Posts Tagged ‘chess practice’
Online Chess Lessons!
Online Chess Classes are now available through CheckMatesUSA! We are offering both one-on-one online chess lessons as well as group online chess lessons for multiple students. We have a variety of teachers that can teach chess to all skill levels from absolute beginner to masters of the game. Our teachers can also speak many languages such as English, Russian, Spanish, Georgian, Hindu, and Tamil.
One-on-One Online Chess Classes
One-on-one online chess lessons are great for people of all ages and skill levels that want to get better at chess. Online Chess Classes give you the ability to learn chess from your home. Online chess lessons are the perfect option to help you improve drastically or learn the game quickly because our chess instructors teach at your pace and customize each lesson for you. If you don’t want to pay the high fees of having an instructor drive to your house and don’t want to settle for the low quality of a cheap instructor, one-on-one online chess lessons with CheckMatesUSA are the way to go.
Group Online Chess Classes
We can also offer you group chess lessons online. Working in a group doesn’t give you as much personal attention as one-on-one online chess lessons, but it has other advantages. A lot of people prefer to learn with a group so they have someone to practice their chess concepts with. Group members can be in the same room, but don’t have to be.
How it happens?
Online Chess Classes use free software such as Skype or Google Hangout to connected chess teachers with one or many students. Students are not only able to see the instructor face-face, but also to share the same screen and use an interactive chess board to learn on. With our system, any resource that the teacher has on his/her computer is available to the students during the lesson. This makes learning chess online with us easy and convenient.
If you would like more information about our online chess lessons or to schedule, contact us.
Online Chess Classes are currently on special for $50 a class!
Minooka Chess Tournament
Minooka Chess Club and CheckmatesUSA
present the first ever
Minooka Area Chess Tournament
Sunday, April 15, 2012 (1pm to 4:30pm)
Minooka Village Community Room
121 East McEvilly Rd. (Next to Creamery)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Entry fee: $10 with advance registration, $15 on-site
Sections: Juniors (K-8) and Open (All ages)
Juniors = 4 rounds, Open = G/30, 3 rounds
For more information, please contact [email protected]
Or call Brian Quast at (815) 922-9291
Chess is a Symphony of Pieces
When teaching chess to kids its important that you find a way to explain chess theory in a way that related to them. Many kids enjoy music and even play musical instruments; so with them I try to relate chess to music.
Chess is very much like music, and a good chess game could easily be compared to a beautiful musical composition. Just think of each piece as a musical instrument. In a good musical composition all the instruments are working together create something that people would enjoy listening to. A song with just one or two musical instruments wouldn’t be as interesting and fun as one with many more.
In chess you are also creating a composition. Like a composer with his or her instruments, a good chess players uses all his or her pieces together in combination to achieve a goal. Just like a composer, a chess player’s personality shows a lot in their chess game.
Its no coincident so many musicians are also chess players, and vice versa!
Insufficient Mating Chances (a technicality in chess)
I love learning something new in chess, and this is something I never knew about. Here’s the deal:
Insufficient Mating chances (or insufficient losing chances) is when a special rule that is used in tournaments. Basically, it has to do with a situation when the chess player with a winning position is almost out of time. They dont just need a winning position, but they need to have an un-winnable position. A referee is called over and the game is called a tie.
The Reason: The point here is simple, chess players want the game of chess to be decided on the moves a player makes rather than the time on the clock. If one player cannot with the game regardless of the moves that he/she makes, then why should he/she be awarded a victory. O Chess players…so righteous.
Getting out of Check
Check is one of the most, if not the most, important concepts in chess. Check means the king is in danger. This means that the player whose king is in danger MUST get their king out of check.
There are three ways that a player can get out of check
1. Move - This means to move your king out of danger.
2. Block- This means moving a piece in between your king and the piece attacking it. Note: you cannot block a check from a Knight because it skips over pieces.
3. Attack- This means you are attacking the piece that is putting your king in check. You can use your king to attack or another piece on your team.
A good chess player will look through all his/her options before deciding. In each position, the correct move may be to move, block, or attack, but you will never know until you look at all the options.
Take a look at this position, what should the white team do?
What do you think the white king should do. He can move out of the way to b1 or b2. He can also use his queen to block on a2, but the best option is to capture the rook on a7 with the queen on f2.
The Ven Diagram of Chess
The Ven Diagram of Chess is something I created to help explain what a player should try to do in a game of chess. Of course, we all know that a player must always strive to give a checkmate. This is a very general goal and most people would get frustrated if that is the only advice a coach would give.
