Learning Chess

/>My nephew celebrated his seventh birthday a few days ago. For his birthday gift I decided to buy him a chess set. I felt that it was a good time to learn how to play. On my part, this is a fairly long term commitment because I was the only one in my family who plays chess. So, it would be up to me to teach him how to play and also to play a game with him from time to time.

Today, I taught him how to play. Seeing that I have never actually been through a formal training method, I decided to just make stuff up as I went along. This was the scheme that I had come up with.

1. I started by introducing the different chess pieces to him and also their different values. I know that some people will say that the values do not reflect the actual strength of the pieces but I felt that this was the easiest way to teach a kid how to evaluate simple situations, by the numbers.
2. Then, I showed him how each piece moved and captured other pieces. I kept the rules simple and didn’t include more obscure situations such as en passant or even the rather common castling move. I’ll keep these other things for a later time.
3. Next, I wanted to test his understanding of the what I had already taught him and also teach him how to evaluate simple chess positions. I did this by setting up some simple scenarios. Then, I would ask him what the problem was, what are the different possible moves, and what were the consequences of each move.
4. In each situation, he had to work out what the final points were after the different pieces were captured. To keep things simple, I limited it to only a 2 move depth. So, in the end, he would choose the best move to make based on the points. I know that this isn’t always the case, but it is the simplest way of teaching chess in the beginning. Strategy would have to come later.
5. Finally, we had an actual match where I played white and he played black. When he made any move, I would ask him why he decided to make the move and what would he gain or lose by making each move. I would also explain every single move that I made and showed him the thought process that went into making each move.
6. In the end, I ended up playing both white and black, by actually showing him the different possible moves he could make and introducing a couple of new strategies such as forks and pins. All in all, I felt that it was a fairly good attacking game with neither side ever gaining a serious upper hand. After about an hour, he lost focus and I ended up playing the game myself.

All in all, I felt that it was good to play a familiar game again, after so many years. Chess is one of those few board games that I have always liked playing. When I was little, I have always dreamed of owning a fine chess set and board. Now that I can afford one, I am merely waiting for the right time to buy one. I had actually come across a good one while I was in Salzburg but the prospect of transporting it around for the rest of my holiday did not particularly appeal to me.

I have also realised that teaching the game is a very good way of improving my game. When playing the game, one mainly sees the board from one side but while teaching it, I had to see the board from both sides. So, I ended up making a lot of rather risky moves because I was interested in seeing where the game would go.

So, I guess that I will have to play a few more rounds with him to ensure that he has learned all the basic rules. Then I plan to introduce him to playing chess on computers so that he can gain some practice with beating the computer. I would need to find a chess software for windows that can have its AI calibrated to different levels. He needs to be able to win a game once in a while for him to build his confidence.