News & Updates
Written by guest author Erik Czerwin for Wholesale Chess
The chess match begins, and 16 players frantically move chess pieces, slap chess clocks, and scribble down notation. The first five or six moves tick off quickly as each team member jockeys for opening position. Just as the pace slows down and players begin searching more deeply into positions to discover clever traps and zaps, one game ends with a player extending his arm over the board and the other player looking befuddled, frustrated, and angry. Sometimes games just end this quickly. Sometimes it just happens. However, they should never happen like they did once for a team member of mine…
He came over to me, beaming. Smiling over his speedy conquering of a relatively new player, he said to me, “She didn’t catch it.” After I asked what it was that she didn’t catch, he replied, “I started with two queens on the chess board to see if she would catch it. I replaced one of my bishops with a queen, and she didn’t even notice! I won, and now that the game is over, she can’t undo the results; those are the rules!” He was grinning ear-to-ear with his own cleverness. I, however, felt queasy and disgusted. Where had I gone wrong? When had I taught my players that abusing the rules of chess was a way to achieve victory? When had I taught them to gloat over cheating?
The answer to all these questions was that I had not, in fact, ever taught my team to play like that. This kid did it all on his own. After recovering from my momentary shock, I demanded that he go over and apologize to the other player. After a brief refusal, he complied. Personally, I apologized to the other coach. I have never been as embarrassed as chess coach before or since.
The fact of the matter is that some kids want the cheap wins. They don’t understand the pure joy of an intensely fought win. Heck, sometimes a hard-fought draw can be just as satisfying as a solid win. This particular student continues to show signs that he doesn’t care to improve his understanding of the game of chess, he only cares to rack up cheap wins.
As a chess coach, I struggle with this for many reasons. My goal is not to have the winning-est team, but the team that most enjoys the struggle to improve and continue growing. If a student like this doesn’t place the same value on intrinsic improvement, what am I to do? Unfortunately, he is a very talented player who could be much better if he stopped practicing poor chess.
However, if he never really wants to improve by studying chess books or working with a stronger player, why should I invest time and energy towards forcing him to? It is my job to encourage him to grow, but if a student doesn’t have the self-motivation to do so, should I continue to spend time trying to move a mountain? Shouldn’t his repeated losses to better players be motivation enough?
His wins are cheap and easy, and when the game is a difficult struggle, his board is more often than not a loss. His wins depend solely upon the mistakes of his opponents, rarely on his skill as a chess player. His team knows it, I know it, but he is blind to it because his win loss record blocks his larger vision. I’m still searching for a way to change this in students. As of yet, I have found no answer. Perhaps there is no answer. Hopefully, over time, he will discover a love of the deeper game. I sincerely hope.
Erik Czerwin is a self-taught chess player and also a self-taught chess coach. He founded the current Marengo Community High School Chess team, founded the Marengo Chess Club, plays at the Rockford Chess Club, and occasionally volunteers as a chess teacher at the Rockford Public Library, all in Northern Illinois. In his spare time, he’s also a full-time high school language arts teacher, part-time graduate student, part-time tutor, and full-time father of two and husband to a very understanding wife.
This article, written by the manager of Wholesale Chess, was first published in The Link Homeschool Publications (Copyright, 2009). Reprinted by permission.
You see the benefits of chess and want to teach them to a child. You don’t have to be afraid of not knowing what to do or how to play. There are plenty of resources to help you.
“Remember that you are passing on a wonderful gift to them,” Mrs. Graham, manager of Wholesale Chess said. “Learn or renew your skills right along with them. Make sure you use care, patience and respect while teaching. Also, try to be interesting! Use humor, funny voices, cartwheels — whatever it takes to make your chess students pay attention and have a good time.”
Mrs. Graham suggests each child have their own chess set. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. Most students use a roll-up vinyl board, plastic chess pieces, either weighted or not, and an inexpensive chess bag for chess pieces to be carried in.
“Wholesale Chess has a very basic chess curriculum that we recommend to work with beginners,” she said. Only move to the next step when you know your child has a real understanding of what you have already taught.
- How the pieces move and how to setup the board
- How to capture pieces
- Check and checkmate
- More advanced rules of castling, en passant, and pawn promotion
- The values of the pieces and making good captures and trades
- Developing your pieces and controlling the center
- Using multiple pieces to attack and defend
- Basic tactics – forks and pins
- Basic strategies – controlling squares, diagonals, and files
- Basic opening principles – control key squares, activate your pieces, get your king to safety
To be a good chess parent, teacher or chess coach you must be sure to get plenty of feedback from the student, Mrs. Graham said. “Make sure you know how your children feel about chess. If they are feeling burned out, then pressuring them may just turn them off more. If they are hungry for chess and you are not feeding that, they may become frustrated.
“If you have a child who enjoys learning and playing chess, you should encourage that as much as is healthy,” she said. “Chess has great social and intellectual benefits that can affect other aspects of life, but remember that chess is a part of life, not the purpose of life. I suggest chess parents watch or read Searching for Bobby Fischer with their child. “It is a great story. We also recommend the book, Survival Guide for Chess Parents.
“Another important thing, perhaps the most important, is to always make sure that your child knows how much you love them regardless of whether they are winning or losing their chess games,” she added. “Never show disappointment at their performance — they are most likely frustrated enough on their own!”
“Chess will certainly grow in the future,” she said. “Players will have to be more accurate in play, as chess computers and training becomes more and more available. But most of us hope that the essence and fun of the game doesn’t change at all!”
WSC Note: Our Book Category has a selection of books designed for parents or chess coaches to use as well as books for children who are beginnnig to play chess to read.
