Barclaycard Yes2Chess tournament 2015

As we told you in our previous report, Yes2Chess is an Internet Chess Community for primary/elementary schoolchildren which offers pupils the opportunity to play chess online with children from other countries, and also to compete in an international tournament. This innovative event sees the participation of primary/elementary schools from eight countries: UK, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and the USA.

Between now and July 2015, schools will compete for the grand prize: each national tournament winner will receive a fun-filled trip to London in June 2015 to take part in Finals Weekend, where they will compete over the board against teams from the other countries.

Yes2Chess Web Client User Guide

By Alex Holowczak

Yes2Chess offers school children the opportunity to play online in a safe environment on the Yes2Chess server – which is a special area on Playchess.com. All children who register for Yes2Chess through their school from anywhere in the world will receive free membership to this private and moderated area, where they can play and learn at any time. This membership will remain active until July 2015, even if they do not compete in the tournament. Later in 2015 this website will feature free chess lessons, some of them interactive, to help improve children’s chess skills or to teach children the very basics of chess.

The web client can be accessed at the following link: y2c.playchess.com.

Logging in will take you to the Open Room, where all registered users will have access. At this point, you should fill in your Name (i.e. username) and Password, and click “Login”. If you haven't registered you will need to do so and get a name and give yourself a password here.

Having logged in, you will land at this page.

The page is divided into three panels:

• Left panel: A list of players who are online and games being played. To challenge a specific opponent, click on their username, and click the white arrow on the blue background that says “Challenge”. This will challenge a player to a game with a time limit of 20 minutes plus 10 seconds per move. To create a challenge to anyone online, click the “Seek” button at the bottom of the panel. To accept or reject challenges from others, click on the Challenge, and click either the thumbs up “Accept”, or the red cross “Delete” as appropriate.

• Centre panel: This is an information panel. In the Open room, there are various time control options available, as explained in this panel.

• Right panel: Contains server information. Only users with staff logins, or Chessbase logins, can use this panel to chat to other users.

Challenging an Opponent

Having clicked on an opponent’s name, and clicking “Challenge”, you see the following screen.

Choose whether you want to be white or black in this game. Here, we choose black. This appears in the bottom of the left panel.

The red arrow indicates you are challenging another player.
For the recipient, this challenge looks like this:

By clicking “Accept”, we can start the game.

Playing the Game

After clicking “Accept”, you land on this screen:

This screen has several buttons across the top:

• Reconnect: Click if your connection drops during the game.
• Resign: Concede victory in the game to your opponent.
• Applaud: Congratulate your opponent on his victory!
• Rematch: Challenge your opponent to a new game. The colours of each player will reverse.
• Rematch OK: Accept your opponent’s rematch.
• Offer Draw: Offer the opponent a draw.
• Accept Draw: Accept the opponent’s draw offer.
• Claim Win: If your opponent is disconnected for a long period of time, and you have been unable to establish contact with the player via some other means.
• Ping Opponent: If you get a response, this means your opponent is still connected to the server. This is useful if you are not sure whether your opponent has lost connection, or is just thinking for a long time!
• Boards: Allows you to see other boards during your game.
• Close Board: Closes the current board. If you do this during a game you are playing, you will lose!

A move is made in one of two ways:
(1) Clicking on a piece, and dragging it to its new square.
(2) Clicking on a piece, and clicking on its new square.

The opponent will see this. The arrow indicates the move White just played.
The game proceeds, move after move. A draw offer will look like this to the recipient:

So you will notice I accept this rare invitation to draw with an International Master!

Game over! Again, it is obvious that the game has ended.

Technical Information

The website works with the following software (as at 18/12/2014):

Not all of the above combinations have been tested, and are left white. If you use any of the untried combinations, it will be useful for you to pass this on to us.

Visit the Barclaycard Yes2Chess web site