side.
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