Olga Dolzhykova

I don’t remember myself without chess. This has never been questioned in our family, where everybody played, and since early childhood, my life has been a chain of tournaments and travelling all around chess events. You somehow always take your lifestyle for granted, but looking back now, I have to admit that all this rich intensity of my life, full of events and emotions and exploring the world, has been possible only thanks to this my early hobby.

In addition to my Woman Grandmaster chess title, I have a background in Linguistics and Pedagogy, having completed Master degree in European Languages and PhD in Education. My research into the development of cognitive skills through chess and interactive games later contributed quite a lot into the methodology and main pedagogical concepts of the chess programs and books you find on this site.

Working as a teacher, sooner or later you realize that unless you are well-prepared and have 25 rabbits in your sleeves to be extracted to grip attention, change topic, show the teaching point from another perspective, provide motivation and make your subject exciting, your lesson is most likely to end up a disaster. This is basically how it all started. I needed rabbits to save my lessons and, not finding materials for children that would be gripping and simple enough to break through the abstract world of chess, I set out to concoct them.

I am very excited and happy about the opportunity to publish and offer the results of our work to the world. And we are planning to create a lot more soon! ;-)