chess club

I've been tasked with starting a chess club simply due to the fact that I beat the teaching supervisor at chess. As you can see from my profile I'm not all that good. Preperations are all ready and I've stocked the shelves with a few copies of several different books. But I'm worried that my lack of true experience will disuade some students. Because of internet issues over here (china) I cant upgrade on this site so what other recommendations do you have for me? Please keep in mind I have another week to prepare and a max of... 18 hours (most of that personal time). Also the age range is from 12 to 18. So far about 30 kids have signed up and I have 2 experienced chess kids that will help with small group coaching. resources for coaches, ideas for ranking, things like that would all be welcome.

A chess club is mainly a meeting place for chess. Chess coaching is something entirely different.

At each meeting show them a miniature, talk about some of the tactics or mating paterns or whatever in the game a little and then play for the rest of the time.  Easy peasy.

I recommend that you study/solve tactical problems like pin,fork,skewer, double attack, mate problems etc. Now if you get familiar with this, you can set up tactical problems for your members. Beginner players usualy enjoy doing mate in one, mate in 2 or mate in 3 problems. They also enjoy solving tactical motifs like pin, fork etc.

Learn basic opening principles, endgames and strategy. A good resource book for basic tactics,endgames and opening principle is Winning Chess Strategy for Kids by Coackley. Good books for tactical puzzles are Chess Tactics for Champion by Polgar and World's Champion Guide to Chess by Polgar. Tactics time book is also a good one.

Do you already have chess clocks? You should also have chess clocks for your club.

Maybe start off with this: 

Then continue with this: 

Then continue with this: 

Obviously that should be intergrated in amongst playing games as well.  But they should enjoy "winning" these endgames. 

The real enjoyment will come when they start winning real matches, using these techniques that they have learnt in these endgames. 

The reason why I selected those endgames, are simply because they are easy.  In fact they are the easiest things to do in chess, so I would say for that reason they are the most important, simply because nearly everyone else will know them. 

Pins, forks, skewers etc, are all important, but winning won matches, is what I would do.  Start at the endgame. 

Yeah start teaching them with those easy endgame mates. Then after that, show them basic matting patterns. Once they grasp mate positions, make them  solve easy mate in one and two positions. After this, teach them tactical motifs that helps win material or mate the king. These motifs are pin, fork, skewer, discovery etc. Once they grasp these motifs, give them  problems for each motifs.

Once they got better at basic tactics, increase the difficulty of the puzzles.

great suggestions everyone. thank you. looks like this will be a learning experience for me as well. we juts broke passed 40 students today and three of the new students are great players. 5 students who are able and willing to help out. everythings coming together. hopefully the school will aprove my request to use the cafeteria though.... otherwise ill have to split the group in 2... and ask a teacher to supervise another group.... gah.

firat day no problem. kids parents and a few teachers that participated loved it

Thats good.  So what did you do? 

history of chess followed by basic rules and tactics then a few games of chess. my favorite being partner chess. you move, opponent moves, your teammate moves, opponents teammate moves. gave them tons of different options though, even threw in a few chess variations and the like. though someone else brought 3D chess much harder to wrap my mind around. wrapped up with club info leaflets because their quick and to the point and i didnt want to waste time explaing stuff that everyone probably already figured out.

Additional supplamental material that you can teach on your club. They are easy and fun.

King and Queen vs lone king mate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3SVorXyxkw

Queen vs Pawn Near Promotion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCwZAw8m85A

King and Pawn vs King

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHEozydrKdU

we covered some mating patterns and a lot of different tactics along with a couple openings. next week we will be teaching direct and indirect control of the center in the opening phase. which is why im going through tons of openings. indian defense, sicillian defense, queens gambit and many, many more.

we covered some mating patterns and a lot of different tactics along with a couple openings. next week we will be teaching direct and indirect control of the center in the opening phase. which is why im going through tons of openings. indian defense, sicillian defense, queens gambit and many, many more.

For those who were following, after a month or so the chess clubs going pretty well. There are 24 students who have come to every meeting and usually there's a good 30 or so students. We've worked out a ladder system and setup school sponsored monthly tourneys with chess related prizes. first tourneys prize will be a very attractive chess board with a runner up travelers chess set.

Nice to hear that the club is doing pretty well.

I will just share these fun exercise that you can set up in your club. It can improve visualization of starting out players.

http://www.danheisman.com/Articles/Exercises.html

Honestly most of the puzzles and exercises are not done by me anymore. I'm more of a... coordinator/supervisor at this point. But I'm learning. I can calculate the best moves but it takes me forever. Either I'm playing standard or I'll mess up.