Kids Chess and Go

Recent Updates

2011-11-05T22:15:00.000-07:00

We've settled in to life in Hong Kong. Of course the first priorities when we got here were finding a permanent place to live, getting into school and adjusting to life in a new town. I didn't really expect to find much of a chess scene here. Certainly compared to New York, you can't really call it a scene at all, but there are actually a number of instructional programs for children and a couple of organizations than run small tournaments.

I will post later about what we found. In short, the quality of instruction is sort of spotty so it takes some effort to find something that works depending on your child's level. There are only 6-8 scholastic tournaments each year but there are a few kids/parents that seem quite into it nevertheless.

Richie went to just one tournament and finished 3rd in his age group (9 yrs and under). He actually had first place in hand when his final round opponent offered a draw, but Richie declined and pushed for a win as he didn't know he only needed half a point for clear first. One thing that's different about the tournament compared to the ones in the states is that all age groups (up to high school) were in the same player pool, but results were then determined by age group. That put Richie at a bit of a disadvantage as he had to play much harder players in the end as he was winning his games early. Anyway it was a good tournament that spanned two days with 8 G/60s.

Richie is entered for another tournament in two weeks and has participated in a couple of warm-up sessions conducted by one of the organizers.

One interesting thing for Richie this year is that he will actually have some teammates. His school turns out to have had a pretty decent chess team in the past (completely by chance). There's a weekly chess club which he joined, of course, but it's completely non-instructional. They just meet to play and then the strongest players are selected to play boards 1-4 in the team competition which happens I think a few times a year.

Otherwise, Richie has not been practicing at all and only plays for fun with his classmates once a week.

I did get a chance go gauge his play during a recent visit to Australia where he played a game of blitz in the park. It was a pretty fun game. I feel a little guilty for unleashing him on unsuspecting old guys... Ah who am I kidding, I love doing that!

Moving to Hong Kong

2011-06-03T19:58:00.000-07:00

I've been very busy with a lot of change recently and haven't kept up with blogging at all. Long story short, we are relocating to Hong Kong! We did try to keep up with chess to the end, we attended what may be our last nationals in Dallas in May and in the lead up to it Richie had an opportunity to work with Ian Harris, a coach at the Chess Club of Fairfield County.

I don't really know how much chess we will play in HK. I was recently there for a business trip and investigated the local scene a bit. Chess is no where near as well organized as it is in NY and the number of players is quite small. I think it will be difficult to find local coaching of high calibre. If Richie wishes to continue playing he will probably need internet coaching. But I think the lack of local tournaments and players may negatively impact his enthusiasm.

I was expecting to find a much better Go scene than in the US, but surpisingly, I found very few established go clubs in the city. Chinese chess seems to be the only game that I saw played casually in parks and such. It's a shame because in Mainland China there are plenty of strong players.

Well I haven't done all that much investigation so maybe I'll find more when we get there.

Odd skill transference

2011-03-24T21:37:00.001-07:00

I often wonder how the brain and behavior is affected by frequent chess play at an early age. In Richie's case, I would say most of the impact has been behavioral. His school teachers, for instance, often tell me that he is very methodical/careful in his work and demonstrates a lot of patience for his age. That shouldn't really come as any surprise when you consider what it takes to play a competitive 3 hour chess game.

Yesterday, while cleaning house, I dug up some flash cards I made for Alyssa and Richie to help them understand numbers as quantities. They consist of approximately 50 cards with 1 to 50 red dot stickers arranged in random patterns. When they were around 3 years old, I would teach them the numbers by asking them to count the number of dots and as they got a little older I taught them to group into sets of 5.

Well it had been several years since I had seen these cards so I decided to trot them out and asked Richie and Alyssa to identify the quantities using the grouping tactic.

Strangely, Alyssa is still quite facile at grouping by fives and could quite easily and quickly identify any number up to 20 or so within a second or two.

But what I found quite fascinating was that Richie would stare at the card for two or three seconds and then close his eyes (!) and count with his eyes closed. I couldn't imagine why he'd do that so I asked him what he was doing and he said he was memorizing the image and counting the dots one by one... I was skeptical so I tested him several times and even removed the card from sight to make sure he wasn't peeking, but he was really doing it that way. His accuracy dropped above 18 or so, but my interest was piqued nonetheless. I can only speculate that hours of visualization at the board has trained this particular visualization skill. I asked him whether he was actually seeing the image or if he was was remembering them in groups or something and he claimed that he was just seeing it as if his eyes were open. That is interesting in that it contrasts with how strong chess players are able to play blindfolded. Typically they are relying on relationships of the pieces on the board rather than holding a photographic image in their minds.

US Amateur East and Upcoming Nationals

2011-03-14T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Spring Nationals will be held in Dallas, TX. This is a convenient location for us, in a way, since we have opportunity to combine the trip with a visit to family there. I have been quite remiss in my recent blog postings owing to many factors. In fact, as happens with almost everyone involved in the game at one point or another, chess has been put on the back-burner recently as the kids have been more involved in music and language lessons and I have been busy with other things.

Richie's practice has schedule has suffered recently. He has scarcely been playing or studying the last few months. Just yesterday I asked him to try out a few games online and he was summarily dispatched in several games in a row. It was a little like listening to an out of tune instrument. Hopefully he'll get back in tune before the Nationals, otherwise he may be disappointed with his placing.

We did manage to sneak in a trip to Parsippany, NJ for the US Amateur East tournament. I had heard over the years that this was one of the most fun events for chess players of all ages and I was really looking forward to it. We formed a team with our friends Daniel Levkov and his father Dmitry. Dmitry played board 1, I played board 2, Richie played board 3, and Daniel played board 4. Richie had a lot of stiff competition on board 3 and mostly played "up" in his games. But even accounting for that, I couldn't help but feel that the mistakes he was making were not typical of his strength, and was left with the impression that a lack of recent practice has dulled his game somewhat. He even lost to a mate in 1 in a winning position, which has much more to do with carelessness and lack of desire than anything else. That last game stung a bit, but overall, I think he enjoyed himself.

Our experiment with coaching didn't really work out so well. I think the lack of a local coach has certainly cost him, particularly in the last 6 months or so as I have been less focused. He could have used some guidance from a professional coach, but we made the mistake of not committing enough to coaching and ended up with a few scattered lessons here and there rather than any purposeful training.

I don't think it's easy to make up for so much lost time in the next six weeks, but we'll see what we can do within reason.

Grade Nationals Report

2010-12-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

Richie scored 6.0/7.0 in the 2010 Grade Nationals which put him in a tie for 2nd (4th on tie-breaks). He was pleased with his result since 4th was just high enough to get a four-poster (a trophy with four posts on the bottom). As expected, the deep field made for a very interesting tournament with many upsets wins and drama, but at the end of the day the event favorite, Joaquin Perkins, emerged as repeat champion. Congratulations Joaquin!

I've become a pretty decent judge of chess strength at the grade-school level, so I was not surprised at all that Richie's friend Corwin placed 2nd and came within a move of winning outright. I had been quite impressed with a couple of games I saw him play when he was just starting and even more impressed after watching him review a few games this tournament with his coaches--considering how long he has been playing, he has a very mature understanding of chess from what I can tell.

Although Richie's final placing was pretty much in-line with his pre-tournament seeding, I actually feel that he's made real strides in his play in the last few months. Perhaps I am succumbing to parental pride, but I really feel his play is more sophisticated than his rating suggests and expect that with a little more maturity he will soon pose a real challenge for players rated under 1500. Whereas many of the games at his level appear to be won by "tactical bullying," I found his wins from this tournament to be due mainly to excellent logic which ultimately is what is needed as he progresses to tougher and more careful opposition. Richie will still need to improve his defensive skills a little in order to more comfortably dispatch the sort of naive "aim everything at the King" desperado attacks that are commonplace at the scholastic level. He'll also need to tighten up his endgame and endgame transitions to convert more "won games" than he is currently, but overall I think the near-term future is bright for his progress.

Wins
+ Four-poster for the win.
+ Friends in the tournament make it more fun.
+ Mastered the art of lowering our expectations at Disney: the food ... didn't make us sick, the coffee was ... hot, the buses were ... free, and the lines ... ok, there's nothing good to say about lines.

Draws
+/- Supposedly this is the last year at the Coronado Springs. Hopefully the next place will be an uptick.
+/- Based on consumption patterns at Disneyworld, the New Normal is the same thing as the Old Normal.

Losses
- 40 degrees in Florida? So much for swimming...
- Sketchy Orlando cab driver purposely driving us to the wrong branch of a nearby restaurant to run up a tab.
- Sketchy Orlando cab driver driving our friends in circles to run up a tab.
- Why is every meal at Disney $20 a person for food court fare?
- Endgame blunders that turn losses to wins to draws to wins to losses...

