Learning Chess

Interested in learning chess? This suite of articles will help you understand the game, improve your skills and ultimately master it.

Summer camp

Summer Chess Camps – Contest

Chess camps can be a great introduction to chess for beginners and give experienced players the skills they need to improve their chess results. Most chess camps are for children, but some camps are now open to adults too. FIDE Master and FIDE Trainer Kevin Bachler became involved in chess camps in 1996. This summer, Kevin is running two week-long camps, OleChess Camp in Minnesota and Caveman Chess Camp in Naperville, Illinois (Chicago area). Read on for Kevin’s tips for choosing a summer chess camp and for your chance to win a discount worth $200 to Kevin’s Caveman Chess Camp. More 🡢

Alina Markowski

U.S. Senior Women’s Championship?

Although most tournaments include men (and boys), there are occasional all-girls tournaments, female-only opens, and women’s invitational tournaments. The most prestigious invitational women’s tournaments held annually in the U.S. are the U.S. Women’s Chess Championship and the Cairns Cup, won its inaugural year (2019) by GM Valentina Gunina, age 29. The oldest, and lowest-rated, player in the 2019 Cairns Cup field was 40-year-old IM Anna Zatonskih. More 🡢

Money for Love

Money for Love

The documentary The Gentleman Driver follows four amateur race car drivers who pay to compete alongside professional drivers. Just as these amateur drivers spend money to race, one amateur chess player likewise sponsors an annual event where he plays chess with professionals. Some amateurs spend millions to compete in the sports that they love, money that they earned from being extraordinary businessmen. More 🡢

Lauren Goodkind

Win a chess book from Lauren Goodkind

Read an excerpt from a book-in-progress and then vote on a name for that book. The author of the book-in-progress, Lauren Goodkind, will pick one winner from the comments. That winner will receive a copy of her previous book 50 Poison Pieces: Solve 50 Puzzles Where the Unprotected Piece is Toxic. More 🡢

Bay Area Chess

The Knight’s Tour

The knight’s tour is recommended by GM Susan Polgar. In her free Chess Training Guide for Parents and Teachers, she wrote, “Try to jump with the Knight from one square to another covering all 64 squares on the chess board, landing only once on each square.” When I taught BayAreaChess students, some taking their first chess class and others rated up to 1000, I included the knight’s tour. More 🡢

Chess Christmas Presents

Instructional Chess Books for Christmas 2018

In this article, I review two instructional chess books published in 2018. Either one would make a great Christmas present! One is aimed at teachers, the other at kids. But both books would benefit chess players of any age, who know the rules of chess, have played several complete games, but are still learning tactical themes. More 🡢

UT Dallas chess team

Six Degrees of Separation and One Day More at the World Chess Championship

The recent World Chess Championship made me think of two iconic phrases. The first phrase is “six degrees of separation,” which states that a chain of “friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in six steps. In this article, I’ll share my two-step connections to the challenger, Fabiano Caruana, and to former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer. The second phrase is “One Day More,” which is both a song lyric and a song title from the musical Les Misérables. More 🡢

Pawn

Stop those pawns!

In an endgame, stop your opponent’s pawn or pawns from promoting. A queen ahead in an endgame will likely win. In today’s article, the winning side stops two pawns before promoting its own pawn. More 🡢