How To Learn Chess Rapidly

Learning Chess The Easy Way

vi/25/2020 – Chess is fun and chess should be fun! But a lot of people exercise not have particularly addicted memories of their first steps in chess. Andy Trattner knows how to teach beginners and he has a few ideas how to make chess fun from the very beginning. | Photos: Andrew Trattner

Learning Chess The Easy Fashion

Unless you're a competitive chess histrion, you lot probably concord a number of misconceptions about the game.

Y'all might think chess players are smart people, or that learning to play chess well is correlated with intelligence. You might think chess is hard, or that yous hopelessly suck, and it's an impossibly tall job to consistently beat that one friend or relative who is the reigning champ. You might think chess is boring, that it's an activity you're not well suited for.

I used to recollect all of these things. I was wrong.

My dad taught me chess when I was 5 or six years old. He did it in the same boring way that virtually dads teach anything. Get-go, he told me a bunch of stuff. We went through each piece and how information technology moves. He laboriously enumerated the rules of turn-taking and capturing and checkmate.

Adjacent, nosotros tried playing a game. This may have taken place many months afterward. I was probably too frustrated learning a million arbitrary piece movements to play a weird, annoyingly complicated board game with my male parent in the offset sitting.

And of grade, playing the game felt more like a task than a reward. I would be absolutely clobbered on the board and often told I was explicitly wrong or implicitly stupid for missing obvious things. "Ah, did you consider this move son? Or what happens if y'all endeavor this instead?" Many a dad but can't help himself in pointing out corrections a flake more than oft than others are comfortable with.

On rare occasions, I would be momentarily fooled by my dad'south goofy playacting. If he allow me win or inconspicuously guided me to capture a piece, I felt accomplished. I'd entertain brief hopes that there might exist an easy route to meliorate results. Perhaps my feeble trivial brain could withstand the cold crushing complexity, the labyrinthine logic of chess. Such hopes would die as soon equally I was reminded of our condition roles as father and son, chess authority versus chess learner.

Finally, inevitably, I would leave the board feeling substantially humiliated. This feeling was often accompanied past a fit of childish rage, an "I hate you, I detest chess" monologue, and perhaps some pieces flying across the room. In hindsight, I could have skipped the chess entirely, reclaiming my precious youth instead past flinging things and grin while gleefully shouting wingardium leviosa!

Despite whatever tricks and treats my dad attempted to leverage for the sake of the well-intentioned chess interaction, information technology ever felt mildly painful. And this dynamic connected for years. I remained trapped in "chess learning for normal people" mode until I was twice my starting historic period. I approximate in that location are far worse things out in that location, but still, it wasn't the best—it was the hard fashion.

Yous've probably experienced this mode of learning in your life, whether it'due south with a parent, teacher, pupil, friend, or romantic partner. The action varies—cooking, painting, video games, cleaning, bird watching, golf game—just the outcome rarely deviates. The teacher fails to inspire, and the pupil is left with a lingering sense of "I'd prefer if we didn't do that." Information technology's simply not fun; information technology'southward an unpleasant situation to be avoided or escaped.

I found my fashion out in middle school, when a group of friends started to play chess in the cafeteria during indoor recess on rainy days. We competed equally peers, exploring the game together. In that location was a lot more pure joy, a lot more dynamism and engaged interaction, when we played. And we stumbled upon a real treasure in the team chess variant known as bughouse.

In bughouse, you pass captured pieces to your partner for them to place at leisure on their board. The game is fast-paced, exotic, and heady when compared with normal chess. In that location are wild, surprising swings when a slice lands in the center of the opponent's ground forces, as if information technology were an alien beamed downwardly from outer space. Add to that the competitive aspect of middle schoolers rotating in and out on teams, male monarch-of-the-loma style, and you lot can quickly see how this game was more addictive than many multiplayer video games.

MVL and Carlsen play some bughouse against Caruana and Aronian

The fun of bughouse led to my joining the chess club in high school. With a newly cemented foundation of enthusiasm, I learned to study chess in earnest and play in serious competitions. Notably, it was only after a couple years of devoted study and play that I offset began to appreciate the life skills and metaphors that chess is so publicly symbolic of.

The importance of planning for the future, of evaluating options and making tough decisions, staying calm under pressure, and working difficult to improve oneself—all these things do not come in a rush to the student of chess. In fact, they probably come much sooner to people learning almost whatsoever other sport or activity!

With basketball, yous acquire to handle the ball, laissez passer information technology around, and refine your aim towards the hoop. The mechanics can take a while, but you sympathize the contours of the journey adequately immediately with your trunk. Then you enroll in the journey and learn from information technology within that framework. You lot tin can see how sports relate to life, teamwork, discipline, planning, et cetera adequately immediately after a couple practice sessions with a motorcoach or training partner. Because you're not so hung up on the rules or environment.

Chess is different. You typically have to spend a ton of time learning the physics of chess starting time! It takes many weeks if not months for a dedicated pupil of the game to transition from "novice" to "beginner" level. In all my years playing chess with family every bit a kid, I never learned the cadre basic skills, let alone the full fancy rules of en passant or castling. I would say I, like many others (and mayhap yous) stayed a chess-exposed novice for a very long time without any meaning progress or joy.