How Do You Prepare Your Kids For Big Events?

2010-11-29T14:18:00.001-08:00

I often find myself wondering what (if anything) other parents of children in these large national chess do before the large national events.

Before one of his first major events, I had Richie focus on tactics. This was the advice I had seen and heard over and over, and for good reason. Mostly I had Richie work through problem sets with specific tactical motifs. I found that he was very good when he knew what to look for, but in real-life game situations he could still miss simple tactics. The result: he did well, but got fancy in some games and sacrificed unsoundly...

As his tactical strength improved I shifted focus a bit and would (before major tournaments) attempt to prepare for him for the most common openings. Part of the reason I did this was that I ultimately wanted him to study middle game concepts and positional thinking but I needed him to get into similar positions as often as possible so that we could talk about common plans. I just wasn't strong enough to have these discussions if he played a wide variety of openings where I couldn't study beforehand the common ideas. The result: he did well, got some decent advantages out of the opening but then missed some tactical wins. On the other hand, he began playing very quickly in the opening as they became rote and didn't seem to realize he was out of his "book." Relying on "feel" to choose the right moves and coming to expect appropriate moves to jump out at him made him liable to play superficially at the early stages of a game.

Over the last summer, we worked a lot on positional chess. I tried reviewing grandmaster games with him that systematically touched on certain positional themes. The result: he'd win a pawn or get an outpost and then relax assuming his opponent would fold. Unfortunately his opponents somehow managed to comeback from positional bankruptcy with surprising regularity.

Then I thought, endgames. That's the ticket. I'll admit I don't like studying endgames. I find so much of it to being akin to learning how to spell esoteric words that you'll never use in everyday writing. So we studied some endgames. The result: I have no idea. Richie's only ever reached a handful of endgames that resembles something we studied.

Sometimes it makes me wonder if doing nothing is best.

But then I quickly come to my senses.

So for this year's Nationals I had him go through a carefully refined study program of endgame, tactics, strategy, and openings! Seriously, though, my goal has been consistency of practice rather than quantity. We decided to skip some of the local events. And to get acclimated to a slower pace of play, for the two weeks prior to the Nationals we avoided having Richie play anything faster than G/45.

This year we opted to fly out on the morning of the event so he will have a pretty rough first day. Usually parents are advised to fly out the night before to get a good night's sleep. One time we tried that, though and the wait from the time he woke up at 7am to the first game at 1:30 pm felt truly endless.

So we're trying something different this time around. We have a very early flight out (hopefully we don't miss it!), and I'm hoping that he sleeps on the plane and catches up on his rest then. Even if that backfires and he's too wired to sleep perhaps he'll have an afternoon siesta, which otherwise would be unusual for him.

His section has turned out so far to be very competitive with at least a dozen players at the 1100+ level with good chances to win it all. I think in 1st grade last year there were a couple of standout players at the 1500+ level, but only 5 over 1100. The depth of strength should make for an exciting tournament.

2010 Grade National Chess Tournament, Orlando FL

2010-11-10T08:25:00.000-08:00

The 2010 Grade Nationals will be held in Orlando, Florida this year. For those who don't know, there are two major Nationals each year, one held in the Winter and one held in the Spring. The Winter tournament has each grade competing in a separate sections, while the Spring nationals have certain grades combined (e.g. K-1).

The table below is mainly for my own convenience to make it easier to look up the top contenders in each section and how they have performed leading into the event (since there is a six week gap between cut-off of the December rating supplement and the actual tournament), but last year, the table got a couple thousand views so I guess I wasn't the only one using it.

This year Richie will be playing in the 1st grade section. Even accounting for late registrants, I think he should be comfortably in the top 10 rated players going into the event, but there are at least a couple higher rated players in his cohort that either haven't registered yet or aren't planning to participate.

2010 Grade National Chess Tournament, Orlando FL

Rating Supplements

2010-11-08T08:36:00.000-08:00

I was trying to work out how ratings are determined for tournaments and found out that there's an element of uncertainty that isn't obvious at first.

The basic problem is this: prior to any major tournament, sections and pre-event ratings must be determined based on some rating snapshot in time. Ratings themselves are based on rated games which should be rated in event order, but the results for rated games must be processed or submitted by tournament directors which can take anywhere from a few hours to several days or weeks depending on how they process and submit (electronically, or by mail).

The USCF approaches this problem by publishing monthly "rating supplements" which are official snapshots of every player's "concurrent" rating for events scheduled for that month. For example, the "December 2010" rating supplement is intended to be use for any events held in December. (Tournament directors have the ability, however, to choose to use earlier supplements if the desire).

For the December supplement to be ready for December, it obviously needs to be finalized before the month of December begins, so it is generally published shortly after the first Friday of November, aiming to capture all events completed in October.

The wrinkle is that some events played late in October may not actually be submitted in time to be reflected in the supplement. Players really can't be certain what goes into the supplement until it's actually published.

One point I am still confused about is how re-ratings are considered. It's my current understanding that each week, the USCF actually re-rates recent tournaments to properly take into account the chronological order of events and correct for the problem of receiving results out of chronological order. (Incidentally, the rating algorithm itself uses a two-pass system, meaning that a first pass is made to estimate each player's post event rating, and then a second pass is made to actually rate every player for that event). This process is impacted by any new incoming data for any player so I believe the re-ratings are done in batch and I assume they go back over some reasonable window and do a roll-forward re-rating of every player and every event.

In other words, eventually, your rating is always computed the "right" way, using the latest rated results for you and your opponent at the time the event was played, regardless of when those recent events results were submitted to the USCF.

But I believe the ratings supplements cannot be altered once they are published. I could be wrong about this, but historically official supplements were published in Chess Life Magazine so once they published that was it and I doubt that would have changed. So whatever is in the supplement is going to be used for that month's events, regardless of any more up to game data, even if those games were held before the date-cutoff for that supplement.

Anyway this probably doesn't have any major impact on the vast majority of players, but in some situations you may find that your rating used for an event isn't based on what you thought it would be.

World Youth Championships

2010-10-21T14:48:00.001-07:00

The World Youth Championships are currently running in Halkidiki, Greece. Simone has a nice blog post about the event with some links to the official site. I noticed that several US players are doing very well so it will be fun to see how the rest of the tournament goes.

I was pleased to see a few games in the U8 Open published. I thought Awonder Liang's (1807) win in round 1 over a top rated Vietnamese player, Anh Khoi Nguyen (1980) was a nice example of how sophisticated young chess players are at the highest levels. Awonder is just 7 years old, so I believe he actually has one more year to compete in the U8 should he choose to.

10th Annual Chess-In-The-Parks

2010-09-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

Richie played in the 10th Annual Chess-In-The-Parks event this weekend. This is an annual outdoors quick chess tournament. Before I go further I have to offer kudos to chess-director-extraordinaire Shaun Smith at Chess-in-the-Schools and his team for putting on a splendid event under challenging conditions. Several hundred players participated in five sections, I think. Richie played in the Intermediate section which boasted over 80 players (both youth and adults) rated from 1000 to around 1300. It's a credit to Shaun and his team that he is able to consistently deliver high quality chess tournaments (which are free to enter due to the generosity of the CIS foundation) that run smoothly and efficiently. This event was no exception. New York scholastic players are certainly lucky for the opportunity to play in his nearly 30 events per scholastic year.

This particular tournament was a G/10 format which is slightly unusual time control because at 10 minutes per side it's not pace that anyone really practices often. It seems that most players are used to either blitz or slow chess, but this in-between time control (which is even shorter than the popular 15-minute ICC time control) seems a little odd.

Nevertheless, I had a suspicion that Richie would be in his element at this speed since quite honestly I think he plays at nearly full strength in his G/15 games (that's not really a good thing), except he plays them a touch too fast, making G/10 practically ideal. It's a very natural playing rhythm for him (whereas I think at five minutes the quality suffers quite a bit).

One nice thing about a 10-20 minute game (total) is that you can actually watch it and try to figure out what moves you would make so it's an ideal "spectator" speed.

Have a look at this final round game to see what I mean. I haven't analyzed it in depth, but while watching it live, I was really challenged to find the "right" moves and plans throughout the game and impressed by both players. Though this final game wasn't for a big prize or even for a high placing, it was exciting nonetheless and features several swings in momentum, which ultimately went Richie's way. I thought Richie did a good job in this game and at the tournament in general in searching for "even better" moves and remaining defensively vigilant. I would characterize his play as "creatively aggressive" and that seemed to be enough to win against most of the players in the class and time-control. (Of course that can tend to backfire at a slower time control when opponents have more time to work out the tactical nuances of the position better).

