We bought No Stress Chess for Christmas so LMS and I can learn to play chess. For some reason, I never learned when I was younger. I think keeping the rules and movements of each piece straight never made sense to me.
No Stress Chess is finally changing all that. There's several levels of play to get you familiar with the rules. In the first level, you pick a card from the stack, and it tells you which piece to move, and how to move it. Obviously, you miss a lot of opportunities to capture your opponent's pieces because you didn't get the card to move a certain piece, but it reinforces names, movements, and strategy.
In the 2nd level each player draws 3 cards to start, then another on their turn. You then play one of the cards in your hand.
The 3rd level is similar to the 2nd, except you draw 5 cards to start. I think having more and more options of pieces to play helps you consider which one would be the best to move, and where.
From there, you move on to standard chess rules.
Honestly, those cards make it so much easier to figure it all out. Having a visual aid to tell what each piece is allowed to do is just what I needed.
It's helped LMS, too. She keeps asking to play it, but she asks to play "Stress Chess"- which is exactly what it's not :)
The other day she played a game with a friend at our homeschool play group, and they were discussing the rules as they played. Too cute!
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