Hello D'Abate Elementary School Chess Team! I'm very excited to be starting virtual lessons with you all. Here is my plan for moving forward using chess.com as a extension to our classes:

On Mondays and Thursdays, your coaches will post puzzles and challenges which we will then reveal the answers to the following days (Tuesdays and Fridays).
On Wednesdays we will post more detailed lessons going in depth on topics like openings, opening theory, tactics, puzzles, end game theory, and much more.
On Saturdays (not tomorrow), we want to try to having class tournaments or matches. Stay tuned for more details on these.
All of these lessons will be challenge by choice, meaning it is up to you how much time you want to spend on these and how hard you want to work. We will be posting more material than you will probably be able to keep up with, so even if you get to just a few of the puzzles or lessons, that is still great! If you get bored at home, there will always be new material on this page for you to work on. I will suggest that spending some time playing chess (even for a short time) everyday will dramatically improve your skills.

To begin, I want to share one of my favorite puzzles with you. It's called the eight queens problem. The challenge is to put eight queens on a chess board so that none of them is attacking any other queen. I will warn you that this puzzle can be difficult, (it took me about ten minutes to remember an answer) but I have faith in each of you. I have three hints for you:

Begin by trying the puzzle with eight rooks instead of queens. This shouldn't be very difficult, but it might show you some shapes that the answer may look like.
Think about the only piece that queens can't move like. This might be a helpful shape.
If you want to do this puzzle on an actual chessboard, you don't need to use actual queens. Instead, use eight pawns (or any other pieces) and pretend they are queens. You could even use checkers on a checkerboard.

If you think you have a solution, make sure you check each rank (row), file (column), and diagonal to make sure no queens are attacking each other. Once you're sure you have a solution, respond to this post by either attaching a photo of your board at home or using the 'insert chess diagram' feature to show us your solution. There are twelve unique solutions to this puzzle, so if one of your teammates already posted a solution, you can keep looking for new ones. If you find one of these twelve solutions, and you're looking for an extra challenge, try to find one of the two solutions that have a queen in the corner (a1, a8, h1, or h8).

Finally, I'm attaching two boards: One is the solution that I found to the eight queens problem and one is not a solution at all: can you figure out which one is which?

Check back in on Monday for more chess puzzles and the answers to the eight queens problems.

Best,

Your Coaches

p.s. If you ever want to challenge me (or any of your teammates) to a game, go to the members tab and click the button that says challenge under my name. I'm always up for a match!

D'Abate Elementary Chess Team

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