Parents, especially homeschoolers are turning to games that invest in their kid's minds while they are young and impressionable. With all the video and PC games out there creating such short attention spans, there has to be a balance.

Heather Gneco, wife and mom to four wonderful kids, chose the Home Chess Learning Kit to help her kids learn chess and get involved in a game that was not only classic and fun, but would help them in their learning ability.

Heather who writes on homeschool education writes.

Besides the solid, educational chess DVD in the chess kit, is a long lasting, durable, and club chess set.

Now parents that school their kids in public, private school, or home, are able to give their children a meaningful gift that sharpens their mind with chess learning, and the all purpose chess set they can play with their friends, at school, or the family at home.

Stevenson's school chess club in Bellevue Washington is no ordinary chess team: The kids are the reigning national champions of the elementary chess circuit - so good that they were selected last year to play a much-publicized, virtual game of chess with NASA astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, which began while he was in orbit on the international space station. Read the full article published in the Seattle Times.

Scholastic chess in Northwest Washington is a popular family activity. Watch this video, shot during a local scholastic event at the fairgrounds, showing the fun, value, and excitement for kids and parents.

Randy Keach is a respected, local chess facilitator and organizer dedicating a lot of his time to helping kids enjoy chess. In fact he organized the first tournament I EVER played in when I was about 8 years old.

Watch Randy, kids, and parents during this event talk about why they love the game. Randy's very helpful website Northwest Washington Scholastic Chess has very helpful information about scholastic chess

Checkmate! from ENW with Deb Slater on Vimeo.

Pocket Shredder is great for Windows Mobile users that want a great chess playing, and chess puzzle solving experience. On the Windows mobile playform, the chess experience is far superior to most dedicated chess handhelds, because it's simply software you install on your already powerful Windows phone.

Pocket Shredder is now also available for all mobile devices with Windows Mobile 5 or 6 and for Pocket PC 2003SE.

You can play against Pocket Shredder, analyse with it, solve chess puzzles and use the various training features. It offers the usual Shredder standard to go. 

Installation took me barely 5 minutes to download and install. I downloaded the demo from the Shredder chess website . It will let you play for 3 days, and try out 10 of the 1000 chess puzzles.

You can read the full review here

The new Pocket Fritz 3 is amazing. If you own a phone or pda with Windows Mobile you can get the most robust and powerful chess software to play, train, and study with you wherever you go.

Pocket Fritz 3 will be available at ChessHouse.com very soon. You can read about its features and view more screen shots of Pocket Fritz 3 on the ChessBase.com website.

When playing a casual game of chess over several days, finding a place to leave the board displayed and accessible can often be a challenge.

Straight Up Chess has found a way to combine beauty and functionality with exquisitely framed chess boards that hang on the wall. Clear acrylic shelving holds the chess pieces, much like a high end demonstration board.

Customers “build” their boards by choosing from an array of fine woods such as cherry, walnut and black maple, and adding a frame such as antique bronze or black flake. They can use their own pieces or choose from the excellent assortment provided.

Time clocks are not an issue when you play on a Straight Up Chess Board. As you pass by you make your move, mark it with the “last move” marker and continue on your way. Later, your opponent passes by, makes their move and marks it as “last move”. Playing vertically can be a bit of a challenge in the beginning, but it only takes 5 or 6 moves to get used to the new angles.

The Straight Up Chess Boards can be used effectively at home, the office or even at school, providing both eye-catching art and a fun distraction during the day.

For more information visit www.straightupchess.com

Bring a little New York City into your backyard with a concrete chess table from Concrete Classics. A welcome feature of New York City parks for over 60 years, these tables are built by skilled artisans to withstand the elements.

Sitting 32" tall, the tables have a 16"x16" chessboard within a 32"x32" tabletop. The chessboard is made with green and white terrazzo tiles held together by a brass inlaid border.

Originally designed with a fixed base for the New York City parks department, the tables are now also available in a freestanding version, ideal for any outdoor space. You can also purchase concrete stools to make the chess table transition easily from gaming surface to picnic table.

For pricing and further information, visit http://concrete-classics.com

Rybka 3 is today's top chess software with an ELO rating of well over 3000. Known for it's human-like playing characteristics. Friendly ChessBase style chess playing interface makes it fun for all chess players.

