Chess

The best book on chess is Art of Attack by Vladimir Vukovic.
Really captures the minutiae of the assault on the King.

 

"Who them little bald-headed motherfuckers?"

 

That book is amazing and was one of the most influential chess books I ever read, but I wouldn't recommend it until a player is at least at low-intermediate level. Some like 1400 on most online servers of 1200 USCF.

 

Do you know how hard it is to play chess with a 5-year old that knows how to move the pieces, but doesn't know strategy?
You not only have to think about your moves, but his moves (so you can tell him where to move when he asks "where should I move?), and how to throw the game (to avoid the crying of 'daddy you were supposed to let me win').

 

lol. My son plays against the computer and just tries to get all his pieces captured.

 

My son won't play the computer because the computer won't let him win.
He's 5, knows how all the pieces move, how to castle, the ABCs (Avoid, Block, Capture) of what to do when you're in check, different ways to stalemate, but not much beyond that. If we have time I try to coach him -- "if you want to put me in check, which square do you need to be on? Which piece can move there?"; "to protect your (piece) what move do you need to make?" "if you capture my knight with your queen, I'm going to capture your queen, do you want to make that move?" Most times it will take him a minute or two to see the move and then he'll do it.

One time I got him with the classic five-move checkmate and he cried.
1. pe4
2. nf3
3. ng6
4. qf3
5. qf7- checkmate

 

My 15-year-old nephew has joined the chess team at his high school (my old HS), an extremely-well regarded academic school in a university town.

Within about 2 weeks of coming out, he had risen to 3rd board on the team (there are about 15 kids altogether). Basically, he says, he can smoke pretty much everybody in the club except for the top two kids (who, rumor has it, are nationally ranked in their age group).

When I was exactly his age, it was (just after) the Summer of Fischer-Spassky and chess was all the rage. I took Fischer's book out of the library and read a few others too.

I went to a couple meetings of the chess club -- I thought I knew what I was doing. There were about 40 kids there. I was put in the corner with Clayton, Muhammad, Sidney and Jugdish (or at least their chess club equivalents). According to school gossip the chess team was a state powerhouse, supposedly they were almost always in the top 5 teams in the state.

After maybe three weeks, my record in club play was something like 1-10-1. When I got my lone win, "Jugdish" put his head down on the board and started to cry (after staring at the board in disbelief for about three minutes). That was it for me. It was pretty clear my only chance of ever making the 'starting rotation' (I think they used to have 8 players play in most official tournaments) would be an outbreak of bubonic plague that took out about the top 35 kids in the club.

Anyway my nephew played in his first interscholastic tourney a couple weeks ago, which included about six teams and some 60 players from the metro area. He finished 8th overall, behind the two badasses from his school and a few other kids from other schools.

I first heard about this whole deal last week, so when I went to visit I thought I would impress my nephew by asking him some really brainy chess questions: "What opening do you usually use with white, Ruy Lopez, Queen's Gambit or English?"

He didn't know what the hell I was talking about (to be fair, I just vaguely know myself). I might as well have been reciting Star Trek dialogue in Klingon. "Oh, I don't know any of that stuff, I just go out and wing it," he says.

Just for fun we sat down to play. When he was younger, in grade school and middle school, we used to play sometimes. When he was in grade school I could usually win, but the last couple years he usually whipped my ass in about 10 moves. This time was no exception.

 

This is the final chess column to run in The New York Times.

nyti.ms/1wjQMgl

 

Carlsen's about to go to +1 after two games in the World Championship rematch with Anand.

Anand is still an elite player, but Carlsen just gives him fits. The positions look completely ordinary and balanced after 15 moves or so, and then by move 30 Anand's pieces are ugly, uncoordinated and holding on for dear life, and it's hard to say where he went wrong. Computers can show how a couple of his moves are slightly inaccurate, but dang.

 

After becoming the first world champion to get shut out in a championship match last year, Anand finally broke through today and beat Carlsen, tying their match at 1.5-1.5 after three games. Huge, huge psychological burden lifted off him.

Love this picture after playing a key move:



The rare, perfectly executed "bored staredown."

 

My kid is 7, pretty bright, and starting to get into chess. I've bought him a couple books, and we play pretty regularly. He usually beats me, although mostly because I resign when he has way more pieces left than I do, because otherwise the game would go on all night. The problem is that I suck.

How does one go about finding a chess coach for some private lessons? I think he'd enjoy it.

 

Contact the nearest USCF club or look on chess.com for coaches nearby. Try to find someone with a reputation and history, because anyone can say they are a coach but most underestimate the teaching side.