This article, written by the manager of Wholesale Chess, was first published in The Link Homeschool Publications (Copyright, 2009). Reprinted by permission.
With all the technology out there, it is a bit ironic that Chess, arguably one of the oldest games in the world, is still leaps and bounds ahead of today’s 
electronic games in helping youth improve their cognitive skills and learn real lessons about life, according to Lyndia Graham, manager of Wholesale Chess.
“Chess not only teaches children critical analytical skills, but it teaches them about choices–that each action is followed by a natural—but very real–consequence and that each of those choices must be carefully considered” she said. “Chess can help the IQ, memory, pattern recognition, analytical skills, overall comprehension, as well as develop patience.”
“It is an ideal game to use in a home, school or home-school setting because the implications of choice and consequence can be casually discussed and reinforced in a positive, but fun setting,” she said. “Bad choices — or chess moves — have immediate consequences and will impact the rest of your game — or the rest of your life. There are rules of play that must be followed, or the end result is not what you want. It’s an age-old lesson as relevant today as when chess first began.”
Nobody really knows just how old the game of chess is. However, Mrs. Graham said, some experts claim that chess is more than 2,000 years old. Some evidence suggests that chess, in its earliest form, was played in India in the 6th century AD and from there spread around the world. Of course, over the years, the pieces and rules changed somewhat. In the 15th century, chess began to more closely resemble the game we now play, she added. But chess really started taking off in the 1800′s when tournaments, chess pieces, chess clocks, championships, and titles like Grandmaster were introduced.
Chess is now thought to be the most popular game in the world and growing especially fast among children, as schools and parents recognize the social and intellectual benefits associated with the game. There are hundreds of millions of players in thousands of clubs around the planet. Women and girls are learning chess in record numbers. Younger and younger players are achieving Grandmaster status and a few are not even teenagers yet, she said.
The overall skill level of chess players is also increasing because of the Internet and computers. Players are able to play a game at any time online and can use chess computers to help them train and learn. There are huge numbers of software programs, some that even pit a player against famous grandmaster games. There are also many hand-held computer games for chess that give those die-hard electronic users a chance to have chess on–the-go without the need of a partner.
Part Two, hints on teaching children chess, will publish next week.
Written by guest author Jason Repa for Wholesale Chess
A continuation of Jason’s reviews of online chess sites. Be sure to check out Jason’s review of ICC.
Second on my list is www.playchess.com.
This server was created by the Chessbase Company which sells popular chess software. Their annual fees are comparable to ICC and you also have the option of getting a year membership with the purchase of any of their new chess playing software, such as Fritz, Rybka, Shredder, or the formidably expensive Chessbase database management utility. A free trial membership is possible as well.
They are based out of Germany, but have a fully functional English interface, as well as providing interfaces in a plethora of other languages. Playchess.com has by far the highest resolution interface and smoothest action for game-play of any chess server on the internet, which is why they began stealing many of ICC’s members when they first arrived on the scene about a decade ago. Read more �
Written by guest author Jason Repa for Wholesale Chess
In the early days of the public internet, there were few choices for those seeking to play chess in cyber space. On top of this, you had to contend with slow response times, crude graphics, and a limited number of prospective opponents. Live, or what is referred to in chess vernacular as over-the-board (otb) chess, was still very much alive and well as many chess aficionados didn’t want to make such concessions.
Today there are many dozens, if not hundreds, of chess servers, sometimes with tens of thousands of users logged on at once, offering everything from turn-based email chess, in which players may take days, or even weeks, to make a single move, to nerve-wracking bullet chess, where all of your moves must be made within a minute or two. In addition to that, Read more �
Written by guest author Erik Czerwin for Wholesale Chess.
Every competition I attend, I see a lot of fascinating chess teams. Some teams pour over computers, chess books, and boards studying positions and famous games. Some teams engage in heated debate about curious moves. Other teams play blitz games and combat one another. Then there’s my team; some kids are playing blitz games, other kids are pestering those players and kibitzing like crazy, still others listen to music and brood in the corner with hoodies pulled over their heads. Certainly, my team is not the most studious. Of course, this only describes what we do before competition ignites. I’ve worked hard over the years to shape a specific culture on my team, and it is open, friendly, yet ferocious.
My team consists of a motley Read more �
Written by guest author Erik Czerwin for Wholesale Chess.
“What am I going to do about these kids? They just don’t take my advice.”
“Our advice…”
“Yeah, our advice. What can we do to inspire them?”
“Maybe we should get in more tournaments, spark the competition bug. Or maybe we could just beat them over the head with rolled up chess boards.”
“Tournaments are expensive. And I don’t know about beating children. That’s a lot of paperwork.”
Such is a common conversation between my assistant chess coach and me. Coaching chess is a weird, stumbling sort of a job that involves teaching a tremendously complex, yet beautiful, game while at the same time managing a small crowd of awkward, sometimes rambunctious, teenagers. When I think about the success our chess team has had, I can really only contribute the success to one exceedingly important factor: having an assistant coach. Every success of our team hinges on Coach Brian and his voluntary presence, and no other team Read more �
Written by guest author Erik Czerwin for Wholesale Chess
Coaching any sport can be a challenging endeavor, but coaching chess entails a great many unique complications aside from knowing how to teach this many-layered game. Over the years, I find myself more frustrated at snarky comments made by uninformed colleagues whenever I mention difficulty in coaching my chess team. They laugh at the idea that it is even possible to coach a “board game” (as they call it). I wish I could say that adults are more mature than that, but that reality simply doesn’t exist. Coaching chess can be an amazingly challenging process for a wide variety of less-than-predictable reasons. Read more �
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