It leads easily in all computer rating lists. Now it is available in the dramatically improved version 3.0 and under the ChessBase-Fritz interface. It includes exciting new analysis functions you will not find in other programs. Great visuals. PC only.

The author of Rybka, Czech/American International Master Vasik Rajlich, has implemented an extraordinary understanding of dynamic factors into his program. This often results in long-term pawn or exchange sacrifices and an active positional playing style resembling human chess. Rybka scores well in all types of situations but dominates especially in asymmetric positions which arise for example in Sicilian Defences. The success of the program stems from dedicated team work: IM Iweta Rajlich is the main tester; Jeroen Noomen contributes opening theory and tournament preparation; IM Larry Kaufmann develops positional evaluation algorithms.

Today the main use of chess software is in interactive analysis. Rybka’s superior playing strength helps you to quickly assess a position. But analysis with Rybka 3 is much more than evaluations and best moves. In the user interface designed by ChessBase, Rybka 3 introduces several ground-breaking new analysis features: Rybka 3 with ChessBase Interface

This is what the program will look like. It's very user friendly.

You can customize many appearance options to 3D, etc as well.

Learn more about Rybke 3 ChessBase version here

ChessHouse is giving away $25,765.56 in chess merchandise to raise money for Chess4Life's chess education scholarship fund this Thanksgiving weekend.

Call the boss crazy - he's shaking things up a bit here, and some customers are going to score big alongside making their holiday gift purchases at ChessHouse.

We really wanted to help Chess4Life with this scholarship.

What better time to have some fun, than when the economy is making things tougher, and we need to tighten (er... lighten) things up.

There will be some amazing deals for people. Items are randomly gift wrapped into bundles and sold for a starting donation of $1.

There is a limit of one bundle per customer, and the sale starts Thanksgiving morning. See http://www.chesshouse.com/chess4life to read more and get a gift bundle while they last.

Here's a frank, hands-on review of the Excalibur Grandmaster computer.

ChessHouse feels that it's important to be familiar with the computers and show you what the computers offer, and why or why not they may be a good choice for you.

It helps us be familiar with them, and answer your questions, or give you the answers to the questions you already have in mind before your have to ask!

I'll cover the Excalibur Grandmaster today. I have one sitting right here and have been playing and testing with with the manual open.

After spending time reading the manual, playing the computer in different modes, and levels, I give this computer a 8.5 out of 10. I never recommended this computer with optimism, but now I feel I can - to the right person.

I guess the fact that I've been around hardwood computers made me feel that it was not a very high-end computer. And the pieces are not heavily weighted.

However, actually setting it up and giving it a few games - I come away with a different impression.

I give Excalibur a lot of credit, because it's very easy to learn how to use this computer. (at least it was for me, and I feel that in 15 minutes, I understand most everything)

I don't have to press down on the squares - the computer recognizes each move as it's made. That's great. Since I've played a lot of tournament chess, I also like the vinyl squares, which by the way, are very authentic in appearance and feel!

The pieces are white/black as you can see in the photos, and sized very nicely to feel like club pieces. They are a tad lighter than a weighted set, but heavier than a standard plastic set I think.

Other than the vinyl board, the whole unit is plastic... but there are some smart things about it. They actually put the reset key right in a handy place on the TOP of the computer! can you believe it? It's not hidden away underneath. The great thing is that I haven't had to use it at all.

This is a good time to talk about reliability. ChessHouse has seen a few grandmasters come back with "dead" squares. But that's out of hundreds of them. We feel this is a relatively reliable computer, and if anything goes wrong, ChessHouse stands behind purchases and will do our very best to be available and assist. You will also be able to take advantage of a one year warranty from Excalibur.

Ok, onto the great stuff.

is it good for playing with a friend?

There are two good size LCD displays. One on each side. So if you want to play with your friend (which this computer is IDEAL for), then each player has a chess clock to time their play. You could select any timing level you want... or play blitz (5 minute) chess.  Then you can watch your time count down or hit the bottom to watch your opponents time as well.

If you are playing against each other, you can also have the Excalibur Grandmaster monitor or rate your moves. Or you can even get hints during the play. This would score your move choices and help you understand how well your are playing.

is it for beginners?

