The Chess Files

The Chess Files

The answers are out there.

By Jim Eade

In a previous column I asked, “At what age can you begin to teach chess to a child?”   Dr. Alexey Root made a convincing case that you can begin as early as five years old in her new book “Thinking with Chess”  (Mongoose Press.)  Another book from Mongoose Press “Chess is Child’s Play” by Laura Sherman and Bill Kilpatrick suggests that you can begin even earlier.

The book contains a chapter on special exercises “For Two-to Four-Year-Olds.”  They say that four-year-olds tend to move much faster through the exercises provided in the chapter than do two- or three-year-olds, but that it all depends on the child.

Some children work through these exercises in one or two lessons, while other might spend a few months on this chapter alone.  They provide the following caution: “if they are not ready, hold off until they are.”

This book is intended for parents who wish to help their kids learn chess, but any adult working with young children will find it useful.  There is a great deal of material and it is presented in a wonderfully unintimidating fashion.  I have never worked with children that young, but the authors clearly have.  This is a terrific resource.

Mongoose Press also deserves some praise, and not just for making these resources available.  The books are also beautifully produced.  Well done!

The world’s top rated player Magnus Carlsen continues to impress.  His spectacular victory of Hikaru Nakamura in the 75th Tata Steel Chess Tournament: 11 - 27 January 2013 in Wijk aan Zee, clinched first prize with a round to spare.  Here is the final position:

Black resigned, because of the threat of f6-f7 +.

As always, you can send your chess questions directly to me at jimeade@comcast.net.

Chess Files

The Chess Files

The answers are out there.

By Jim Eade

At what age can you begin to teach chess to a child?  According to +Dr. Alexey Root, a former U.S. women’s champion and a senior lecturer at UT Dallas, you can begin as early as five years old.  At least that’s what I took from her new book “Thinking with Chess” which has the subtitle  “Teaching Children Ages 5-14.”

In this book Root differentiates between challenges and puzzles.  The challenges use fewer pieces and pawns than in a complete chess game, take much less time to complete, and are manageable for children as young as 5 years old, as long as they are paired with more advanced chess youngsters or adults.  Root maintains that the challenges remain intriguing to older children as well, because they require strategy.  As I worked my way through the book, I found no reason to doubt her.

Challenges have multiple correct answers and help develop divergent thinking.  Puzzles, on the other hand have predetermined right answers.  This helps to develop convergent thinking.  Both, she maintains, are important for academic success.

What I loved most about this book is how Root ties puzzles and challenges to academic areas.  The Classify type of challenge, for example, is tied to science where a student might be required to classify animals, for instance.  This connection is critically important to make for administrators, who might otherwise be skeptical about chess in their schools.

The advancement of the science of chess instruction in the last decade or so is astonishing.  My main complaint is that this was unavailable to me when I was teaching chess in schools in the 90’s!  In those days most, if not all, of us were winging it.

With this book in hand, Root asserts that even non-chess playing adults can administer the lessons.  Chess players are typically skeptical about such assertions, but she has turned me into a believer.  Highly recommended.

Here is an example from the “Moves of the chessmen worksheet.”

The white pawn can move to a3, a4, and which other square?

The pawn captures diagonally, so it can also move to b3, capturing the black pawn.

As always, you can send your chess questions directly to me at jimeade@comcast.net.

The Chess Files

The Chess Files

The answers are out there.

By Jim Eade

The Woman’s World Championship is being held in Russia as of this writing.  Results can be seen at: http://chess2012.ugrasport.com.  It is a fact that the best players are almost all male, but why is that?

In many parts of the world, cultural and or religious factors play a decisive role in preventing women from realizing their potential.  As for the United States, I think chess progress for females might be subject to the same influences as math and science, as detailed in Peggy Orenstein’s book “School Girls.”

She reported that young girls were at least equal to boys in math and science until they reached an age where they began to care about what boys thought about them.  Girls were subject to negative peer pressure, if they continued to excel.  This was coupled with a mostly unconscious bias in favor of the boys exhibited by the teachers themselves.  They often demonstrated a tendency to acknowledge boys more frequently, and were prone to give the boys more positive feedback.

