ECF Certificate of Excellence

The Certificate of Excellence is the English Chess Federation’s own award scheme: a progressive set of exams for anyone starting chess or wanting to get better at it. The club works through the first two levels, and the ECF publishes practice sheets for both.

The bronze level is ideal for those who are just starting chess, and also for those who wish to learn more about the most beautiful of games. The puzzles cover:

• How the pieces move
• Position evaluation
• Captures and checks
• Basic checkmates
• Stalemate

The Bronze certificate comes with a large number of puzzle sheets, which test your basic chess knowledge in preparation for the exam. They are excellent practice, and they are free to print off and complete. When you can answer all of them correctly, you are ready for the Bronze exam.

There are eighteen Bronze sheets:

• Are we ready to start?
• Where can these pieces go?
• Can you take the black pawn?
• Where do the pieces work best?
• Getting out of check
• Can white castle?
• Take a piece for free
• Spotting captures
• Who is ahead?
• Is it checkmate?
• Will it be checkmate?
• Queen checkmates
• Rook checkmates
• Bishop checkmates
• Knight checkmates
• Pawn checkmates
• White checkmates in one move
• Black checkmates in one move

The silver level is the perfect follow-on from the bronze. It includes skills such as:

• Notation, and writing your moves down
• Special pawn moves: under-promotion and en passant
• Development and basic openings
• Checkmate in one and two moves
• Some essential checkmates
• Discovered and double checks
• Forks, pins and skewers
• Outposts

The Silver certificate comes with its own skill sheets, eight of them:

• Language
• Forks
• Double attacks
• Skewers
• Pin
• Discovered attacks
• Removing the guard
• Rook & queen checkmates

Several of those have a page here already — there is more on forks, pins and skewers under chess skills, and the tactics that go with them on chess traps.

All of the sheets above — Bronze and Silver, puzzles and answers — are published by the ECF and are free to download and print. They live on the federation’s own page, which also offers them as a single bundle:

The ECF’s Certificate of Excellence page

We link the ECF’s page rather than each sheet, so that the sheets keep working when the federation reorganises its own files.

Bronze and Silver are the first two of four levels: Gold and Diamond follow, and the same page explains what those ask for. The club teaches towards Bronze and Silver; if your child gets that far, come and talk to us about what comes next.