Blog Archives - Chess Parents FAQs

Why should my child play in tournaments?

6/30/2015

After a student has played chess for a few months, this critical question comes up naturally, either because some fellow students are playing in tournaments or because the parents hear something about tournaments.

From my personal observation, 50% of the students in after-school chess clubs are not playing outside the club, neither at home nor at library. Almost everyone of them will drop out of chess when the club activity ends. Among the outside players, 40% (of the club) never play in tournaments, most of them will drop pretty soon too. Why? lack of motivation to play, study and improve. No goal, no achievement.

Only 10% are entering tournaments. Half of this 10% will continue playing in tournaments and of course continue playing chess for at least a few years. Some may have chess as his/her life-long hobby.

If you want to avoid that chess being a one-time activity in club, you should encourage your child to play in tournaments. Tournaments will provide them strong motivation to study chess further and richer enjoyment.

It's an eye-opening experience!

What should be my child's target after 2000?

6/30/2015

If your child still doesn't know his/her answer, then his/her chess education is a completely failure. Your money and his/her time and effort have been spent for nothing. That's very sad. S/he doesn't need help in chess, in contrast, s/he needs help in life most.

I wish nobody in this sad situation.

After 2000, comes 2200, Nation Master. Then 2300, 2400, 2500, etc. S/he should begin to think about getting norm to become IM or GM. S/he turns into "professional", though there is no formal ceremony and no big money coming afterward. All his/her games will be tough and long. S/he will mainly play in regional, national and international multi-day long tournaments.

How to become a USCF member?

6/29/2015

To play in a rated tournaments (almost all non-novice tournaments), your child has to be an USCF member.

The annual membership is much cheaper than any other cost related to your child's chess activities, even less than registration fee of one tournament, or tuition of one chess lesson. Therefore there is no reason to not sign up a membership is your child wants to play serious games in tournaments.

At most clubs, you can sign up membership on the spot. They have signup form and will collect the membership fee for USCF. But it's also easy to do it by yourself in 5 minutes. You may want to sign up online by yourself, because we will use the website uschess.org

which you will use a lot in future years, for searching for tournaments and checking your child's rating.

Load the uschess.org page:

on the upper-right corner, find "Join/Renew"
use the third option "If you have problems or if you you want to skip the questions and go straight to the membership webstore, click here.", which is much easier to navigate
you will see a table with the list of membership type
select the one you want and
fill in other information

Your child will become a member right away. S/he will receive a membership card in a few week.

Why can't my child self-teach him/herself, i.e., working without a coach?

6/29/2015

In fact, s/he can self-teach at various levels, some as a beginner, and some as an advanced player. Most self-teaching kids have extremely strong self-motivation to learning chess and strong work ethics. They don't like chess, instead they love chess. To them, chess is as important as lunch and dinner, maybe even more.

But most kids are not in this exetreme range. They themselves

can't know what needs to be done and at what time
can't find appropriate material to study
can't setup high enough goals for themselves
can't make their own plans
can't measure their own progress
can't tell whether they are on a wrong path
can't correct themselves quickly if they are on a wrong path
can't figure out what is blocking their progress
can't persist if their progress becomes stagnant

Therefore, they need some external help from a coach.

Even Bobby Fischer, who was famous for self-teaching himself chess and Russian (because he wanted to study Russian chess books), has a mentor, Jack Collins. All world champions and other top level tournament players hire seconds to help them train and practice.

Everybody has blind spots s/he can't see by him/herself. For beginners, there are many, maybe too many.

What are the three things we look for when analyzing any position?

6/25/2015

We always look for check, capture and threat.

For a beginner, s/he has difficulty to see check and capture, let alone threat. If s/he is not rushing, s/he would try to scan the board, from right to left, from top to bottom, and repeatedly. If s/he is patient, s/he will check every square (64 of them), every vertical line (8), every horizontal line (8), every diagonal (16). Even with such complete scan, s/he sometimes still can't see. The reason is that s/he can't connect information together and can't prioritize data. S/he wastes a lot of time on useless areas (80% of the previous scan) but skimps on the key areas. Sometimes his/her vision is so tunneled that s/he just can't see the one-move checkmate no matter how long s/he scans the board.