Reflecting on this journey, I now see how information technology could accept been accelerated. I could accept bypassed the initial years by jumping direct into the eye school peer experience of fun chess and bughouse. Then I could have moved more quickly to the high school claiming of getting intimate with the game.

We'll have to relieve the full story of my chess career for another time, just I volition mention one more interesting milestone—when I became the male parent figure in high school, trying and failing to teach chess to my little sister! It was hard to convey why chess was interesting at all, and I at present deeply regret crushing her without mercy through the years. I wish I had known and then what I know at present…

Then let'south swoop in (to this ane weird cloak-and-dagger fox that doctors hate):learning chess can be done quickly and transformatively through minigames! The starting place is Bishops + Rooks.

This is a minigame in which white moves a bishop first, then black moves a rook, and whoever captures a piece first wins. It'south a depict with best play, but getting to that skill level may accept a second grader a month of lessons. During this time, she volition get a ton of instructive value from playing the minigame once more and once again.

I could say a lot more almost Bishops + Rooks and how to best utilize this teaching tool. Feel free to check out my written guide here and explainer videos hither! There'due south a whole suite of such content, including follow-on minigames like knight battleship, pawn wars, zombie chess, and more. For the purposes of this essay, I'll requite one additional example here then wrap up with some concluding takeaways.

This minigame teaches Male monarch Opposition, and information technology's a good starting place for adults who are quick to chief Bishops + Rooks. I don't recommend it for younger kids until they are enthusiastic tournament players, since the practise can feel too abstract and wearisome.

As with Bishops + Rooks, standard piece movement rules apply, just the objective isn't checkmate. Instead, white tries to get the king to a8, b8, or c8 while blackness'south goal is to block this from happening with her male monarch. There's a forced win for white that makes beautiful employ of the real-game principle called "distant opposition" which I won't explain hither but encourage y'all to explore…you tin observe enough of practice online.

I've constitute playing this minigame with interested or even tentative friends to exist extremely rewarding. Post-obit upwards with rex and pawn vs king scenarios and then queen / rook checkmates ordinarily leads to an enlightening "aha" experience. The most common reaction is, "I've never seen chess like this earlier."

Starting with a couple pieces instead of a complete set is crucial to educational activity and learning chess the easy fashion. With these minigames, novices have a well-defined environment in which they quickly come to grapple with the fundamental skill of chess: finding options, thinking through them rigorously, and deciding on reasonable ones—in a give-and-take, strategy.

The "like shooting fish in a barrel fashion" isn't meant to imply that learning chess or strategic thinking is easy. Rather, minigames are more understandable bite-sized chunks to chew on and engage with, when compared with traditional rote verbal methods that try and fail to teach everything at once.

Another benefit is the level playing field minigames create. An advanced friend and her beginner friend can appoint in a realm where both sides stand up a chance at winning, or at least not losing horribly and ambiguously. The person with less chess feel feels comfortable making mistakes considering it'southward more than obvious how they themselves can notice and learn from them. That's empowering.

Lectures never take this tangible, experiential quality, which is why I believe it'south best to dive into silently playing minigames as shortly as possible. The more rules there are to explain and memorize up-front end, the more probable information technology is that folks end upwards in the sorry state of "chess learning for normal people". Don't make people learn chess the difficult way!

If y'all're in the teacher'south seat, with anybody simply specially with immature children, please comport in mind that they may exist unfamiliar with the process of navigating on their own. Chess can be 1 of the first experiences in a person's life when they really get to meet the complete physics of a contained situation and to operate fully autonomously inside such an environs.

Exist extra patient, watch silently, and let them explore on their own equally much as possible. Allow the outcome of the game to teach them their mistakes. Y'all don't need to bespeak out the correct answers. Give them a fun time and the opportunity to play again. Debrief with questions like "what did you lot learn from playing today or discover that was interesting to you?" Information technology's really wonderful how many doors open with this kind of self-propelled learning journey and accompanying self-confidence gains.

The truth is that chess can and should exist stimulating and fun and empowering, from the beginning. It's inherently interactive, and although it's a zilch-sum competition over the board, it's more importantly a series of tractable challenges which provide a medium for self-improvement and social appointment.

In the era of COVID-19, humankind is riding the swelling wave of screens and isolation. Now more than ever, it'southward especially important to take these kinds of healthy media of commutation and growth with our friends, families, and children.

Observe a partner and try out a minigame! Everyone can feel and capeesh what it ways when I (and others) retrieve of chess fondly. It's all most having the right tools and mindset to get started on a rainy day in a fun, approachable way.

This article first appeared at https://andytrattner.com/chess-the-easy-style.html. Republished with kind permission.

Andy Trattner Andy is an skillful-level player who has taught chess to hundreds of students, ranging from pre-K to adults. He has developed curriculum on the teaching staff of the Saint Louis Chess Club, the Mechanic'southward Institute, and e3 Civic High.