It's been about two years since the last video I posted, so it's interesting to see how much has changed in the interim.

Richie on the Rise

2010-09-14T10:44:00.001-07:00

Richie has been scoring well in his recent tournaments, bringing his rating up to around 1200. Interestingly it had fallen to around 1000, after incorporating some different openings into his play. We spent most of our effort over the summer in understanding middle game concepts better and actually did almost no tactics practice. The shift in focus seems to have taken awhile to adjust to but it seems that he's gradually assimilating the new knowledge.

Interestingly, when I ask if he thinks about the concepts we've studied during his games he says he's "not sure" which indicates that at this age (nearly 7) there is still not much of an "internal dialogue" going on in his mind about longer term plans or positional considerations. His move choices are largely based on direct calculation of lines or some kind of application of rules/guidelines that he's internalized to a subconscious level.

As a side benefit of our studies over the summer, I seem to have improved around 150 points or so on ICC at blitz. Since I went many years without any significant blitz improvement I can only speculate the recent studies were directly responsible for the improvement.

Local Chess Club in Norwalk, CT.

2010-09-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

Players from the Fairfield County Chess Club meet at Barnes & Nobles in Norwalk on Wednesdays and Fridays. Richie and I have been going periodically for speed chess and bughouse. For younger (and weaker) players its a little more accessible than some of the other meet-ups in the area because there are usually 2-4 scholastic players present. It's a fun group so I hope it continues to meet through the school year since Richie really enjoys going.

I think his recent play at speed chess has improved a little. Last weekend he tied (with me!) for 1st in the FCCC speed chess open for U1600 ahead of a bunch of higher rated players. He even scalped a 1900(!) player so I think that's a personal best. Of course blitz and slow chess are totally different, but it was nice confidence boost for him nevertheless.

Tactics from the Bradley Open

2010-07-26T12:14:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we played in the Bradley Open in Windsor Locks, CT. I played in the U1600 section and Richie played in the U1200 section. This tournament was a great opportunity to play long time controls (2 hours for 40 moves + 1 hour for the rest). But after Richie played too fast again in several games, I've basically given up trying to convince him to slow down. I think it's just something he needs to realize on his own after he loses more games to players he feels he could otherwise beat. Still, he managed to win 3.0/5.0 which wasn't too shabby. I only won 2.0 of my games. I had really been looking forward to playing some slow endgames to work on my calculation since I rarely get to think online during endgames (either the result is decided already or there's not enough time to play carefully). Ironically, I blew both close endgames that I managed to reach.

On the bright side, Richie really impressed me with his tactical alertness. Here are two interesting moments that featured themes we had recently practiced.

Position #1.
This first one is pretty elementary once you look around at the whole board. Richie is up material but his opponent has the simple threat of c2 followed by c1=Q. What's the most easiest way for Richie to wrap up the victory?

Highlight below to reveal answer:
Richie played Ba5! Black cannot defend against the double threat to win the pawn and mate on the backrow. Note that Bxf6 is worse because it opens an escape square after gxf.

Position #2
Richie's opponent dropped a pawn early in this game but turned things around by making use of the open lines/diagonals vacated by the lost pawn to launch a severe attack. Richie attempts to hold his position together with duct-tape and string but he senses his imminent demise. The position calls for a major swindle so Richie responds with the mysterious Bc8?!, inviting his opponent to increase the pressure with f6. After all if the position is a win now, it's definitely a win with the pawn on f6 right?

Highlight below to reveal the missed win, and Richie's devastating counter-attack. Had his opponent followed Richie's camp coach's advice to always analyze the forcing moves in the position, he could have found the winning attack or at the very least, discovered uncovered Richie's trap before it was too late:
His opponent misses the forcing line: Bxg7+, BxBg7, Rh3+, Nh2, RxNh2+, f6+, Bf5, Qg7#. Instead the attack on the f-pawn provoked the seemingly strong f6??. How can opening up the diagonal for the bishop bringing the pawn closer to the enemy king be a bad move? No doubt, his opponent counted on something like gxh??, Qg7# or gxf?? Qg7#, or maybe just Bxf6, where he thought Rxf6 would be good enough in view of gxf6? Qg7#.

Instead, after f6??, Richie surprised his opponent with Qxf3!!, after gxQf3 (forced) comes the cute Bh3#.

What impressed me the most about this was the "trapiness" of the move. Richie realizes he's lost but plans this tricky mate with his move Bc8. From the diagrammed position he had to visualize the removal of the pawn on f5, the distraction of the pawn on g2 via queen sac, and the two bishop's mating motif.

Of course we'd prefer to not get into losing positions in the first place, but having the resourcefulness to turn things around by inducing non-obvious blunders is a valuable skill to have as well.

NSCF Westchester Chess Camp

2010-07-19T22:50:00.000-07:00

Last week Richie participated in the Westchester Chess Camp which is run by the National Scholastic Chess Foundation. The NSCF actually runs two summer camps, one which is targeted at stronger players (over 1200) and one which is for any level. Although we had gotten permission to put Richie into the advanced camp, after finding out that there probably weren't going to be many kids near his age and that there would be some significantly stronger players we thought it probably wouldn't be too fun for him. Instead we opted for the general camp after getting some assurances from Sunil (Weeramantry) that the instruction and play would be at an appropriate level for him. Most chess players are familiar with Sunil since he is Hikaru Nakamura's step-father and coach (as well as being a FIDE master).

The camp began at 10:00 am each day and went to 3:00 pm with a lunch break and free play period. At the beginning of the day campers were paired with each other (or an instructor) for a slow, tournament style game which was recorded. I believe that this game was reviewed afterwards. Later in the day there were two lecture periods which seemed mainly to consist of going over annotated games or solving tactics.

Richie enjoyed the camp, especially after a couple of days when he had gotten to know some of the other kids. Personally I was a little disappointed with the turnout(around 10-12 kids) since I think it would be nicer to have a more boisterous atmosphere, but Richie didn't seem to mind at all. And of course, the upside to those numbers are that the student to instructor ratio was a very healthy 5 or 6 which insures an appropriate level of supervision.

One thing to note is that Sunil himself doesn't give the lessons and generally is only present for part of the day. But the master level instructor he selected seemed to be quite good from what I could tell and there were always one or two other strong players helping out as well.

Overall I was quite pleased with this camp as well. Having now seen several camps with different pros and cons I would probably say that for anyone living near Scarsdale, this camp probably offers the best bang-for-the-buck and convenience for somewhat serious players compared to other summer offerings I've seen.

Castle Chess Camp, Atlanta GA

2010-06-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

Richie attended the Castle Chess Camp in Atlanta, GA a couple weeks ago. This camp is probably one of the pre-eminent chess camps in the country, judging by the sheer number of titled instructors.

At this year's camp, GMs Var Akobian, John Fedorowicz, Greg Serper, Julio Becerra, IMs Anna Zatonskih, Daniel Ludwig, Carlos Perdoma, and FMs Kazim Gulamali, Mike Klein and Alex Dunne led the instruction. The approximately 120 campers were divided into ratings categories and each assigned a "home" instructor.

The schedule was intensive but most campers didn't seem to struggle much at all with the load. Each morning was kicked off with an unrated slow tournament styles game. During this game instructors would go from board to board, observing play and making notes on what to address with each young player during the reviews. Immediately after the game each playing pair would go off to have their game analyzed by one of the instructors. Following that there would be three lessons spread out over the day, broken up by meals and a free play period. The first lesson was given each day by the home instructor while the other lessons would have rotating instructors. At then end of the day there was an optional quick tournament or event which took a different form each day (blitz, bughouse, endgame blitz, simul). The week is capped off with a normal rated tournament which many of the campers stayed to participate in. Each camper receives a final review and given some advice on how to improve their game.

Before I go into my thoughts on the camp, I would have to say that one of the things I found most impressive had nothing to do with chess instruction per se, but with the organization of the camp. The team of organizers, led by camp director Jennifer Christianson, the well prepared instructors and volunteer counselors put together a truly praise-worthy camp experience. Any parent that is thinking of sending their child to Castle Chess can rest easy that their child will be in good hands for the week.

Considering Richie's young age, we decided to attend as observers. It seemed that most campers under the age of 9 or so were either local commuters or attending with a parent. I was able to observer first-hand most of the camp activities and came away appreciating some things that I might not otherwise had noticed.

I'll start with the obvious though: 6 to 9 hours of chess related activities every day for 7 straight days is bound have some positive impact on your chess, no matter what your skill level. For children, the impact is probably magnified, even. But the big open question is how does a camp experience, and specifically, how is does the Castle Chess Camp experience compare with other chess activities like playing tournaments or taking lessons with a coach, or even other less structured non-overnight camps? The answer is simple in a way: people (and kids especially), learn better when they're having fun. Fun and enthusiasm are sort of infectious in a way. I don't think it's possible for a kid with even a moderate degree of interest in chess to not get really excited about chess during a camp like this.

