Greetings all,

For my first post here, I have a question about learning and game time. I'm writing a modest report about the different benefits of the practice, the study, and the analysis of chess for children.

One of the aspects I want to develop is the difficulty, within a school club (with sessions generally lasting less than an hour), to deal with all three. To illustrate that I want to point what seems to be a fact to me, and at least a common belief on these forums, that even an adult learner needs at least a full 30 minutes to play a game that leaves them enough time for thought.

I'm looking for references to back up that argument - or possibly contradiction. I believe someone's bound to have written on the subject, or just said something about it. Any quote, reference (as well as personal opinion!) concerning the time it takes an average learner to actually give their game enough thought for it to be profitable would be much appreciated.

Many thanks in advance!

I'm not going to look it up for you, but I know that Coach Dan Heisman has expressed that opinion.  I'm sure it is somewhere on his site DanHeisman.com or maybe even in one of his articles on Chess.com.

Thanks for the hint. :)

I contacted Dan, who was very helpful and pointed me to that article:

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman135.pdf

I also found these:

http://www.geocities.ws/goodchessclub/real.txt

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman115.pdf