There is no quick way to improve his/her vision. No logical reason will help him/her understand the problem and find solution. The only possible approach is to do a lot of exercises, such as one-move checkmate. A lot, I really mean a lot, not 10 or 20, at least hundreds or thousands. They are simple and they will not help your child much with chess knowledge or strategies. But they will enable him/her see things. S/he should do the exercises in a fast-paced batches, such as 100 problems in half hour. Do them often until s/he don't miss the checkmate or capture anymore.

Threat is more difficult to see than check and capture. Many times it will take at least 2 to 3 moves. This will be a training topic in next step.

What should be my child's target after 1800?

6/24/2015

Of course it should be 2000, a great round 4-digit number. Your child will leave classes behind. S/he is an USCF Expert now and getting closer to become a master.

At this level, all games are difficult fight. There are no more low-hanging grapes anymore. Working hard "only" may not be helpful for him/her to make progress. Outside guidance from a GM or IM will bring the most benefits at this time.

There is no way to tell how long your child will stay at this level.

What is PGN?

6/23/2015

PGN is Portable Game Notation. It's a plain text format for recording games. This is most common format that almost all chess programs can accept it. Because of plain text, it's human-readable. The notations inside are mainly the algebraic notation we use for recording chess moves, plus some meta-data fields.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Game_Notation

Why chess software is important?

6/23/2015

In modern days, kids are making progress much faster than previous generations. Becoming a GM under 20 used to be a great feat 30 years ago, Kasparov became GM at age 18, now it sounds like a failure. Kids are getting at young age of 15, 14, 13, and even 12. People are no longer surprised anymore when a new record is announced.

Why? Computer! Chess software have greatly shorten kids' learning curve. If you are still working with books and board exclusively, you may want to check out this new powerful tool.

Normally a computer software that trains tactics contains more than 1000 problems. It can track your child's progress, measure his/her problem solving skills, and create quizzes with randomly selected problems to test your child under time pressure. Your child can repeat his/her practices with the software in different ways. There is no need for setting up a board, which consumes a lot time. Often, the younster already sees the solution before the position is setup on the board. There is no need to flip to the end of the book for checking answers. When your child makes a mistake, s/he will also get some hint on screen to correct his/her mistake.

How much do all these conveniences cost? $10 to $20. Not more expensive than a chess book.

There are a lot of chess software available. From my personal experience, I recommend ChessOK software. They are adapted from Russian chess books, and consists trainings from tactics, endgames, middlegames, strategies, to openings. I am working on organizing my recommandation list on the "Software" tab of this blog.

What should be my child's target after 1500?

6/22/2015

Now your child is already an advanced player. S/he him/herself should know what s/he wants to achieve with chess at this moment and what should be his/her goal.

1800 is a natural target next, which moves him/her to the top class: Class A. At that level, s/he will be considered as a strong player in most standards. S/he should be on almost all Top 100 lists of his/her age. S/he should also win some state and national champions here and there.

As a top scholastic chess player, s/he will play more large national tournaments and international tournaments.

After reaching that level, s/he definitely needs a GM or IM to help him/her further develop his/her chess career.

How do I check if my child is on a Top 100 list?

6/19/2015

As looking up rating or tournaments, you go to the official uschess.org. Follow the following steps:

On the left, select "Players and Ratings"
From the expanded list, select "Top Player Lists"
Scroll down the "By Age" section, check your child's age list

Compare the lowest rating with your child's official rating,

You will know whether your child should be on the list or not
If not, you could know how far s/he is away from getting on the list

Remember, deciding age group is using exact birth month, and the rating used may have one-month delay. So also check the age group below and above to make sure.

If you have a daughter, you can also check the Girl's lists.

If you see your child's name, congratulation! Have a small celebration!