Oddly enough, the single biggest bonding experiences for the kids that I saw (since we didn't stay in the dorms) were meal times and bughouse sessions. These social activities proved to be great enablers for of the formation of friendships at the camp. The subject of bughouse probably deserves a separate post, but suffice it to say that I wouldn't take bughouse away from Richie even if it held him back years in development (which I don't think it does).

You never know what's going to trigger a child's fascination but I think for Richie, seeing IM Daniel Ludwig win a blindfolded speed chess game against one of his friends left an indelible impression of what strong players are capable of. Watching Kazim Gulamali, live up to his reputation as one of the strongest bughouse players in the world as he played at a lightning pace against all comers was also a unique display of human talent.

The sheer amount of chess energy at this camp is something I've never witnessed before (even national tournaments with thousands of players don't compare). Of course Richie had a blast, and already has asked to return. The impact on his chess isn't totally obvious but there's a notable uptick in his keenness to play. Just a few things he did which would almost have been out of character before camp: He couldn't wait to show off Anna Zatonskih's impossible mate in one puzzle to his sister. He specifically asked me to help him prepare for an opening he had trouble against which was also something novel. And after a couple of his tournament games he actually told me he thinks he can play better.

As part of his review I learned something about Richie's play that I had not noticed so much before. (He often overlooks piece mobility and he needs to work on breadth of calculation, not necessarily depth). Knowing what to focus on in the immediate future is in itself pretty valuable. At least until we have made some decisions on chess instruction, I'll have something to try and practice with him.

Fairfield County Chess Camp

2010-06-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

I sat in on the first day of Fairfield County Chess Camp taught by NM Dan Lowinger. This camp is clearly just getting off the ground this year so some allowances need to be made, but overall I'm pleased with what I saw for reasons I'll briefly outline.

For balance, however, I'll start out with two minor criticisms. The venue (Just Dance Studios in Norwalk) leaves a lot to be desired compared to other locations I've seen chess classes held (typically schools or public community centers). It's a bit of a run-down building with a warehouse look and the room used for the lessons was an interior room with no natural light. It certainly made me appreciate places like the Norwalk Community College, and the Greenwich Civic Center where Richie has also attended clubs.

The second criticism is probably just a result of being new but there only five students had signed up (and on some days even fewer). I personally don't mind the small classes because it makes for more individualized experience but I think for the kids more is better.

Despite these criticisms, I am pleased with the camp. Based on what I saw, I think Dan is a talented instructor. He came well prepared with a planned curriculum and clear goals in mind for what he wanted the students to get out of each lesson and the week as a whole. On the day I was there he reviewed four games by Greco in the King's Gambit. Dan's approach is sort of standard game review approach where he uses a Socratic method where he uses an example game to pose questions about the position at hand. He's diligent about making sure all the students are participating, and basically polls the students for an answer and then reveals the winning tactic or strong move. Over the course of the four games it became clear that in the first lesson he was striving to convey a couple of key related themes that allowed the hero to win: each game was a clear example of early, purposeful development with tempo, immediate central control, and converting the position to a win through a tactical breakthrough. In some ways this is was really basic stuff that any 1000 rated player should have a firm grip on, but it never hurts to review the basics.

At one point in the lesson, he asked for each person to evaluate a position by giving a numerical rating from 0 to 10 with 10 being completely won for white. I found it interesting that to me the position looked completely won, but Richie only assigned a rating of 7. In the position in question white was just 2 or 3 moves from a decisive material advantage due to threats on both sides of the board, impending breakthrough to an uncastled king through the center, and no immediate counter threat from black. I'm pretty sure if he had said 'white to move and win' Richie would have found one of any number of winning continuations, but posed as an open ended question without any hint that white was on the brink of victory left the students unsure of themselves (answers ranged from 6 to 9).

In a way it's sort of surprising that he's sometimes able to play as well as I can when his "evaluation function" is so fuzzy. I've always been a little curious what he thinks during his games that he loses when he's been in a winning position. I'm not sure if he realizes the extent of his advantage.

Anyway, I really like the fact that there's an overarching theme to the lessons which hopefully provides a context that allows the students to really internalize the material being presented.

Of course, aside from my thoughts on the quality of instruction, Dan scores highly in my book for the simple reason that everyday I ask Richie if he had fun at chess camp and get a cheerful affirmative. I was even told by my wife that she saw Richie moving around pieces on a board by himself at home (apparently trying to figure something out after camp) which is actually something he rarely does, as surprising as that may be.

Summer Doldrums Intervention!

2010-05-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

If the last couple of years can be taken as precedent, without active planning we'll be heading for another lazy summer with little chess activity. This year, however, I've got some strategies to keep the ember burning a little better than previous years. We're planning to try out several of the local and not so local chess camps. If they are anything like the Go camp we attended last year Richie will have lots of fun and learn a lot too.

I have found several chess camps and programs within the greater NYC area that are of interest + one camp that is well known nationally.

Darien HS Chess Summer Camps (Darien, CT)
Fairfield County Chess Club (Norwalk, CT)
National Scholastic Chess Foundation (Westchester, NY)
NYChessKids (New York, NY)
Chess-in-the-Schools (New York, NY)
Castle Chess Camp (Atlanta, GA)

These vary in terms of the average strength of the players and seriousness with the Atlanta Camp being on one extreme and the Darien HS at the other.

The first one to kick off in our area is the Fairfield County Chess Club which is starting out before school even ends. I like the idea of this one because it seems to incorporate some of the history of the game as part of the program which would be a nice change. Incidentally, FCCC is apparently opening a new dedicated chess facility in the area which, as far as I know, will be the only one of it's kind in the state of CT.

I am most excited this year about going to the Castle Chess Camp in Atlanta which we learned about during the last nationals. Richie saw some videos of the Grandmasters on the website and became very excited to go. We heard good things about the camp so we decided to try it out and see how an immersive chess experience goes over with Richie. (The nearby Red Wall Studios offers Art Camp at the same time which seems perfect for Alyssa).

After that we're not sure what our plans are but assuming Richie is up for it we may even try some of the other camps listed above. I'll also be on the lookout for interesting local tournaments--preferably those in locations that make for a fun trip and which will give Richie experience with longer time controls.

If all goes well Richie should have plenty of opportunity to play in fun environments. Unlike previous summers, I hope he will be able to maintain and even increase his playing level this summer even without dedicated coaching.

Speaking of dedicated coaching, sadly it has become apparent to me that even my best efforts are likely to slow his development down from this point relative to having a dedicated chess coach. We're still not sure if a professional coach is the way to go yet but it's clear that if he is going to aim to stay near the top of his age group he'll need more help than I can give him.

I am still on the fence about coaching, however, because I do find it somewhat perverse to for a six or seven year old kid to have a professional coach. But on the other hand it seems like that's what it takes barring exceptional self-motivation or talent. At this point, I still don't know where Richie stands in those two dimensions. I believe with work he'll become quite strong, but I have no idea if he'll want to put in the effort later on in life to bring himself to say the master level. But on the off chance that he does turn into a serious chess player for the duration of his scholastic years, I would probably regret it if I didn't give him the same opportunities as I see other kids getting.

Decisions, decisions. More later on this one.

Nationals Round-Up (Continued)

2010-05-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Richie finished the event strongly, picking up wins in all his remaining games to end up with 6.0/7.0 points and a tie for 3rd place (10th on tie-breaks). Overall his play was not bad but I think that if he had to face the top players (a fate he avoided by having the early loss) he may have struggled to win. Even as it was, his final round against none other than Alexander Medina (the kindergartener from the Grade Nationals who played a 2-hour final with Joaquin Perkins), was only won through a terrible oversight by his opponent in a won position. At every Nationals I hear so many stories of games that were given away in won positions that I wonder if parents realize that in virtually every game, each player gives up "wins" multiple times, and it's really just the player who makes the penultimate egregious error that emerges victorious. This is especially true at the lower scholastic levels which can to have more in common with roulette than grandmaster chess. In Richie's case this event was similar to the prior nationals: he was swindled in round 2, and he swindled in round 7 so I guess it balanced out. Even more interesting, from the standpoint of karmic neutrality at least, was that his 7th round swindle was almost the exact same situation with roles reversed--his opponent was up material but with queens on the board still and he maneuvered his queen to a position that seemed to offer a trade of queens or a mating attack, but in fact, simply forced Richie to execute his own mating attack first. Had his opponent thought for a just a few seconds about where Richie was going to move his queen if he didn't want to lose the game on the next move, he would have seen that his own King was perilously close to being mated and he could have avoided the upset easily.

