Latest Update on Beginners ⓇELATIONAL Method. Wait, What's That Method, Again?

A NEW PARADIGM IN EARLY CHESS EDUCATION: PIECE RELATIONSHIPS-CENTERED TEACHING AND LEARNING FOR COMPLETE BEGINNERS

As some of you may know, I have been a proponent of Relational (or Contacts, or Alt-SquareOne) method for ten years now. (I sometimes also call it the Belgrade method after my hometown.)

The new Relational approach represents a seismic shift and a paradigm revolution in how the game is introduced to absolute beginners at Chess Square One on Day One. 

And, can you believe it, it doesn't start with the moves.

Beginners come to conclusion how chessmen move on their own — without being told previously!

Sounds surreal, uh?

But once you have seen it, makes you realize how basic and elegant the Relational approach is.

Here is GM Jonathan Tisdall (the author of Improve Your Chess Now) on the Belgrade  method (my Twitter handle is ChessContact and is exactly named after piece relationships, interconnections, contacts...)

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@RoaringPawn's paradigm shift in early chess education

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So how come the Relational Alt-SquareOne teaching/learning method for beginners got its attribute?

Relationalism is a conceptual framework to understand reality that interprets the nature, and meaning of things that exist and function only as relational entities in their own universe. The Relational has thus come from the fact that all existing systems (ecosystems, organisms, society, brain, living cell, atom, game of chess, the entire universe) are created and can only be understood by the functional Relations between its elements, objects, members, chessmen.  

Every field of human activity has their paradigm, that is domain's foundational concepts, laws, or theory that provide a model from which everything else springs forth.

Paradigm revolutions always follow when the basic conceptual model has collapsed, having lost its capacity to solve acute problems. It is in these times that thinkers start questioning the field paradigm's fundamental assumptions. There are some warning signs indicating that the traditional chess teaching paradigm is ripe for replacement in the 21-st century,

(1) it is apparently afflicting millions with chess blindness, or myopia scacchistica,

(2) although a game with very simple rules, chess reveals a very high attrition (drop-out) rate due to an utter lack of meaning and understanding in the first, critical period of learning, effectively preventing the millions of chess entrants from taking wing beyond the mere moves,

(3) Nimzovich's warning statement (1929) that the traditional "moves-first" approach is fundamentally flawed.

Source: Aron Nimzovich, How I Beacame a Grandmaster, Shakhmatny Listok, 1929 (from My System, Fizkultura i Sport, Moscow, 1984)

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Source: GM Ray Keene's Nimtzowitsch: The Reappraisal).

My translation, for the first time in English in full, in The Chess Journalist of America, Vol XL No 4, Fall 2011 

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Paradigms are generally difficult to change. New ones see a slow progress and resistance before full adoption. Think Copernicus' heliocentric model that was opposed by contemporary astronomers and the authority of Church. "The fool wants to turn the world of astronomy upside down." (Luther). Sixty years after De Revolutionibus, there were only 15 scholars of astronomy supporting Copernicus' theory. A new scientific truth doesn't triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. (Max Planck) 

Seeing this inertia with scientists, it is anticipated that chess educators will also stay committed to the dominant traditional paradigm of teaching ignoring the Relational method. The new paradigm can only gain its own individual followers with different reasons for why they adopt it.

All this considered, I was very happy to receive a message from @neurodivergent ten days ago,

"Just to let you that I have been using the system you use for teaching chess for years. I never really gave it a name but my method is inspired by things like molecular chemistry, atomic and sub-atomic particles, line of sight, firing range, flanking and other battlefield tactics in ancient and medieval warfare. With your permission perhaps I could use "RELATIONAL CHESS" to name my teaching method." 

I was really glad to learn that some folks out there had been using the Relational. And it was really nice of him to ask (later, he messaged that he had found another name for his method).

There are also people who use mini-games that I personally use to teach my beginners by the Relational method. For example, 2B vs 2R is the first mini we play on Day One after a brief familiarization (10-15 minutes) with the concept of Piece Relationships.

The top blogger Andy Trattner @capatalfish3 wrote a post back in June (his only one so far, by the way) featuring 2B vs 2R.

It goes without saying that everybody can use the mini to teach. The interesting part with @capatalfish3 is that when asked how he has come up with 2B vs 2R, he replied that he had found it somewhere on a chess.com forum, but lost the reference since.

Well, the only place he could find it was my blog. And he knew it! But not only he is unscrupulous, the very way he starts the mini-game with the beginner (as shown in his video) is by first showing the moves, the traditional way, without centering on Relations! Suffice to say, this is in stark opposition to the cornerstone idea of the Relational approach.

So, really, the mendacious Trattner boy is obviously Not a Proponent of the Contacts method like @neurodivergent,

or GM Jonathan Tisdall (Twitter: gmjtis), a freelance journalist, commentator and author of the Improve Your Chess Now classic, and co-author, with GM Yasser Seirawan of Five Crowns.

or FM Carl Strugnell @Volcanator aka Karl Ouch (he was a chess-boxer), board 1 of the Wales National team who has designed instruction material for the Welsh Chess Union by the Relational approach,

or James Stripes @ziryab (Twitter: jdstripes) a historian, chess enthusiast, fly angler, and the author of the Chess Skills blog (#37 in the Top 90 Chess Blogs, Websites & Influencers in 2020),

or Richard James @falseknight (MiniChess.UK), Twitter: chesstutor) a chess teacher and educator (he has an enormous experience of teaching Junior chess, GMs Luke McShane and Jonathan Rowson were amongst his pupils at Richmond Junior Chess Club) and author of the best selling Chess for Kids and The Right Way to Teach Chess to Kids that I all wholeheartedly recommend,

or Jim Stevenson (Twitter: Jimovskytwenty3) an ex-Scottish International player and coach who wrote the reflections and review of the Belgrade method trial test,  

or Paul Barasi, a Wimbledon Chess Club's Junior coach, inventor of "Think Bunny" before moving to avoid blunders, chess enthusiast and campaigner for strategy to make chess - social or competitive - the game for everyone (Twitter: paulbarasi; you can contact Paul at pbarasi54@btinternet.com to get guest access to the members-only Wimbledon Chess Club site),

or Dirk Schmele of the Alzenau Chess Club, Germany...

The heliocentric theory had 15 supporters in sixty years. The Relational method has half that many (or few) in ten, and counting...

JOIN THE REVOLUTION!

(Please let me know if you might want to get listed as an adherent and supporter of the Alt-SquareOne movement)

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Further reading:

1) Why Chess Teachers Should Convert to Relationists

2) On Relations, the Very Fabric of Life (in PRINCIPIA SCACCHORUM, Part 11)

3) Poor Board Vision as a Common Early Symptom in Chess

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