What to do to save (young?) amateurs from themselves.

I have only recently returned to chess (after 50 years!), but have studied Waitskin's Chessmaster and am proceeding through the lessons on Chess.com.

I have played only a few games and reached 1200. But I believe that I have some important observations, especially for (young?) amateurs if they wish not to become so demolarlised as to give up chess altogether. Three observations:

1. Why would you attack with just Queen and Bishop, and totally ignore your development, while allowing your opponent to get on with his?

2. Why would you expose your Queen to your oponent's attack, as if he is going to respect your wishes to leave his Queen alone?

3. Similarly, why would you place the Queen in front of an uncastled King, and not expect a Rook to attack your Queen, pinned as it is to the King?

4. Why waste 3 moves stepping the A7 pawn all the way to A4, to no advantage and allowing your opponent to have a free hand in development?

I am presuming that these players are young and using their parent's subscription to Chess.com - if it was their money, maybe they would use it more wisely.

In any case, my concern is that they have entered into live games where they will be wiped from the board, which could be very demoralising. We all lose because we lose people who may have developed further interest in chess.

I do not have an unanswerable solution. Maybe a basic 1-2 page of introductory "do's and don'ts" would help. I do not advocate censorship, but maybe a brief but pertinent "yes and no" questionaire would also be useful, before they passed the test to participate in live games.

But, as the sayinying goes, you can lead a horse to the water of chess education, but you cannot make him drink it!

Any ideas?

Your intentions are good geoff, but the truth of the matter is that people stay at my rating or below because of laziness or lack of interest. Neither of those qualities make good students so I wouldn't worry about those folks all that much. As for me, I probably just resign too much. Lol

As for three - I do it, as long as I know I can block it by interceding with another piece on demand, or move the pinnable piece or what it's pinned to before the opponent can pin :-)

Reflectivist,

Waitskin has a classic exercise in his Chessmaster series, where the interceding piece can be removed 1) by doubling up with a Queen or another Rook behind the primary  attacking Rook, or attacking the interceding piece with a Bishop, meaning the Rook can take it and your Queen cannot respond with itself being captured. Either way, the defender will lose material. Best is to move the King to safety and try to save your Queen.

My parents pay for my account.

My dad has a free account.

I am 1800+ in online, while he is <1200.

I don't know what playing on an account paid for by parents has to do with anything.

I take chess very seriously and I doubt children at the 1200 level, with all due respect, take chess as seriously as you do.

Stevieblues,

Some of the guidelines to good (if not reasonable) chess play are so basic.

Seek to control the centre of the board (your Pawns), develop your pieces (Knights and Bishops), do not bring the Queen out early (rather place it on the 2nd/7th rank), castle for King safety, so that your Rooks are finally connected), place a Rook on an open file when one appears, maintain King safety (don't push King pawns), etc.

Is that so hard? You do not need to know 1001 openings if you abide by these principles - we are not GMs!

Taylorgang73,

I am sure that you educate your children. However, some of the games in which I have played, where horrific strategic and tactical blunders have been made and my (young?) opponent has been wiped out, must be demoralising for them.

I am simply exploring what can be done to improve their basic chess understanding, lest we lose them from the chess community. See my reply to Stevieblues.

They do not have to go through the detailed Chessmentor course. However, teaching the principles is not that complicated in order to provide some basic understanding of what to do when they sit in front of a chess board.

I am 15 geoffalford and I'm glad that you care about the game as much as I do. If you want to teach children, teach children.

Unfortunately, we are human and thus we make mistakes. That is why I'm still a 1700 here. Noone can simply "solve" someone else's blunders by just ranting about it on the forums. Frankly,it's not your problem.

Please teach kids chess it's one of the greatest gifts made by man himself :)

I agree with your principles geoff. Why not try making a monthly chess.com blog for beginners?

As obvious and straightforward as this answer may seem, I'll share it anyway. If the chess player wants to get better then they will figure out their mistakes and learn from them. They really need to learn by making the mistakes and seeing the consequences. We are able to be paired with our own rating on this website so I don't see the benefit in a barrier to entry.

Congrats on coming back to play chess!!!!!! I'm so happy for you ^^

geoff, I recognise those mistakes, because I frequently made them myself and yes it was very demoralising to be wiped off the board because of them. That was before I learned the importance of tactics, which should be the starting point for all beginners to learn. Might I recommend a resource that helped me greatly? It's Ward Farnsworth's "Predator at the Chessboard". You might have heard of it, you can view it for free, just google it.

~ I realise my tone seems to be implying I think geoff is the novice, which for the record is not true.

Just try to help:

1. King : the most valuable piece, yet weak. It's better protected by pawns than by the Queen.

2. Queen: the most powerful piece.

3. Rooks : rank 3rd, very powerful in attacking opponent position.

4. Bishops : can only occupy one of the colors.

5. Knights : move strangely, yet cover squares around it.

6. Pawns : the least valuable pieces, except in endgame. Duty: build barricade and protect the king. March to promotion.

I found this from Chess.com in 2011. All should read it.

http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-principles-of-the-opening