The Collection
Six games, in teaching order.
Each one exists because a skill that is hard to teach from a demo board turns out to be easy to teach as a game.
Playable above. Board vision starts with knowing the ground you stand on: board mode teaches it, blind mode proves it, and the daily run keeps a class honest. Runs as a warm-up in under a minute.
A word search played on coordinates. Repetition at speed, until the grid is fixed in a player’s head.
Wheel of Fortune with chess puzzles. A full room plays at once, built to make review night feel like a game show.
Ninety-nine forced mates a day, and the run closes on a mate in 1. Referee grading, so every legal mate counts — underpromotions included. Pattern volume is the whole point.
A knight, a clock and something chasing you. The knight’s move is the hardest one to teach from a wall board, so the game turns it into a survival instinct.
Find the move, one ply at a time, with a shot clock and a class roster. The Reinfeld 1001 collection is baked in — a century of combinations, run like a team sport.
In play
Forkle
JeffPardy
Kaufman Pardy
PandaBall
HangPawn
Chesstris
Check Checker
Mate In 2 Kewl
Knight Tour
Knight Climber
En Passant Panda
Chuh Bingo
The full cabinet
The Maker
NM Jeffrey Ashton
Ashton made master in high school, won the inaugural Final Four of College Chess on a chess scholarship at UT Dallas, and has coached in Houston since 2003. In 2008 he founded Panda Chess Academy — a brick-and-mortar chess club built only for kids, run on three values: safety, sportsmanship and focus. He writes about chess teaching for ChessBase, is a US Chess SafeSport ambassador, and was named a recipient of the US Chess Meritorious Services Award in 2020.
Every game on this page came out of that classroom: when a skill is hard to teach from a demo board, it becomes a game instead.
In the Classroom
Field-tested every week.
These games run live at Panda Chess Academy in Houston. Below: the current ratings and the latest updates.
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