How to teach a kid?
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Jul 3, 2007
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great question! i would setup a position on the chessboard and have him just THINK about the best move. set a 3 minute timer and he cannot move before that timer is up. at the end of the 3 minutes if he makes the right move you reward him with a quarter (or something). if he can tell you about all of the other moves he looked at and why he didn't pick them, then give him another quarter. that will train him to start spending more time looking at individual positions. just a thought!
The most important thing when dealing with kids is to make it FUN. If you force them into studying too much when they don't want to, they will begin to resent the game. So if you can find ways for him to study and learn that is fun for him, that is perfect. Erik has a good idea with goals/rewards. Positive reinforcement (in my experience) is the way to go. I also suggest you get him playing against other kids. When he can compete with other kids his age, he will want to stick with it more. There are tons of great scholastic chess programs around the country, so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding one for your son. Good luck!
you should improve your game so you can give him a challenge and dont blunder.
Yep, I'm the lazy chess dad. Have an 8 year old that loves to play the game and I am willing to let him go as far as he wants within limits. I'm trying to figure out a good set of stuff that he needs to learn as handing him a book and saying "Go read this" is not quite going to work.
He knows the rules of moving the pieces, basic attacks (i.e. skewers, pins, double attacks, forks etc), some 1 step mating patterns, opening principles and I am having him do some free puzzles that I downloaded.
Next is 2 step mates puzzles and then the Chess For Beginners CD. He gets to play on ChessMaster 9 but he literally "plays" with the different characters and their styles rather than "train" or challenge himself. I'm also tempted to get Polgar's 5334 book for him.
Biggest problem - he likes to play too fast but I think that will fix itself with time. He is better than I am in the sense that he blunders a lot less than I do - and I blunder a lot. Those puzzles seem to be making him a better player already unless I am imagining things. When I play him, I try to create interesting difficulties for him.
So, I'm asking for suggestions as to what you guys think his next steps should be.