Now that I know what this computer offers, I will recommend it to beginners. Not only is it a wonderful, fullsize, real board, to practice and play during your supplemental DVD, book, and software studies, but the actual modes it offers give practice hints and scoring.

One of the BIGGEST helps to beginners that this computer offers is the square name printed right on the square!!  I love it!  I'm not a beginner, but I know how helpful this will be to those that need it. So, when you see a move on the LCD readout. You can know exactly which square (E2-E4) to move the piece!

You might wonder how an LCD can provide this input. Well, you can request a hint, cycle through your options, and let it show you a score for any move possible.

Scoring is a three digit number, where 150 equals a pawn, etc. And from there it will estimate and create it's partial scoring scale, mathematically incorporating all the pieces on the position.

There are 100 levels. When you first buy the computer, it starts out in Level 6. This is the easiest, where it's limited to looking ahead one move. And of course it won't let you make illegal moves, and it knows all the rules of chess including en passant, castling, stalemate, etc.

Now, if..... yes if you can't beat it on the beginner level you could give the computer a handicap and have it play "short" a few pieces :)

You can also verify the position of the pieces on the board in case you forget where a piece should be or if your youngster is helping you move a few pieces at once.

Oh, and you can easily switch sides, or ask the computer to make your move, by pressing the MOVE key any time.

There is a "Threat Warning" which will show you if any of your pieces are being threathened.

Another good feature for beginners is the Book Opening Learning. There are 32 openings by name that you can choose to play, and the Excalibur Grandmaster will guide you through them.

more on levels

I think the level setting is very intuitive and easy.  Hit the level key. Choose from 1-100. Move by 10's by holding down the key. Simple.

The first level is facinating. It will use your average time and move accordingly.

The next few levels (2-6) let you limit the number of moves it can see ahead... three, two, or one move.

Level 7-36 require the computer to move in a fixed time from 1 sec, to 3 minutes per move, depending on which level you choose.

Leverls 37-66 are averaged time, so it will take an average of the specified amount of time from 1 sec to 3 minutes per move over the whole game.

Remember, any time a move is "a given" or required, or the only move possible, the Excalibur Grandmaster will move immediately. This is also true if the Grandmaster still recognizes the position as in it's opening book.

Levels 67-89 will be very popular because they are countdown (aka sudden death). I know... that's weird if you haven't heard that before. This is where you'd choose a game like 5 minute blitz (Level 70), or any length of game from 2 min to 120 min.

Levels 90-93 are Tournament Levels. You can choose from some popular ones like 40 moves in 120 minutes; then 20 moves every 60 minutes thereafter.... or 40 moves in 60 minutes. etc.

Level 94 is a good one. Infinite Search. Say you want the computer to analyse a position for a long time... or overnight.  You can choose level 94 and let the computer think. Then, when you press MOVE it will make it's move - whatever the best move is that it found.

Levels 95-100 help you with "mate finding". Not dating. Checkmate finding. These are programmed specifically for helping you find Mate in X. Say you find a chess problem in the New York Times and can't come up with the answer. Now you can setup this position, and the computer will do the work for you :).  It will do Mates in 1 to Mates in 6.

You can set up special positions. Change a position. Add a piece, remove a piece, all with the Setup features. The manual explains this simply and clearly.

is it for strong players?

Yes. It's ideal not just for beginners, but I think stronger club players and even experts.

With an estimated rating of 2200 (Master level), it will give a strong game even to experts. If you want a super strong way to play against a computer, of course you'll need to search out chess software.

But all-in-all, it's relatively strong and better than a host of other chess computers.

In case you are wondering, this computer will not hook up to a PC. Some have asked this, but that's not part of the design.

in summary

I think that for the price, this computer offers quite a lot, especially being the only full size computer, and currently the largest, practical, computer vs. player or player vs. player model.

I'd give the computer an 8.5 out of 10. It's not the toughest plastic, and it doesn't have a super quality appearance, but with all that it offers, I think that the vast majority of you will really enjoy it.

I think it would be great as a gift for an uncle, dad, or grandpa for playing at home. Or for a child that's serious about improving.

To buy the Excalibur Grandmaster, go to ChessHouse.com. You'll be dealing with a responsible, friendly company that's easy to do business with.