Zachary Barnes had the same "chess instruction book" prop for most of the movie, and near the end of the shoot he realized it was only a prop; it didn't contain any information about chess.
The exterior of the school and the hallways are from Oakdale High School, but the classrooms are at Riverbank High.
Almost every chess sequence in the movie was notated move by move exactly in the script. In the last games, the actors had memorized the entire game.