Blog Posts - Chess Parents FAQs

Why do you want to play up?

2/20/2017

I have discussed this topic for a few times now. I'd like you to see this record:

2017-02-18 201702188802 **IDA FREEMAN WINTER OPEN 2017 (OK)
1: PREMIER 1316 => 1325906 => 1020
2017-02-10 201702106222 B&N BLITZ FEBRUARY 2017 (OK)
1: OPEN  1009 => 1010
2017-02-04 201702042972 OSCO PREMIER (OK)
1: OPEN 1121 => 1316638 => 906
2017-01-29 201701299732 3RD NORMAN CHESS FESTIVAL (OK)
3: EXTRA 1097 => 1121
2017-01-29 201701299732 3RD NORMAN CHESS FESTIVAL (OK)
2: U1700 975 => 1097
2017-01-21 201701216532 WESTARK WINTER WARM-UP II MAIN (AR)
3: KNIGHTS U1200 721 => 975

In about 2 months, his rating jumped form 721 to 1325. Looking at the sections he played in, they are U1200, 500 about his rating; U1700, 700 about his rating; Open and Premier.

You can get stronger only by playing against stronger opponents. So don't stay in your comfortable zone. Grow out of scholastic tournaments. Play adults and play up.

How many games should my child play everyday?

2/12/2017

The younger your child is, or the earlier stage your child is at, the more games s/he should play. My answer is 5-10 games, ideally.

When your child is young, such as 6-8, they need a lot of exposure to chess to gain experience quickly, and they have time at that age. People learn chess by making mistakes. The more mistakes s/he makes, the quicker s/he learns. Understanding rules or theory is not enough. S/he needs real game experience. If your child only plays one or two games a week, it will take her/him at least 5 more times to progress as a child who plays 5 games a day.

5 games a day takes about 1 hour. One or two games might be longer, but most are short. If you say that you don't have 1 hour to spare, then you should lower your expectation and just let your child have some fun.

It's not easy to ask a child to play 5 games a day, especially when s/he has other toys to play. It takes a little bit of strategy and persistence. I initially asked my son to play 10 games a day. He executed for a few days, then start to rebel. He just procrastinated playing until bedtime. So we reduced the requirement to 5 games a day. But soon he procrastinated again and began to strike. And he didn't want to play because he had lost too much. Everyday we just nudged him to play a few games. Sometimes he did, but sometimes he just didn't want to play. But we never gave up. Recently he started to win more again, and he became happy to play. Now it's much easier to tell him to play 5 games.

Engine is so powerful, do we want to play against engine, or learn from engine?

1/23/2017

Short answer is no.

First, engines are so powerful and perfect that you will be defeated all the times. Some engines may allow to config levels, but the mistakes they make are stupid dummy mistakes. It's not intelligent enough to simulate human errors. You will feel dummy to lose, and you will feel dummy to win.

Second, engines' calculations are 15 to 30 moves deep. Their comparisons are based on that calculation. No one can calculate that deep in every move. So we won't get the same moves as engines.

Third, because engines make decisions based on calculation, the moves they suggest may not make any sense to human beings. The experience, or chess sense, can't be converted to a number.

Fourth, you won't get same amount of joy after winning an engine vs winning a human opponent.

All in all, I suggest against engines.

We can use engines to generate ideas, but we can't simulate the engines.

What is chess engine?

1/18/2017

Chess engine is just a computer software. It can have graphic user interface (GUI), or can work without an GUI. Basically it knows how to read in chess notations, do deep calculation and spit out chess moves. It can be very dummy, as it was 10 years ago, or very advanced. The strongest engine is way above any human being, rated above 3000.

A few famous engines are: Komodo, Houdini, Fritz, and Stockfish (which is freeware).

Strength of an engine does not only depend on its algorithm and its game database, but also depends on how it uses the powerful hardware efficiently.

There is also an engine competition: TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship). Stockfish 8 was the champion of the latest season 9.

Should my child play chess everyday?

1/10/2017

The answer is definitely yes.

If s/he wants to grow in chess, s/he has to play it everyday, especially in the beginning. S/he can read books, or s/he can solve puzzles, but there is nothing that could replace playing. S/he applys what s/he learns to playing, and s/he gains experience from playing. S/he also learns lessons from her/his playing. How often s/he plays determines how fast s/he could progress, at least in the beginner stage. This is like any other sports.

Do you or does s/he care about win or lose? No, s/he should not. S/he gets experience by doing it. The more s/he does, the more familiar s/he becomes. Later, s/he would think about how to improve.

If s/he doesn't play, her/his knowledge is just on the book, not in her/his mind.

So, kindly nudge your child to play, everyday.

My son loses a lot in tournaments, and cries a lot. What should I do?

1/4/2017

Short answer: bring him to more tournaments until he gets numb.

Losing is a very normal phenomenon in chess, especailly for beginners. If one doesn't lose, one will not progress. There is definitely no need to worry. It's same as a baby learns to walk. S/he would fall down a lot, but s/he will also stand up again. What you need to do is encouraging her/him to try again. No judgement, just encouragement. You don't comment that s/he falls gracefully or clumsily. You don't laugh or scold. You just ask her/him to try again. Very natural. Nothing fancy.

Same should happen in chess. When your child loses, give her/him a hug. Tell her/him there will be another game, another tournament. S/he will win another day. Come back and try again. Commenting is useless. Leave that job to her/his coach. Believe that our kids all want to win. They did their best. They will try again and do better.

Soon he will stop crying, and soon he will start to win.

Holiday greeting!

12/28/2016

Thank you all for reading my blog in last two years. It became the most popluar site for chess parents to look for resources and help.

I highly recommend you check out the index page, which will save you some time to look back.

In the new year, I plan to add more features to my blog, and follow a publishing schedule so I myself can have some deadline. Please check back periodically. You can also like our Facebook page to get more notifications on your Facebook.

If you have any questions about chess, please email me or add comments to any of these posts. Without your questions, I have nothing to write about.

Thank you again!

Happy New Year!

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.

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

11/10/2016

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.

Why the fundamental skills are critical for chess development?

11/7/2016

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

Author

Coach Andy
Princeton Chess Academy

Having been a chess parent for more than 10 years himself, Coach Andy will answer questions about chess, chess education, scholastic chess for chess parents from his own experience and lessons.

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