At any rate, Alexander's play until that point was commendable. He played an uncommon opening which Richie handled poorly and built up a sizeable advantage. I can see why he's had good results at these large events and is certainly capable of being a dangerous opponent.

I witnessed another fascinating quick skittles game between Max Roberts and Richie. It's a joy to watch them play because their play always seems to create devilish complications with unexpected and creative solutions being found at nearly every turn.

Kindergartener Praveer Sharan from Oregon emerged victorious with the only perfect score for the event. This was all the more impressive when you consider that the field had at least 20 higher rated and older players include a handful with current ratings over 1200 and he defeated at least three experienced 1000+ players on route to victory. So congratulations to Praveer! Update: It turns out that Praveer's pre-event rating may have been as high as 1300 in the Northwest Scholastic system which put him in among the top seeds but of course doesn't diminish his accomplishment at all. I expect we'll see more of Praveer in upcoming events.

Wins
+ Atlanta venue was great. Even though we stayed in the overflow hotel (Marriott
Marquis) it was connected by covered walkways through the Peachtree Centermall.
+ Kudos to the organizers and volunteers. Job well done!
+ Comeback kid.
+ iPad. Perfect place for an iPad for many, many reasons.
+ Mary Mac's Tea Room.
+ My that's a really big aquarium.

Losses
- Swindle and re-Swindle? I hope he outgrows that soon.
- Lazy until it's too late. Richie didn't want to warm-up with tactics or review until after his first loss.
- Alyssa didn't do 2/3rds of her homework because she didn't have a ruler(??). C'mon...

Draws
=/= Hibaaaachiiii. We went to Benihana the first night and it was great. The kids loved the fried rice, so we were back again for an after-event celebration with our friends. But the 2nd chef overcooked my steak which lessened my enthusiasm for the place.
=/= Paying for the first bag on the airplane. But I guess that's just part of the new world order.

Nationals Update and The Importance of Tictacs

2010-05-08T10:46:00.000-07:00

After four rounds (out of seven) Richie has a score of 3.0/4.0. His early loss in the tournament was a bit of Deja vu from his last appearance at nationals. He obtained an objectively winning position up the exchange with just a queen and rook versus queen and bishop for the endgame but blundered badly and lost his rook. I think strategically he had the right plan to trade off the queens and shutdown his opponents counterplay, but he overlooked a simple response by his opponent in an almost forced position. This kind of blunder is probably one of the most common reasons for losing and I think the main reason for it is the natural human bias towards egotism. In a winning position we become fixated on our own attacking prospects and a little over confident. It's easy to stop looking at our opponents tactical resources and blunder away the game.

Every player knows the importance of tactics in chess. Some would argue that tactics is the single most important thing to practice to improve at the early stages of development.

The title of this post wasn't a typo. I've seen many different tactical training programs and books and the all have one thing in common: the vast majority of puzzles are posed as attacking motifs where you are looking for the best move for your side. That is to say the board is arranged from the point of view of the person to play.

I've often wondered why Richie can sometimes find really difficult tactical solutions when he is the aggressor but will overlook even simple tactics for his opponent. I think the problem has to do with not being adept at putting himself in his opponents shoes.

I decided to conduct an experiment with the help of chess.com's excellent tactics app for the iPhone/iPad. In addition to having a great selection of problems (not just mate in N, but also winning material) with this software you can flip the board to view the problem as if you had just blundered (I.e. If this was a candidate move the tactical refutation would be a reason to discard the candidate). Plus it has a score keeping mechansim that punishes incorrect guesses and gauges tactical strength. Interestingly i found that both Richie and I consistently score about 100 points lower on average just by flipping the board around. And just experientially it really feels harder to find the tactics (or tictacs as we took to calling them) when the board is "upside down."

So for developing players I highly recommend flipping the board once in awhile to improve your awareness of tactical danger which hopefully will translate into better move selection and fewer blunders in real games.

2010 Burt Lerner National Elementary K-6 Chess Championship Player List with Most Recent USCF Ratings

2010-04-22T05:16:00.001-07:00

We finally got off the fence on the K-6 Nationals and (surprise, surprise) we decided to attend! That gave me the motivation I needed to make the small modifications necessary to be able to publish the current ratings data on Socrata.

The Grade Nationals were just 5 months ago (Why are there two nationals each year anyway? Is Don King involved in anyway with the USCF?) but in that time span many scholastic players will have improved significantly thanks to in-school programs, plenty of weekend chess tournaments and other practice. In the winter I thought that Richie was playing a little better than his published rating for the event. This time around it may be a bit of the opposite.

More recently his "form" has been a little off as other activities have attracted him (primarily video games and play-dates). So it seems we'll be "going fishing" for the month before Nationals. (10 Extra Chess Nerd Points if you know what the quote alludes to).

I was a little surprised to see when I registered him that he's seeded in 5th in K-1. I expect before the tournament starts that we'll see a handful of higher rated players register, but nevertheless it makes for a more interesting event if he's a dark horse contender.

We're looking forward to seeing some of our friends. Just in K-1 I see many of the strong local players we know (Hudson, Ethan, Manaav, Jonathan) as well as a couple familiar names from the grade nationals (Max, Diego, Daniel). And of course many others. Good luck to all!

2010 Burt Lerner National Elementary (K-6) Chess Championship

Recent Chess Events

2010-03-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

Auntie Kumi has pointed out that I have not been keeping the blog up-to-date so I thought I'd do a quick recap of recent events:

Recently Richie played in the NY City Championships which is held at the New Yorker Hotel annually. He placed 3rd overall in the K-1 section with 4.5/5.0 points and got a nice plaque for being top Kindergartener. There isn't too much to say about the event itself or the result which was about in-line with ratings based expectations.

He also placed well in the NY State Championships, scoring 4.0/5.0. His third round loss was to a player rated a few hundred points below him but after looking at the game score I would say that his opponent is likely on the way up so I don't think the game result was as much of an upset really. The event winner, Hudson Beaudoin, has been a frequent co-participant in recent major events we've attended and I was not surprised at all to see him come out on top.

For a change of pace, we took Richie to the Eastern Class Championships in Sturbridge, MA. This was a two or optionally three day event with very long time controls (90 minutes for 30 moves + 30 minutes after the time control, I think). Richie was very excited for the opportunity to play for a substantial cash prize (his section winner received around $900). He participated in the Class E section (under 1200), and most players were adults which was a bit of a challenge for him. In fact, his one win came against another scholastic player while most of the adults played carefully against him and capitalized on his lack of experience at long time controls. Having said that, he actually put up quite a strong resistance in several games, including one in which he probably missed a win in a difficult game where his opponent had 4 pawns vs. his bishop + 1 pawn. It was actually a fun mini-trip for the family though, so I think these adult class tournaments will become a more frequent part of our chess calendar. It's nice to be able to combine a chess trip with a visit to the the Old Sturbridge historical village, among other things.

The other notable event he played recently was the CT State Scholastic Championships. After last year's experience, we had almost decided not to attend this year's event but we had a change of heart since a few of his CT chess friends were going so we decided to go at the last minute.

Richie didn't have a great tournament, scoring 2.0/4.0 in the K-3 Open section where he was actually seeded #2. I may be partially to blame for the result, however, as I committed the cardinal sin of chess parent/coaching and didn't give Richie the chance for a good night's sleep. We had dinner at a friend's the night before and were goofing around on the computer until nearly midnight after we got home. A review of his games for the tournament adds confirmation to my completely unscientific estimate that getting fewer than 8 hours of sleep for a 6 year old is the equivalent of handicapping him/her by 100-200 ratings points.

On the bright side, we did run across the Suryawanshi brothers who have also been to some of the NY tournaments we've been playing in. Rohan, the younger brother, is another promising kindergartener from Connecticut. He played a scrappy game in round 1 and was able to overcome a 3 pawn deficit by capitalizing on a piece blunder by Richie and efficiently guiding the game to a winning endgame. It seems that there are now a handful of very promising K-1 players in the Fairfield county area. Of particular note from this tournament: From the K-3 Reserve section, event winner and 1st grader Tyrell Staples breezed over Richie in a skittles game afterwards--from what I can tell he already has the foundation for great chess results. Cogan Lawler, Sadie Edelman, and Terry McGrath are a few more young players from the area to highlight. If there was a K-1 regional team event, I think CT could be right up there with NY, TX and CA in this age group.

Game from Nationals

2010-02-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

Originally this post was meant to be in the grand tradition in chess of cherry-picking the best games for annotation. But it's been so long since the tournament, that I feel obliged to combine it with the equally grand blogging tradition of apologizing for my lack of recent posting activity.

But without further ado, I give you Richie's penultimate game from the nationals. This particular game is an interesting example because I think it very much highlights how his chess has developed in the last six months or so.

