Recently at my local chess club, one of the adults was trying to teach some opening ideas to a ten year old. He gave her about 25 rules to follow in the opening, and I could tell she was overwhelmed.
That made me wonder, what would be the three most important ideas in each phase of the game? This is what I came up with:
Opening
1.Develop all the pieces
2.Fight for the center
3.Castle the king to safety
Middlegame
1.Active pieces on open lines and outposts
2.Pawn breaks to open lines favorable for your pieces
3.Coordinated threats against weak points
Endgame
1.Active pieces, including the King
2.Create and promote passed pawns
3.Learn the basic draws and mates
We teach that and other “sundry information” as part of how to achieve the goals rather than as part of the goal itself. It keeps the rules simpler. We also avoid negatively worded rules (such as "Don’t do ‘x’) as they tend to inadvertently encourage ‘x’.
Nunn’s famous “loose pieces drop off” is relevant in all phases. Tactics should be foregrounded more, as more games (in chess and tic-tac-toe) are decided by trivial double attacks than by deep strategic thought.
And more games are won by queening a pawn than direct mating attack. In the endgame, Fine’s rule that the superior side should trade pieces and the inferior side should trade pawns is probably even more important than the king activity rule.
The same “active pieces” rule is repeated three times in three different ways. (We generally don’t centralize kings in the opening and rooks in the middlegame: to everything there is a season.)
I would give the 10 year old a copy of “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess”
Its a pretty rudimentary book on mostly basic mates and other really basic tactics… but it does very well to show a younger person the ideas behind postions.
There are some books designed for people that want to teach chess to youngsters. I haven’t looked at them, but from what I understand, some of the books do quite well in laying out a foundation of lessons to go through over several weeks or months that teach all sorts of chess ideas in a way that kids or even entire classes of kids can understand.
Say on the first week or two… the lessons might focus on pawns and have “pawn games” where the only pieces on the board are pawns and the kings. -As an example.
For ten year olds, the middle game section seems pretty advanced. (Of course it depends on the ten year old.)
For young kids, I would really emphasize number 3 in the endgame. I ran an unrated, local, scholastic tourney for a while, and I had to declare an awful lot of games as draws when there were two kings and a rook on the board.
I think that some of your 9 rules might require explanation equivalent to 25 rules in order for them to be of much use. What does it mean to “develop all the pieces” or to “fight for the center”?
I’m not at all sure there are 9 rules that are appropriate for all 10-year-olds, regardless of their playing level. But I’ll give it a shot:
Opening
Read some good books on standard openings (Like the Pandolfini Chess Openings: Traps and Zaps books).
To get experience playing various openings during practice, open at least a third of the time with something other than e4 when playing White, and respond to e4 at least half the time with something other than e5, and at least a quarter of the time with something other than e5 or c5, when playing Black.
Look for ways to restrict your opponent’s ability to attack.
Middlegame
Look for ways to gain a major piece advantage.
Look for ways to gain a pawn advantage.
Look for ways to expand your control of the board while restricting your opponent’s control of the board.
Endgame
Learn how to flawlessly checkmate with KQ versus K, KR versus K, KBB versus K, and KBN versus K.
Practice recognizing mating combinations (i.e., “mate in n moves” problems).
Learn how to turn pawn advantages into promotions.
It can be argued that some of these are rules for learning how to play well rather than rules for playing well. But I think this is more realistic. When it comes to openings, for example, we’re not in the 17th or the 18th or even the 19th century anymore. Standard openings have been explored in considerable detail, and every 10-year-old needs to be learning how to play them, rather than learning a set of vague rules. It’s true that advances have been made in opening theory over the past century, and will undoubtedly continue to be made over the next century. But this isn’t likely to be done by 10-year-olds!
I guess I shouldn’t have started the question with the story of instructing a 10 year old. The answers were naturally geared toward that audience. I was just explaining why I was thinking about the question.
All I really wanted to discuss was “What do you think the top 3 ideas are in each phase of the game?”
There have been some good answers so far. Any more?
That the rules need explanation is ok - it doesn’t mean that you need to expand the rules. When people learn, they clump information. Tell them the rule, tell them the detail, and then as situations arise make them talk about the detail back to you and to others; they will “label” the information and remember it. Make them name it: Develop, King Safety, Center, Prevent Opponent. That’s all they need for the heading - and the rules are “headings.”
I think there are too many nuances in the opening phase to just say “Develop your pieces” I know when I first learned, the class was told to “Develop your pieces, especially the center pawns, knights, and bishops”… which invariable led to most of the games in the classroom ending up as some sort of guccio piano opening.
Then I noticed (years later as an adult), that children will often resort to *symetrical play for at least a few games, until they realise they never win those games against stronger oppoents.
The middle game is rife with tactics. Hard to put down specific rules in playing the middle game, since it hinges so much on decent opening play. You should decide in the early in the middle games what your major plan of attack is. Could just putting pressure on one side of the board or the other, while keeping your pieces mobile enough to change to a different plan.
The endgame. For most people, just basic mates and mating patters should be more than enough. Have enough knowledge of basic mates and mating patterns, both children and adults can recognise potential patterns in the late middle game, so they can steer the game in that direction.
*there are some symetrical openings, but I meant where the player does only symetrical moves until the opponent moves in a way that makes it impossible to play a symetrical response.
“13. Repeat and repeat until student ready for basic opening rules and only if student ASKS “why”. Otherwise give no principles.”
Pedagogically, I dunno. This seems like a slow torture method.
Certainly one could work general principles into the Socratic method.
S: “Why did you take this pawn?”
T: “Generally, I always take a center pawn unless I see a good reason not to.”
[…a couple moves later…]
S: “Then why was it bad for me to take the center pawn here?”
Teacher might then explain that S was lagging in development (three tempi = one pawn rule of thumb) and demonstrates concrete refutation (such rules have many exceptions, but this position isn’t one of them).
And so on… the teaching gets worked into the post mortem. This is good, as one winds up teaching both the “rules” (exceedingly useful, but still mere guidelines) and the many exceptions.
Bill, I knew YOU would understand completely. Your S and T q&a is exactly what I meant by Socratic Method. T never explains why unless S asks why. Yes it’s a slow process.
I learned chess from an old guy rated around 1800 back in 1959. The method above is what he used. We played almost daily for 6 months. After @ 1000 games I finally won one. 3 months later we split 50/50. 3 months later I played my first rated tourney and got a provisional rating of 1850.
Of course this is best for just a single student. Be prepared to spend a lot of time. Good for parent and child. If a student can last out the process you KNOW he/she is motivated.