How to Teach Your Young Child Chess

With the school year soon coming to an end, millions of children will find more free time than they know what to do with; let's have them spend some of that time on chess! 

Depending on the age and relative skill level of your kids, you'll want to work through this plan at different speeds and intensities. The following guide should help you break down the elaborate complexities of chess in such a way that even your youngest ones can learn - and love - this game!

Learning the Rules 

I recommend starting off by teaching your kid how the kings, queens, and rooks move...ONLY! The king and major pieces are all relatively easy to learn and can be played as a game. Once the child is comfortable with how the pieces move, let them play with you or with other kids in the following starting position.

One catch - don't worry about check or checkmate! The vast quantity of movement rules to absorb is more important to nail down before the "strategy" rules come in. Instead, simply say the winning side is the one that first takes their opponent's king. 

Once the child moves the pieces correctly and is itching for more, you can begin talking about bishops and knights. First, show them how the pieces move in isolation before setting up this new position to master all the pieces together. Again, no check or checkmate will be considered.

If you thought knights were tricky, just wait until you try teaching the pawns! It's my suggestion to remove all the other pieces, for a while, and just play the pawn game. Teach all pawn movements except queening and en passant, as these will be learned later. 

The goal of this game is to get a pawn to the end of the board. Before playing full-scale chess, you can add any piece your child is having trouble with to the pawn game for extra practice. 

Now that the clumsy knights, shuffling pawns, and speedy other warriors have been mastered, you can bring it all together for a "full" game of chess. Watch the youngster and call out any illegal moves, not being afraid to pause the battle to reinforce how one unit slides around the board. Don't rush the process; allow the kids to play this game for as long as required until they are confident with all the mechanics.

If junior is still having trouble with how one, or more, of the pieces, does its dance, release a MONSTER! Monster positions are where one piece, say a knight, must move around the board, capturing one piece on every turn. The opposite side does not get any moves! Try this on a real board and see if you can make it to the end!

At this point, the pivot can now take place. Now you can teach check, checkmate, and stalemate along with queening and en passant. The tricky part with checkmate is enumerating to your child that they can't take their opponent's king AND that king can't move into check (you'll get questions like, 'why do I have to move the king if they can't take me??'). Patiently work with your child until they firmly understand the concepts.

Finally, before releasing your child into the wide and wonderful world of chess, I'd encourage you to show them many checkmating patterns (if you don't know them, look up 'common checkmating patterns' on Google). Get them to master the mate in 1, have the back rank checkmate down solidly, and ensure they practice the king-queen vs. king checkmate. Here is a great example puzzle to give. 

Why do these puzzles? Many children are not confident that even if they play the perfect game, they would be able to finish the game with actual checkmate. Learning some basic patterns will imbibe them with the moxie they need to battle any opponent with confidence!

They are Playing - Now What? 

From this point out, playing regularly will keep kids practicing the rules they've learned. This might be all you need and you can now rest assured that your child will be able to entertain themselves in a new way through this game.

If you'd like them to practice seriously, maybe to begin seeing the benefits of chess study like learning patience, thinking two moves ahead, etc..., I recommend either you, a chess coach, or a website (like ChessKid.com), teach the children basic strategies! Excellent topics include opening principles, the relative value of the pieces, more tactical patterns (like forks, pins, etc...), and reinforcing already learned checkmating patterns like the king and queen vs. king. 

Hours of endless entertainment, those benefits mentioned above, and the confidence to succeed on their own can all be learned from this (not so) simple game! I hope that you invite your children to learn the great game of chess this summer!

Jonathan Rasberry - Rasberry Chess Academy