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How to turn an old smartphone into a power tool for chess study?

11/14/2016

We all have some old devices at home that are no longer in use, iphone, ipad, Android phone, and etc. Each of them has couple of Gigabytes that sit idle. We can easily turn these idle devices into some power tools.

For beginners, tactics are utmost important. So you can create some tactic puzzle collections, and put them onto the device. You can get puzzle pictures from Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, or chess tactic websites. It's not difficult to accumulate thousands of puzzles, which is enough for your child to kill some free minutes. A puzzle picture is perfect for a smartphone screen.

You don't need any fancy apps. Just pictures, and a simple free app to show pictures. I am using QuickPic on Android.

Another help beginners need is coaching. You can also collect chess videos so your child can watch at any time. You can find them on Youtube, on chesslectures.com, and on ICC/chess.com, if you know how to download them. Again, a simple free video viewer app is enough. I am using MX Player on Android.

To transfer picture or video files from your PC to smartphone, I definitely prefer Android to iOS, which is much more intuitive.

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How did I (we) manage to play as much as possible?

11/10/2016

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As you all know, my goal for my daughter was to play tournaments every weekend. But as all other families, we have other obligations. We had Chinese school on Saturdays, and piano lessons on Sundays. So I tried to reach my goal as close as possible, 2-3 tournaments every months.

Every year I would list all major tournaments I knew, even when there were no scheduled dates yet. There are about 12 to 15 tournaments in my area, within 5 hours driving distance. I would also include some important tournaments that required flying. For the weeks that didn't have major tournaments, I would try to insert some possible club tournaments. My goal was to fill in every week with 2 to 3 options.

I would keep monitoring the list all year around. If we didn't play in any tournament for a week, that's exception. You have to treat it this way, or you can never get close to your goal.

I would like to spread major tournaments once a month, if possible. I had to negotiate with the piano teacher when the time was in conflict. We tried to ask for being completely excused once a quarter. For couple of times, we just took a bye from the tournaments without alerting the piano teacher.

Our typical schedule on Sunday was like this:

leave home at 9am
drive one hour to Brooklyn
take two hour piano lesson
drive 40 minutes to Westfield, grabbing a lunch on the way
play the Quads
drive 45 minutes home, get home around 8:30pm

We survived by doing that for four years.

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Why the fundamental skills are critical for chess development?

11/7/2016

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I was watching an old Japanese TV series: The fire of Youth (which was translated to Chinese with the name: The Volleyball Girls.) The heroine grew up in the northern rural area. She was asked to run and jump everyday by her father, without knowing the reason. The only hope was to break a high-hanging ball, which contained the instruction to her life. She just practiced day after day, and year after year. One day, she finally broke the ball, and got a paper that told her to go to Tokyo.

After she got Tokyo, she was told that she would join the High School Volley Ball team, which was her mother's alma mater team. She had never played volley ball before, but with her fundamental skills, she quickly became the key player on the team.

The morale of the story is that no matter what we are doing, the fundamental skills are important. For volley ball, they are running and jumping. For chess, the fundamental skills are tactics, tactics and tactics.

Tactics is so important that the whole Steps Methods is 90% about tactics.

If you are a beginner, you have to start with tactics. At this level, you can't grasp the whole picture of a chess game. Learning opening is almost useless. It's like war vs battle. A chess game is a war, and tactics are battles. Beginners only understand battles, Talking about wars is futile. You should try to win most battles to win the war, i.e., the game.

That's why I encourage kids to practice tactics, as much as possible. After solving 5,000 tactics problems, you will see big improvement in your child's play.

Here are some books I recommend:
http://www.completechesscourse.com/books.html

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How to turn an old smartphone into a power tool for chess study?

How did I (we) manage to play as much as possible?

Why the fundamental skills are critical for chess development?

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﻿How to turn an old smartphone into a power tool for chess study?

How did I (we) manage to play as much as possible?

Why the fundamental skills are critical for chess development?

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Archives

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How to turn an old smartphone into a power tool for chess study?