Of course you see the solution immediately....

...but can you imagine carelessly missing this shot (or, even worse, allowing it) in a tournament game?

White to play and win

Once again, this is from  Winning Chess Exercises For Kids, a fabulous workbook for advanced beginners!

The Pillsbury mate

Another exercise from Jeff Coakley's Winning Chess Exercises For Kids.

 White to play and mate

Be honest: did you have to calculate the solution, or did you solve it instantly because you knew the mating pattern?  (But please don't ask the author of this blog entry to be honest.)

Have I mentioned that I love this book?

The book in question is Jeff Coakley's Winning Chess Exercises For Kids.

 White to play: what's White's best move?

 

In real life, successful tactics don't always give you a won game, but only a slightly superior position.

A great deal of endgame wisdom condensed into one position

Jeff Coakley's Winning Chess Exercises For Kids  delivers a healthy dose of endgame wisdom along with the tactical exercises.

White to play and win 

In the general case, are rook endings easy to win?

Easy combination with several cute points

We're cribbing once again from Jeff Coakley's Winning Chess Exercises For Kids

White to play and win material

Defenders need to calculate, too

A simple but pleasing example from the very first quiz page of Jeff Coakley's Winning Chess Exercises For Kids.  (You may not have realized that you're teaching your students an introduction to geometry!)

 White to play: what's White's best move?

More from my favorite

At the risk of repeating myself: if you are teaching advanced beginners (students above USCF 800) and you can afford 30 clams, you must stop what you are doing and buy Winning Chess Exercises For Kids right now!  (No, I'm not getting a commission!)

Another sample:

 White to play and win material

Those of you strong enough to see the correct solution immediately might not notice that there are two (!) traps in an alternative variation that looks completely plausible to beginners.

The one beginner's book you absolutely MUST buy!

I had never heard of Jeff Coakley before reading teaching guru Elizabeth Vicary's blog.   Follow this link to get some of Coakley's wonderful free chess lesson plans (a software download is required).

If you are teaching advanced beginners (students above USCF 800) and you can afford 30 clams, you must stop what you are doing and buy Winning Chess Exercises For Kids right now!  (The linked site is Canadian: I bought the book on Amazon last month, but they seem to be out of inventory at the moment.)  Be forewarned that these problems are far too difficult for players below USCF 600, and be careful to order the right title (Coakley has authored several books with similar titles: another book, Winning Chess Puzzles for Kids, is a tactics primer for true beginners.)

 

In the introduction to Winning Chess Exercises for Kids, Coakley promises, "This is at least a year's worth of material," and he delivers!  There are 100 exercise sheets in the book: each sheet is a quiz with nine diagrams: three mates, three combinations to win material, and three "find the best move" problems that develop defensive, middlegame, and endgame skills.  At the bottom of the page, there's a question generally designed to make students think about the way the pieces work. (For example: "What is the most total squares that can be attacked by two rooks?")  Most adults would find the material challenging, but Coakley and illustrator Antoine Duff present the exercises in a kid-friendly format.  (Adults rated 1000 to 1600 may wish to work through the book for their own benefit before using it to teach!)

Over the next couple weeks, I'll post some sample problems from Winning Chess Exercises for Kids.  Here's one:

White to play and mate

Learning to count

I'm getting ready for the scholastic season, and I'm on the lookout for tactics books for beginners.  One of the best I've seen is Dan Heisman's Back to Basics: Tactics (Kindle edition available here).

Heisman argues (quite convincingly, in my opinion) that before one teaches students about pins and forks and such, one first has to teach them not to leave pieces en prise (chess speak for "giving pieces away for free") and to take your opponent's pieces when she leaves them en prise.

Sometimes the answer is rather easy:

White to play

Other things equal, the rook on g3 should eat the pawn on d3: a free pawn is a good thing!

Sometimes the answer is more complicated:

White to play

1.Raxd3 Qxd3 2.Rxd3 Rxd3 is approximately an equal exchange, so the correct answer is "It depends."  (Heisman provides the reader with a more sophisticated point-count system, still suitable for advanced beginners, that suggests that in the general case, the exchange is good for White.)

And sometimes the answer is surprisingly subtle:

White to play

Is the Black pawn safe?  (Three attackers, three defenders)

There are of course other pieces on the board.  To answer Heisman's question, just concentrate on these seven pieces; you may assume that when the missing pieces are taken into consideration, material is equal.

I'll have a few more examples from Heisman in the coming days....

Point-count chess

The object of the game is checkmate, so all point-count systems are rules of thumb at best.  But the "primitive" values we teach beginners are surprisingly useful: bishops and knights are worth 3 pawns, the rook is worth 5 pawns, and the queen is worth 9 pawns.

Some years ago, IM (now GM) Larry Kaufman slightly revised these rules of thumb based on empirical data.  I just happened across the article today while looking up something else: it's still fascinating.

To summarize Kaufman's improved rules of thumb: bishops and knights are worth 3¼ pawns (but add ½ pawn for the bishop pair), rooks are still worth 5 pawns, and the queen is worth 9¾ pawns.

What tactic is more basic than pins and forks?