The first aspect I would point out was that until move 6 both players were playing along what is widely considered to be the critical main line for the two knights defense.

The main move of interest in the game was 8...Bxf2! This was part of a basic combination that nets a pawn and prevents the opponent from castling but from a chess development standpoint it is interesting because it shows a reading depth of around five or six plies (half-moves) even in the early opening and it appears to have been part of a plan to simplify into a probably winning endgame which is something he would have been reluctant to do half a year ago.

In general I would say his moves are beginning to involve more positional considerations than before (although this game was ultimately decided by a simple fork tactic).

Nationals Round-up

2009-12-14T00:13:00.000-08:00

Richie ended up scoring 6.0/7.0 which put him in 2nd Place in the Kindergarten section. After a bit of a rough start, he worked very hard in his remaining games and made a nice comeback. He had some very nice games during the tournament. He also had a few games that were...ehh. He was certainly quite lucky to escape with a win in his final round against a very impressive David Zhurbinsky. In fact, what impressed me the most about the tournament was the strength of some of the play that I saw from the other Kindergarteners. (This was the first time in awhile I've actually seen other Kindergarteners playing).

His first round opponent, Diego Costas, showed great maturity in converting his win over Richie. He re-routed pieces well during the game and very effectively denied Richie counter-play by declining easy material that Richie offered as bait.

The aforementioned David Zhurbinsky had built an absolutely crushing advantage over Richie in the final game but fell victim to a back-row checkmate. Judging from the quality of his play to that point though, I'd say he seemed to be comparable in strength to Richie.

Max Roberts played a couple of quick games with Richie after the tournament since they weren't able to play during the official matches. They both seem to be attracted to highly tactical, double-edged positions and played a couple of amazingly complicated middle game positions where both sides needed to be mindful of continuous tactical threats and held the balance much longer than I could have. I think Max's game shows a lot of promise.

Richie made fast friends with and played a few games in the airport with Daniel Levkov on the way home. Daniel won a nice game over Richie, coming back from a piece deficit even, and also showed well developed endgame skill. It won't surprise me at all if he's soon rated much higher.

And of course, the event winner, Joaquin Perkins, deserves special mention for his perfect 7.0 performance. (Joaquin and his opponent, Alexander Medina, played a 2 hour game in the final match. I wonder if that's a record for Kindergarten). Sadly, Richie never had an opportunity to play with Joaquin but clearly he played at an exceptionally high level to run the field.

I wish all of these bright young players continued success and hope to meet them and their parents again in the future.

Good:
Hilton Anatole -- rooms exceeded expectations.
USCF -- tournament well organized, playing venue excellent.
American Airlines -- no major delays.
Breakfast buffet.
Kumi & Dan for driving out to visit with us.
Meeting Sarah -- what a cutey.
Meeting some very nice kids and parents.
Julian & Zachary & other familiar faces from the NY Tournaments.
Big Trophy

Bad:
$20 for the *first* checked bag on AA??
Wide awake at 5:30 am on the first day.
No Italian restaurant or pasta at the hotel??
Apparently the muffins that K&D&S ate before the drive up from Austin.
Only 7 rounds. More games at shorter time controls would be nice.

Ugly:
Losing the first round.
Winning a game when down 2 pieces...

The Setback

2009-12-12T04:47:00.000-08:00

Richie lost his first round in the Nationals. While always mindful that in chess anything can happen in any given game, I must admit that I had some expectation that he would be in the hunt for top honors longer than the first game!

My initial reaction when Richie emerged from the playing room looking less than thrilled was of course to be disappointed. I had mentally prepared myself for this moment but I wasn't expecting it to come so soon. I knew that we had built up in his mind the importance of the Nationals. The whole point of even going is to give him something to strive for, to learn to set goals and push himself, etc. But the consequence of the build up is that if you stumble along the way, the let down is greater.

I have to confess that I more or less assumed that Richie blundered his queen or blitzed out his moves without thinking. But after reviewing the game with him, I realized that his loss was directly related to some of the combination exercises he had worked on recently--unfortunately, combinations (where you initially sacrifice material, but regain it through a tactical follow-up) introduce an element of risk into the game because they require accurate calculation a couple of moves ahead at least and if they fail you're usually left worse off. In this case, the combination was actually quite deep (in its intended form) but he didn't recognize that one of his opponent's replies created an immediate forcing response that saved the position. Still, the fact that he was even looking for this type of combination is something that was a direct result of his recent training exercises so I can hardly find fault with him for trying. My next thought was that he failed to put up resistance after he was down material and just gave up without fighting. In reality, he posed his opponent multiple tactical threats over the course of the game and even baited some clever traps, any one of which could have swung the balance, but to his credit, his opponent dodged them all and even found some very strong responses and eventually finished the game off solidly.

Richie generally handles losses with relative equanimity. This one was a little different. I asked how he felt and he defiantly replied, "fine," but I could tell he was upset because he knew that his chances for first place were probably over already.

Well, I suppose that situations like this are where the real life lessons are learned and I was actually looking forward to sharing the whole "a man's character is measured by how he reacts to adversity" thing, but before that, step one was just to cheer him up.

I had told him a few days ago about some of the world champions and what I thought made each of them so great. I told him that Paul Morphy was like a force of nature -- he was a great attacker and defeated his opponents right out of the opening. I told him that Capablanca played beautiful simple looking moves that created tiny advantages and was the best in the world at converting his advantage in the endgame. And I told him that Bobby Fischer was one of the most consistent players ever -- move after move, he just didn't make mistakes.

I raised his right hand and I said, "You had Paul Morphy, right here in this hand, look at the way you charged out in the opening and planned that combination," and I raised his left hand and said, "and Capablanca was right here waiting patiently to finish the game off in style," and then I searched in his left pocket and I searched in his right pocket and I said, "but you forgot to bring Bobby Fischer with you!" "Richie, Richie don't forget about me! You didn't here him calling for you?" He laughed. We hugged. We watched a Pokemon movie together.

In a calmer moment, we had the talk about setbacks and adversity and character.

While Richie was playing the next round, Julian stopped by to wish him well. I think he had heard about his first round loss and wanted to cheer him up but he had to leave for his own game before Richie could see him. I delivered the message.

"Richie, you just missed Julian. He came by to cheer you up and give you encouragement. Wasn't that a nice thing for him to do for you?"

"Yes. Well. That's O.K. Tell him 'Thanks, I'm already cheered up.'"

Never underestimate a kid's resilience.

[On a technical sidenote: it is possible to win a 50 player tournament even after losing the first round, but it's unlikely unless you came into the event seeded #1 or #2 especially in a field where the strengths span a wide range (Richie was seeded #5). The reason is that even if you win the rest of your games, in order to be picked to play against the tournament leader you need to be in clear 2nd place or have the highest rating among players tied for 2nd going into the last round (that haven't already played the leader. A series of upsets in this particular tournament is fairly unlikely due to the wide ratings span.]

The Most Valuable Lesson

2009-12-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked to write a short article for a local newsletter about our family's chess activities and decided to repost it here:

The Most Valuable Lesson

When my wife gave birth to our first child, Alyssa, I brought two books to the hospital to read while they napped: What to Expect in the First Year and Bobby Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games. The first choice reflected my uneasiness with my new role as a father--I felt that somehow every thing I did from that day forward would shape my daughter's future in irreversible ways and I was intent on doing everything I could to make the right choices. The second book is a collection of chess games from the career of Bobby Fischer, one of the most enigmatic and talented chess players to have ever pushed a pawn. I had owned the book since I was in high school and over the years had made more than one failed attempt to unearth the chessic secrets that surely laid within. Of course, I should have read the pamphlet, What to Expect in the First Four Days, because if I had I would have left the chess book at home--I never got past page 2.

The truth is that I am a mediocre chess player. I have been mediocre ever since I started and I probably will remain mediocre for the rest of my days. Having had a certain degree of success in various other academic and competitive pursuits, my lack of progress at chess has always nagged at me. At the end of more than one failed episode of chess training, I concluded that I had just started the game too late in life--perhaps some subtle change occurs when we stop believing in fairy-tales that forever closes the door to chess mastery. Some say that we seek to create in our children better versions of ourselves--and so I planned to redeem my failings by teaching our children to play chess at a very young age.

It's now eight years later. In three weeks, my 6 year old son Richard and I are taking a father-son trip to Dallas, Texas for the 2009 National K-12 Grade Chess Championships, where nearly 1000 chess players from around the country will compete to determine the top players in each grade.

Richie is one of the top-rated kindergarteners in the country and is probably one of the top 100 chess players under 7 years old. He has already bested adult players, won countless trophies at local events and placed in the top 10 in the country as a pre-Kindergartener at last year's event.

