2 weeks to get ready

Opening Principles:

1. Control the center squares – d4-e4-d5-e5

2. Develop your minor pieces toward the center – piece activity is the key

3. Castle

4. Connect your rooks

Tactics...tactics...tactics...

Pre Move Checklist:

1. Make sure all your pieces are safe. 

2. Look for forcing move: Checks, captures, threats. You want to look at ALL forcing moves (even the bad ones) this will force you look at, and see the entire board. 

3. If there are no forcing moves, you then want to remove any of your opponent’s pieces from your side of the board. 

4. If your opponent doesn’t have any of his pieces on your side of the board, then you want to improve the position of your least active piece. 

5. After each move by your opponent, ask yourself: "What is my opponent trying to do?"

I'd like to know how to get kids to play slower too!  I think it is a universal problem for most young players without any good solutions.

Gives him puzzles to solve to train him to calculate and not to move quickly. It will also improve his tactical ability.The puzzles must be not only mate puzzles. Give him also puzzles for winning material.  Maybe 4 puzzles a day is enough( have a 1 day break for puzzle solving).  Before he answer, make sure he already know the answer. If  he can't find the answer after trying for 15 minutes, show the solution. And let him solve the same problem the next day, to test if he remembers(this is building pattern recognition). You solve easy problems for pattern recogntion. You solve harder problems for calculation improvement.

If you can find him human opponents, let him play some practice games with them using a clock.

He already know the king and rook againts a lone king mate?

Tell him these tips to lessen blunders.

Always study your opponent's last move

Always look at the whole board to see piece positioning

Before you make a move, check if there is a tactical drawback.

Here is a simple example of before you make a move, check if there is a tactical drawback that you can give your son as a test. He can win the opponent's queen, but doing so, allows his opponent a back rank mate. Set up the position on the board. You can ask him question like this. Is it safe to capture the queen or there is a tactical drawback? You can modify this to your liking.  Another example. His queen is under attack and moving his queen on that square will allow his opponent to pin(is is a tactical theme) his queen against his king. You can ask him like this. Your queen is under attack, is there no tactical drawback if the place your queen in that square? Between now and then, you should give him puzzles like this because it will train your opponent to be alert tacticaly not only on his possibility, but what his opponent might to after he makes a move. The problem on giving only problems like find a mate in two or white to fork is  that possibly it will only train him to look at his own possibility without considering the tactical threats of his opponent.

If you can get a book, get Chess Tactics for Champion by Polgar(known as a good kids trainer). This book will be good for his puzzle and tactical training. What i like about this book is that it also contains defensive puzzles, pawn promotion puzzles,sibling position puzzles,destroying the king position puzzles and famous chess combinations. I am pretty sure this book will be also usefull to you. Before i used this book with my 7 years old nephew and it helps him become better at tactics.

If i had 1 view for all the times you have posted this, i would have more than naka.

Thank Goodness for the copy and paste.