If you argue that there are intrinsic reasons that males outperform females in chess, you will undoubtedly, and correctly, be confronted with the example of the Polgar sisters.  Home schooled, the three sisters were systematically trained in chess from a young age.  The eldest, Zsuzsa, became a world renowned Grandmaster, and eventually Women’s world champion.  The middle sister, Zsofia, became an International Master, while the youngest, Judit, became one of the strongest Grandmasters in the world.

The Polgar sisters became inspirations to young girls all over the world.  When I asked former US Champion Jennifer Shahade who her role model as a player was, she didn’t hesitate in naming Judit.  Thanks to players such as the Polgars and Shahade, young girls across the country now know that the sky is the limit when it comes to chess.

Judit Polgar delivered mate in five moves from the following position in a 1990 games against Krotonias:

1…Rd1+ 2. Kg2 Rc2+ 3. Kh3 Rxh2+ 4. Kg3 Rg1+ 5. Kf3 Rf2#.

As always, you can send your chess questions directly to me at jimeade@comcast.net.

The Chess Files

The Chess Files

The answers are out there.

By Jim Eade

I’ve supplied partial answers to the question: “What do you do after you’ve learned the basic?” in previous columns.  A recommendation from the first half of the 20^th century was Nimzowitsch’s “My System.”   One from the middle part of the century was Larry Evans’ “New Ideas in Chess.”  It is now time to turn the spotlight on a contemporary chess author.

Jeremy Silman is an International Chess Master, who has won the American Open, the National Open and the US Open.  He is a world renowned chess teacher, who has served many times as a coach for the US delegation to World Junior Championships.

Most importantly for our purposes, Silman has authored a number of excellent instructional books on chess.  It is very difficult to choose just one, but I am comforted in the knowledge that I can’t go too far wrong.  Silman is just that good.

My recommendation is his “The Complete Book of Chess Strategy.”   It is sub-titled “Grandmaster Techniques From A to Z.”    He has sections on the three phases of the game: Opening, Middlegame, and Endgame, but also includes a useful section on what he calls “Practical Matters.”  Each section concludes with a set of Quizzes, which I think is a valuable methodology.

In a tip of the hat to the past, Silman gives an example of prophylaxis in chess.  This was a term coined by Nimzowitsch, who taught that it was sometimes more important to prevent your opponent from playing a good move than to make one yourself.  The example Silman uses to illustrate this concept is given below:

Silman writes that “White has a substantial advantage in space and piece activity.”  He continues, “However, Black is about to play …c6-c5.  What should White do about this?

1.c5!

Silman concludes as follows: “By following up with Ne5, White can build a kingside attack at his leisure, while Black can only stare helplessly and wait for his doom to arrive.”

As always, you can send your chess questions directly to me at jimeade@comcast.net.

chess files

The Chess Files

The answers are out there.

By Jim Eade

The US Game/30 and Game/60 Championships were held in Pleasanton earlier this month.  In the former event each player gets 30 minutes for the entire game, while in the latter they get 60 minutes.  You run out of time and you forfeit the game.  The Championships were organized by Salman Azhar, and were directed by John McCumiskey and Tom Langland.

What is the optimal amount of time for serious game of chess?  When I began playing in tournaments it was standard to have 2 ½ hours for 40 moves, and an hour for the next 20.  Every time you completed 20 moves you were given another hour. This was referred to as the time control.  Five hour games were routine, and in the US, we would often play two rounds in the same day!  Eating and sleeping properly became logistically challenging.

Eventually, the initial time limit was reduced from 2 ½ hours to two for the first forty moves.  The thinking was that this would shorten the games by about an hour on average.  You would think the players would’ve welcomed this change, but many of them complained that it was destroying the quality of the games, by forcing players to move faster.

With the development of digital chess clocks, it became possible to give a small amount of time for every completed move.  This meant that you could keep playing as long as you liked, as long as you kept moving quickly.  This caused most games to be completed in five hours or less, but there were howls of protest!

