.

[COMMENT DELETED]

YOUNG MAN. Stay in school! Learn about microbes and kilowats and Ophelia. They will help you get married one day.

I didn't become interested until my last year of high school (luckily?) but I used to draw little chess boards (draw a box and divide in half over and over until you have an 8x8 board) and work knight problems (capture the pawns in fewest number of moves) or compose simple tactics.

I heard there was some chess excercise in Czech, where they test for chess ability in youngsters by making them move the knight around the board, without being attacked by pawns on c3, c6, f3 and f6. The knight starts on a1, and must go to every square at least once, except for the pawn squares.

Two minutes and under when doing this is a sign of grandmaster talent apparantly. 

EDIT: I was just posting an exercise to do, you can try and do it without a board, but it is generally done best with the board. The Czech exercise was done with the board when testing. 

It always amazes me how people can visualise a whole chessboard in their heads, I have trouble with 4 squares let alone 64!

Seriously people, how do you do it? Share your wizardry.

Why would he ever want to get married?

In my opinion, the basic trick is that you shouldn`t visualise an actual board and pieces.All you need to do is to image their moves.A bit hard to explain...Similar to what you do when calculating tactics maybe.