Dan Heisman (whose Chess Cafe column is wonderful reading for beginners and their teachers) has argued that teaching beginners to count is the indispensable first step in teaching tactics.

Blog contributor Vince Hart, who has been working with the Prospect High School chess team for the past nine years, emphasizes piece safety with his team, and points us to a wonderful Heisman column on the subject.

Tactics quiz for advanced beginners...and beyond

Dan Heisman's quiz may be too hard for true beginners. It's drawn from John Bain's Chess Tactics for Students (strangely out of print, but used copies can be found on the Intertubes).

Get out your stopwatches, read Dan Heisman's instructions before you begin, and play along! (Yes, I scored 12 out of 12, no, I wasn't as fast as I should have been, yes, I saw the dual solution. The easiest problem was the one that took me the longest.)

Here's an earlier Heisman quiz with the same format.

Thanks to Dan Heisman for pointing out that Chess Tactics for Students can be ordered directly from John Bain.

GreenCastleBlock demonstrates the basic checkmates

Another nice YouTube video from Matt Pullin!

What is zugzwang?

For the answer to this question, see the Kavalek column.

We take turns in chess: first White moves, then Black, then White....  Usually, "having the move" is a big advantage: if both sides are threatening mate, you would like it to be your move!  

Whoever moves first, wins

I hope it's my turn!

This is particularly true in the opening: when we speak of tempo (plural "tempi"), we're often talking about getting  your pieces into battle more quickly than your opponent does.  Having the move can only help!  If you look at the three Marshall Defense traps that Frederick posted earlier this week, you'll see that White gained one or more tempi by forcing Black to recapture the d5 pawn, then retreat the recapturing piece.  If you move four pieces out with your first moves and I've only moved one piece out, then you've gained three tempi on me!  It's a little more complicated than that, but this gives you an idea....

But sometimes (more frequently than most chessplayers realize), having the moving is a burden, not a privilege.

White to play

A complicated position!

I remember trying to explain the king and rook versus king mate to elementary students.  They found this position difficult, so I asked their parents to help.  The parents were confused, too!

First, let's pretend it's Black's move:

• How many legal moves does Black have?
• In each case (heh!), can you find White's best reply?

Now let's look at the position with White to move:

• What is the fastest way for White to win?

And now...let's (temporarily) CHANGE THE RULES OF CHESS so that you don't have to move when it's your turn!  (Instead, either player can just say "pass" and skip a turn.)

• With White to play, what is the fastest way for White to win this position?

One could ask the very same series of questions about another complicated position:

White to play

Another complicated position!

(Remember that the White pawns generally travel "up" the page (or in this case, the screen) and Black pawns travel "down": the queening square for the d6 pawn is d8.)

No answers for the time being: try to figure this out yourselves!

Learn to play chess at Kelly Library, 6151 S. Normal, Chicago

Every Tuesday and Thursday (at least through the end of April) at 1 to 3 p.m., at Chicago Public Library's Kelly Library, 6151 S. Normal, in Chicago.

The library is convenient for folks in Washington Park / West Engelwood: more info here.


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Domination for beginners

It's not what you think! When one of our pieces takes all (or virtually all) squares away from its enemy counterpart, we say that our piece dominates the enemy piece.

White to play: the Bd5 dominates the Nd8

The Kc6 dominates the Na8

The poor Na8 has no legal moves, and the White king can eat at his leisure.

So knights are weak and pathetic, right?

Black to play and win

 
Here's another goodie from Beginning Chess.

For absolute beginners

White to play and win

From Bruce Pandolfini's Beginning Chess: Over 300 Elementary Problems for Players New to the Game.  (These "simple" positions make it easier for us to understand the relations between the pieces; enabling us to avoid blundering into mate in one.)

Did Ben Kingsley ever discuss this position?

White to play and win

With obligatory plug for Bruce Pandolfini's Beginning Chess.

eBay Giving Works

Do-gooders and Scrooges unite!  You can save a few bucks and help a charity by buying used beginners' books through eBay Giving Works.  For example, Pandolfini's Beginning Chess currently sells for a reasonable $11.70 plus shipping on Amazon.  However, Goodwill Grand Rapids is currently selling a copy for $4.99, postpaid.  (My copy came from the Goodwill in St. Paul, Minnesota, also for $4.99.)

Such a deal, and the proceeds go to a worthy cause.

Bruce Pandolfini's Beginning Chess

If you're looking for chess books for beginners this holiday season, Bruce Pandolfini's Beginning Chess: Over 300 Elementary Problems for Players New to the Game definitely belongs in the mix.  It's a good first, second, or third book for young players..

My sister-in-law's brother (who's not a patzer) had the good sense to give this book to our nephew the beginner.  So Nephew and I spent a couple hours this summer working through several  chapters.  Even I enjoyed Pandolfini's selections: he has a gift for boiling ideas down to their simplest tactical elements.  These are simple shots (some are crude en prise exercises, others are aesthetically pleasing), but all of them are shots that win games.  Bright preteens will not find this material too difficult:.  A few may even find 90% of the positions too trivial.  That's OK: they'll discover that chess will get hard enough soon enough, and they need to practice the 10% of positions that they can't solve on sight.

White to play and win

White to play and win 

 White to play and win