The Chess Ven Diagram Visually Guides you to what you should be able to do. It does not show any specific moves, but instead explains the theory of how you will be able to create the opportunity for yourself to win on the chess board.
If you look at the Chess Ven Diagram you can tell that the main goal of chess is to checkmate your opponent. There are two things that you need to do to allow you to checkmate your opponent: Control the Board and Protect your King. You can protect your King by Castling either Queenside or Kingside. In order to control the board you must develop your pieces to powerful squares and stop your opponent from doing so. These powerful chess squares are most often in the middle. If you do these things you can attack your opponent and control the momentum of the game. This will allow you to then give a checkmate.
What is a pawn chain?
Pawn are the first piece that most players learn…but are by no means the simplest. They are a very unique piece for a variety of reasons:
1. They are the only pieces that cannot move backwards.
2. They are the only pieces that attack differently that they moves.
3. They are the only pieces that can be promoted.
Pawns are actually my favorite piece for these and many other reasons, but enough about pawns. Pawn chains are one the first strategies that a chess players learns when dealing with pawns. A pawn chain in when a group of pawns are in a diagonal protecting each other. This is beneficial because the pawns are much harder to attack for your opponent, and easier to defend for you. The pawn at the bottom of the pawn chain the only vulnerable one and therefore you can focus your defenses on him. Later on, more advanced players learn to coordinate their pawn chains with the color of their bishop. Having many pawns chains on the board leads to a closed position and is very powerful for a knight.
Discovery Attack!
A discovery attack is one of the best tactics that a player can use in a chess game. It is a chess tactic that will distract your opponent from your main attack…then if they don’t notice…DISCOVERY ATTACK!
Here’s how it works:
In this position (We are playing as white) we can use a discovery attack to win our opponents Queen and eventually win the game. Our Knight on e3 can move anywhere it wants to without fear or being taken, as our Rook on e2 will be attacking the opponents king and creating the discovery attack. In this instance, it is actually a discovery check, which is the best kind of discovery attack. Can you figure out where we should move our knight?
…
..
.
If you are thinking f5 you are correct. By moving our knight to f5 we can attack the Queen and create a discovery check with our rook. The Queen is now lost for black, as it can only go to e3 or e6 to stop the discovery attack and both moves will lead to it being taken.
The Minority Attack
The minority attack in chess is a rather advanced strategic concept. But that’s ok, even if you are a kid or a beginner. First of all, you can impress your friends when you walk around talking about the minority attack. If they don’t know what it is they might just nod and pretend they do, or if they do know what it is their eyebrows will go up and they will say “aha!” and think, wow, this kid really knows chess! So either way it’s great!
The minority attack in chess is simple to explain though. It is when you have a smaller group of pawns in an area of the chess board than your opponent and you begin storming your opponent’s larger pawn mass with your smaller one. And why should you do it? Well, for the same reason a poodle attacks a great dane! And sometimes the great dane looks at the tiny barking noisy animal and thinks maybe I better not mess with it! But there’s more reason. To open lines for your pieces to attack, and when you open lines for your pieces you often find tactics. You are also weakening your opponent’s pawns too, after which you might give up one to win two, if you can visualize that. For example if they capture your pawn they might double theirs, and you can win them by placing a rook on the file. Or if they just let you exchange they might end up with a backward pawn, or a pawn that isn’t protected by another pawn, and that can’t move forward without being captured.
Chess Books for Beginners
There are a lot of books about chess, not surprising considering that chess is over 1500 years old. There are many chess books that would help a child’s chess game, here are a few:
5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games by Laszlo Polgar and Bruce Pandolfini- This is a great chess book that I recommend for players of all levels. This has sooooooo many chess problems in it for chess players of all different levels that you can keep it around for years, solving chess puzzles and going back to it again and again.
303 Tricky Chess Tactics by Fred Wilson and Bruce Alberston- This is a chess book that goes over chess tactics for all different levels. A challenging training tool, these tricky tactical chess problems are not only fun to solve, but great for beginners, intermediate, and expert players to use as tools to improve their chess game. Chess Tactics are presented in order of difficulty, so that players can advance from simple to complex chess positions. Examples from actual chess games illustrate a wide range of chess tactics from the classics right up to the current games. You’ll learn to use pins, single and double forks, double attacks, skewers, discovered and double checks, multiple threat tactics-and other crushing tactics as part of their problem-solving chess challenges.
Checkmates USA | Creative Services by D1MA