I'd be proud to tell you that Richie is a genius and let you infer that it must run in the family. But the truth is much more prosaic. The secret to his success is simple: Richie, by virtue of having started when he was 4, has simply played more hours of chess than just about all the other kindergarteners in the country. Studies have found that for almost any activity, whether it is playing a musical instrument, playing chess or even learning to golf, achieving mastery had more to do with hours of effort than prior talent. Having seen the results of my two children diverge greatly based solely on their relative interest and effort put into the game, I can readily agree with their findings: expertise is earned through work, not granted at random.

All this effort, but to what end?

After allowing a child to devote hundreds of hours to a pursuit, often to the unfortunate exclusion of other worthwhile activities, there comes a point for every parent where they probably begin to question the value of mastery. Exactly what is Richie going to do with his chess skills? Will it help him get into a better college or have a better career? The short answer is, of course, "no." Why would it? And the long answer is, of course, "yes."

In chess, as in life, we learn through experience. Through trial and error, study, practice and competition, we make gradual improvements to our game and to ourselves. At times we may feel the opposition is insurmountable, or the required knowledge too vast to retain, or we may simply lose interest or focus. The mark of a successful personality is the ability to overcome these setbacks and obstacles and emerge from each defeat or failure with a desire to get better. To be self-critical and disciplined, to understand his faults and weaknesses and to continuously seek improvement is a mind-set that will remain useful throughout his life in all manners of pursuits.

At a tournament a few weeks ago, Richie lost a particularly difficult game where he was outplayed in an unfamiliar opening called the Dragon Sicilian. A year ago he might have been upset by the loss but on that day he emerged happily from the playing area and said, "I want to learn the Dragon!" I smiled to myself, content in the knowledge that in simply desiring to improve and being willing to put forth the effort, he had already learned the most valuable chess lesson of all.

Pokemon Debate Continues

2009-12-06T20:42:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post I drew parallels between Pokemon and Poker as imperfect information games. As our kids have become more avid Pokemon card collectors and players I have realized that there is a distinct element of gambling involved in the collecting process. Cards are generally sold in packs of 10. The distribution of cards is non-uniform across the range of all cards. Generally speaking, each pack of 10 cards will contain 6-7 "common cards", 1-2 "uncommon" cards, 0-1 "rare" cards. As I watched the way the kids' eyes light up as they opened a new pack in anticipation of the possibility of receiving one of the elusive "rares" (which are obviously the more powerful cards in the game), I realized that this randomization of reward preys directly on the gambling preference. There have been studies that show that compulsive gamblers are more likely to have been exposed to gambling at a young age (younger than 10 years old) than non-problem gamblers so if this is any parents out there are concerned about gambling issues, its certainly something that should be taken into consideration.

On the brighter side, I also mentioned in my last post that I had hoped that wanting to play the game properly would motivate Richie to learn to read. Amazingly, I think Pokemon did just that. He relies on a mix of memory, sight reading and phonetic reading to work out what the cards do. Unsurprisingly his memory for the card rules is quite good relative to mine so when we play he's often correcting me about the correct use of a particular cards during the game. The game also requires basic arithmetic (addition and subtraction by 10s, multiplication by 2), and emphasizes some statistical concepts about sampling, but it's not especially challenging really. (As an aside, Richie learned what negative numbers were from Pokemon, because you need to determine if a pokemon is knocked-out by an attack (i.e. it has zero or fewer health points after damage and modifications are taken into account).

My general assessment so far is that the single-game strategy in pokemon seems more constrained and basic than in chess or go. It seems that the real art and skill is in deck building and the meta-game. Once you have chosen your deck and your opponent has chosen their deck, there is less correlation in the outcome of a match with skill level than there is in the other games I mentioned. But the skill really only gets tested completely when you have access to many different cards, strong opposition and a shifting universe of available cards. Without some of these features, the creative process is less demanding and less beneficial.

I would say that in addition to this negative gambling aspect parents should be aware that the entire Pokemon concept is based on "gotta catch 'em all!" (this is the pokemon theme phrase). The movies, cartoons, video games, etc. all feature collecting or catching as many pokemon as possible and training them into stronger and stronger versions to do battle.

If your child has any sort of obsessive impulse, this can be an issue because there are hundreds of Pokemon types (maybe 400 or so) and each type has multiple versions from past card series. The rarer ones are difficult to obtain so you end up with many duplicates of basic or common cards, but few of the more desirable rare cards. Needless to say this can quickly become expensive.

Overall, I'm comfortable with the game. The kids certainly enjoy it and I think the negative aspects aren't all that bad if the game is played in moderation.

2009 National K-12 Chess Championship

2009-12-05T05:31:00.000-08:00

The 2009 National K-12 Chess Championships will be held in Dallas, Texas this year from December 11-13th. Richie will be participating in the Kindergarten section. It took in a couple of months to regain his form from last year, but I think it's safe to say that he's playing quite a bit more strongly now than he was at the time of the Supernationals last Spring and is as well prepared as he could be for the nationals.

The two areas that I think he's definitely progressed in recently are his depth of tactical reading and his comfort with and use of slower time controls. Of course he has lapses all the time, but overall, I would say that his gross blunder rate is much lower than last year and that has resulted in more wins against higher rated opposition.

A word about ratings: In a previous post I had stated that ratings are an unbiased, and highly accurate indicator of practical chess strength. There is, however, a caveat. Ratings tend to better *relative* indicators within an active player pool than they are *absolute* indicators between players from different pools. Of course there is always a gradual adjustment of any misaligned ratings as players cross over from one pool to another but it is still quite easy to have a couple hundred ratings point difference between equivalent players playing in separate pools. I think our own experience has been that in CT, ratings can easily be inflated by 200 points over NYC ratings at the lower levels. In NY, the large player base and tendency for tournaments to have players from many different schools present leads to very consistent and accurate ratings for pretty much the whole city. In CT, it is possible at the lower levels to still be playing virtually entire fields of unrated or novice players even in 2nd and 3rd grade. An experienced player would have no trouble beating such a field, and could quickly achieve ratings of 1000+ but they might still struggle against a 600 rated NY player that has been competing regularly against other 600 rated players with some experience and coaching. Even within NYC there are overlapping, but on the other hand, graduated competition levels based on age group: many tournaments offer K-1, Primary (K-3), and Reserve (K+) sections which all might feature fields with top ratings close to 900, but the older, more experienced sections are without a doubt tougher at the same rating level.

In our case, Richie's peak nominal rating of almost 900 was achieved over a year ago after winning some local CT tournaments, but immediately dropped 250 to 300 points when he started playing tournaments in NYC against more experienced and deeper fields. He's since re-established that level but essentially he's "improved" from a CT 900 to a NY K-1 900 to a NY Primary 900 to a NY Reserve 900, while showing little peak rating change.

It will be interesting to see how things shake out at the Nationals which offers one of the few opportunities for direct comparison between regions (albeit on a small sample set). My suspicion, though, is that New York is one of the more underrated regions *on average.* Having said that, obviously ratings don't win tournaments, otherwise, players wouldn't need to bother showing up at all...

Ray Robson achieves Grandmaster title

2009-11-12T08:13:00.000-08:00

With Ray Robson reaching Grandmaster status, I thought I'd revisit this chart showing the ratings histories of some of the top junior chess players in the country (and Richie). This list is just representative. There are many other very strong chess players in each age cohort, but these were the ones that I was interested in comparing. [Edit: I had to republish this chart because Richie was upset to discover that he wasn't blue like Ray Robson. So sorry Ray Robson, but you're now magenta...]

2009 Grade National Chess Championship Player List

2009-11-10T03:22:00.000-08:00

Last year when we went to the SuperNationals I had a spreadsheet where I recorded the players in the K-1 section. I used it to keep track of the top handful of players names and most recent ratings on the USCF website. Due to the lag between the most recently used USCF supplement and the actual tournament date, current ratings will often be a better indicator of playing strength than the listed rating from the official tournament publications.

I have a small story which probably says too much about chess parents in general and me in particular. Before the first round I was chatting with another parent as our kids played some practice games. The subject of ratings came up and we talked a little about how impressive some of the top players were. Then he reached into his bag and surreptitiously handed me a piece of paper. Imagine my surprise as he said, "I've recorded all of the most recent ratings from the USCF website. You can use this to see how strong your kids opponents really are." As I imagined the two of us (and who knows how many others) clicking through the torturous USCF website and scribbling down the latest ratings in the wee hours of the night, I got to thinking that there was probably a better way to do this.

This year, to spare myself the trouble, I wrote a small program to do the work for me. Once I had the data and a way to refresh it easily, I needed a nice way to put it on the blog. I found this is a neat applet to publish data on the internet from Socrata.

