2010-11-12T02:34:27+00:00
I love chess, and teaching chess to kids. I have shared my passion for chess with kids over the years. It's holiday season for kids living next door. I have taught them chess, over the last 2 years, depending on time and availability. Mostly, they don't get time, as their focus is more on studies. And, now even I find difficult to spare time due to being father-at-home to a one year old son (loves eating chess pieces!!). So, the issue was how to make them better at chess. I found, that they keep leaving their pieces "en-prise" i.e. unprotected. So, yesterday I decided to play chess with this rule - anyone who leaves their piece unprotected, and the piece is captured, looses the game; the winner stays on to play the next opponent . This turned out to be quite an interesting experience. I cannot gauge yet, if this helped them. In the evening, I watched 2 of them play a game. It was interesting that they were being careful not to leave a piece unprotected, and also both of them had castled( have been bombarding them about King safety and using castling every-time they play). And, this had one affect- now, they were developing other pieces too. They have a habit of developing couple of pieces, and moving them around. I have added one more rule to this game - allowing higher valued piece (like Rook) to be captured by lower valued piece(like Pawn), looses the game. This experiment will continue..