Younger players, who grew up with the new rules, generally had no such complaints.  They were used to moving quickly and accurately!  Older players would either have to adapt, see their results suffer, or drop out entirely.  There is still some grumbling, but most of it has died down.  The fact is that today’s players can produce high quality chess games at almost any speed.

If you don’t like a certain time control, you can always organize an event yourself.  Or, better yet, get Salman Azhar to do it for you!

I had the white pieces in the position below.  Black probably expected me to capture his rook in b3, but White has a far stronger continuation.

  

1.Nf6+ forces mate.  Because, the black king is in check by both the rook on d1 and the knight on f6, it must move.  It’s only legal move would be to play 1…Kc8, which would allow 2. Rd8#.  Checking the king with two pieces simultaneously is called “double check” and it can be one of the most powerful maneuvers in chess.

As always, you can send your chess questions directly to me at jimeade@comcast.net.

Chess Files

The Chess Files

The answers are out there.

By Jim Eade

There is no single answer to the question: What do you do after you’ve learned the basics?  I will assume that learning the basics includes becoming proficient at basic tactics, such as forks and pins.  Indeed, I maintain that you should do tactical drills until you’re seeing knight forks in your sleep.  Then what?

You’re really trying to develop a positional or strategic understanding of chess at this point.  My first column on this subject recommended Aaron Nimzowitsch’s book “My System.”  Published in the first part of the 20^th century, it quickly became and remained a classic work in the field.

Today, I am recommending a book from the mid-part of the 20^th century:  Larry Evans’ “New Ideas in Chess.”  Putting aside his bad habit of using words such as “New” or “Modern” in some of his titles, which had the unfortunate consequence of dating his works, Evans was a four time U.S. Champion and an excellent writer.  His explanations of difficult concepts are clear and concise.

He begins with a light, but interesting, examination of the evolution of chess up to the time of his writing.  He then turns his attention to what he considers the elements of chess:  Pawn Structure, Force, Space and Time.  He concludes with chapters on problems taken from actual play, his approach to chess openings, and one called “Summing Up.”

Any book first published in 1958, and still in print today, has to have something going for it.  This one does.  Anyone who studies this fairly thin book cannot fail to come away with a deeper understanding of the game. 

Evans taught about the importance of converting advantages in one element into an advantage in another.  The following example illustrates the conversion of an advantage in Space into an advantage in Force.

Solution: 1.e6 fxe 2. Qxe6+ Rf7 3. Nc7 Nf8 4. Rxd8 Bxe6 5. Rxa8 Rxf4 6. Nxe6 1-0

As always, you can send your chess questions directly to me at jimeade@comcast.net.

Chess Files

                  The Chess Files

The answers are out there.

By Jim Eade

The stereotypical chess scene involves two elderly men playing in the park.  Chess is a great solace in old age, but the question is: Is chess a young person’s game?  My answer is an emphatic: Yes!

The number of players who remained at a world class level after turning 50 can be counted on one hand.  The number of players remaining among the world’s elite past age 40 is almost as bleak.  It is true that Anand is 42, and he is the current World Champion, but things are not looking up for him these days.

Consider the latest list of the highest rated players in the world:

1. Carlsen - 2847.6  age 21

2. Aronian - 2815.4  age 31

3. Kramnik - 2795  age 37

4. Radjabov - 2789.7  age 26

5. Caruana - 2786.5  age 21

Anand had been a top five mainstay for years.  It’s become increasingly difficult to imagine him ever making this list again. Furthermore the Grand Slam finals were just completed in Bilboa, Spain, and Carlsen won on tie breaks.  Here are the final standings:

1-2. Carlsen and Caruana - 17,

3. Aronian - 11,

4. Karjakin - 10,

5. Anand - 9,

6. Vallejo - 6.

The amazing thing is not that Carlsen won, but that Anand did not manage to win a single game!  Carlsen is favored by virtually everyone to not only become the next world challenger, but to dethrone Anand as well.  The gap between them in ratings and results is simply too much to ignore.

Carlsen had White in the following position, and Anand, who was in a hopeless position, resigned.

As always, you can send your chess questions directly to me at jimeade@comcast.net.