And voila! I will be keeping this as up-to-date as possible until the tournament start.

2009 Grade National Chess Tournament, Dallas TX

Heat map of number of entries by state.

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Chess In The Schools

2009-11-09T09:21:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, Richie and Alyssa played in their first Chess-In-The-Schools Tournament. For those who don't know, CIS hold free tournaments throughout the academic year at public schools in the NY City school districts. Amazingly, CIS is one of two separate free chess programs in NYC (along with The Right Move) which co-exist alongside several well-organized and popular paid alternatives (NYChessKids, National Scholastic Chess Foundation, Continental Chess Association and several private schools that hold their own regular tournaments. There's even the Marshall Chess Club for higher rated players).

If you are at all a follower of scholastic chess you'll be familiar with the exceptional performance of certain NY public school chess teams at national scholastic tournaments. Many of these schools serve lower-income and minority residential areas which demonstrates quite convincingly that chess is an equal opportunity mind sport. After visiting the infamous IS318 (home of chess instructor extraordinaire, Elizabeth Vicary), it's really quite obvious to me why these schools are able to consistently turn out nationally competitive teams. (Observant readers will be able to make Elizabeth out in the photo).

If ever a picture was worth a thousand words, the few I post here certainly would make a short novel. When the top chess players in the school are prominently lauded on a chess hall of fame, and the hallways are decked with championship banners and newspaper clippings of past conquests and students have access top enthusiastic and top flight chess coaching, it's no mystery at all why IS318 is a perennial top-runner in team competitions.

The Weakest Link

2009-10-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

I happened to overhear a conversation that a father of a novice player was having with one of the NY chess coaches. The father was saying something like, "he seems really strong to me, he can play exceptionally well for 4-5 moves in a row but will then blunder a piece and throw away the game. If only he could play like that the whole game, I'm sure he'd do much better..." And the coach nodded and assured the man of his son's obvious talent for the game, etc.

I think this is really a common thought among parents of beginner or improving players. And it's pretty much universally true. Everyone could probably play 100-200 points stronger if they eliminated the 1 worst blunder from their games.

It's so common, in fact, that thinking this way is sort of a trap. It's easy to convince yourself that the player is somehow better than the results. The harsh reality is that the chess rating system is amazingly accurate given enough time. Rating is the unbiased, brutally honest measure of your strength as a chess player. I've often found myself thinking that Richie, for instance, should really be rated 200 points higher but why do I really think that? Perhaps it's because he beats me occasionally. But the problem is that when we play casually, do I really take the time to think and play near my full strength? Am I subconsciously soft-playing him? Surely letting him take back that one obvious blunder couldn't make a signficant difference. There's no way he'd make that kind of gross error in a slow tournament game, right?

I picked out a recent game to illustrate the point. Richie played this game against another player rated almost the same as him. Amazingly, even after putting this game through a chess engine, I could only identify 1 major blunder. In fact the game was within about 1.0 pt (1 pawn) of even until that blunder. It's no wonder that Richie playing strength seems to so hard for me to comprehend when he can play a nearly blunderless game with excellent positional control, only to uncork a stinker like 18... Bd3?? for no obvious reason. And this isn't exactly a fluke since he made an almost identical error later in the same tournament.

Structured Thought Processes

2009-10-18T04:51:00.000-07:00

I was reading through some of Dan Heisman's excellent chess articles. One thing I like a lot about his writings on ChessCafe is his focus on the practical requirements to play well and improve. One lesson he gives is the importance of playing well throughout the game. After all, it only takes one major blunder to lose a game. At the scholastic level this is especially important. It's not a natural act for a young child to look at the board from their opponent's point of view or to weigh the consequences of their actions and consider multiple options before physically acting. The vast majority of players in the K-1 age group are playing the first decent looking move they can find. Alyssa and Richie have developed their basic skills enough and have been playing long enough that I thought it was time to introduce a structured thought process into their game. The idea is to have a few steps that you go through each and every move of the game. I had looked through some example processes in various sources but I thought for my kids that it was important to keep it relatively simple. It wouldn't do any good to give them a 12 step checklist since they'd never be able to do it.

The first thing I did was give them the analogy of the weakest link. I described a chain that had all its link made of steel and one of it's links made of play-doh. I asked them to imagine someone pulling on this chain. I explained that in a chess your game can only be as good as the weakest moves you make.

For the structured thought process, therefore I asked them to remember these things. Most importantly, I asked them to do this *every move* of the game.

On their turn:
1. Look for threats. Look at the last moved piece, scan the squares it attacks and check for moves that go through the square it left. This is far and away the most important thing to learn.
2. Choose three candidate moves that do not obviously lose material. Here is where you can really make things complicated if you want. But at this stage I wanted a realistic goal. In practice I've told them that some moves they should consider are moves that answer a threat defensively, moves that attack the opponents pieces or king, moves that move your pieces into more active positions. For Richie, I've asked him specifically to analyze in-between moves carefully.
3. Visualize their opponent's best response to their candidate moves, try to visualize at least three half-plies ahead, particularly if they are forcing their opponent to do something (e.g. checks, queen attacks, attacking a free piece).
4. Play the move they like the best

I noticed that during their games, they would focus when it was their turn but tune out when it wasn't their turn. I said that if you watched grandmaster's play, they thought just as hard during their opponent's turn as they did on their own. Since it can be difficult to guess what their opponent is going to do, rather than spend all their effort finding what they think might be likely continuations, I suggested that they should try something different.

When it's their opponents turn:
1. Look at all of their opponents pawns and pieces and identify which ones are weak.
2. Look for weak square that are not defended which can be reached by their pieces.
3. Look for three-move-plans. Pick an objective and find a three move sequence that helps accomplish that plan.

I've been talking talking to them about this process for about one month. I asked them recently to play a game against each other where they talked about the process out loud and I enforced the process at each move.

Not surprisingly they played a wonderful game. To all of our surprise, the game lasted nearly two hours and none of us noticed. Around move 50 I suspended the exercise and put them on a clock. The idea was to see if they could do an abbreviated version: look for threats, pick 2 candidate moves. Alyssa who was playing white and had been winning stumbled a bit under the time pressure but otherwise played well above her level in my opinion.

The Teaching Game

2009-09-13T22:22:00.000-07:00

I was taking a nap one day and somewhere in the middle of it, as I drifted between states of consciousness, I heard the sweet sound of Yunzi stones snapping on a bamboo board. Now I'm not 100% sure I heard this correctly, but on the edge of my consciousness I heard Richie reviewing a part of a game with Alyssa. He was saying, and I quote, "in this situation you could just play here, because then I go here, and you connect here." I'm a little vague on the exact wording but I'm sure about the vocabulary used. I recall thinking "situation" is a strange word for him to be using (I've never heard it from him before), and realized he must be mimicking my own review language. But as I enjoyed the moment, wishing to somehow stop time or bottle up the scene somehow, I soon fell back to sleep. When I awoke, Richie told me he played a 9 handicap game with Alyssa and lost. I said 9 stones is too many for a 13x13 board, but he was said "yeah, but I invaded all over the place, and I could have won."

Feng Yun Summer Go Workshop

2009-09-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

Last week we attended the Feng Yun Summer Go Workshop in Somerset, NJ. I had noticed an announcement in the American Go Association E-Journal mentioning the workshop and decided to attend with my family on a whim. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. There are comparatively few opportunities for young players (or adults, for that matter) to play go and get exposure to strong players for instruction so I was really looking forward to having Richie & Alyssa get a proper beginner's introduction to the game. Having a chance to learn something myself was an added bonus. I was a little concerned that the attendence might be low, but the turnout was actually pretty healthy. There were over 20 players in attendence, and importantly, there were at least 7 that were about the same age as our kids, most of whom were absolute beginners. I was a little surprised that I was only one of two adults in attendence, but the healthy number of (mostly Chinese) kids, really added to the fun for our children who had an absolute blast running around the hotel with the other kids in between lessons.

The daily schedule was intensive but manageable even for the young ones. All meals are included and prepared in the hotel, which definitely streamlines the go experience. Each day after breakfast there was a 3 hour instructional session from 9-12pm, followed by lunch, a 2nd session from 1 to 4pm, an afternoon physical activity break from 4-6pm, followed by dinner and an evening session from 7-9pm. At first I thought this heavy a schedule would be too difficult and that our kids would get tired or restless, but surprisingly they had plenty of energy and seemed to enjoy even the late evening session.

The group was divided into 3 sections--a dan level group, a kyu group and a beginner group--and the activities were different for different groups. For the kyu players, usually the morning and afternoon session consisted of initial instruction (either a game review or solving problems) followed by an hour of ladder tournament games which continued all week. The dan level players spent most of their time playing teaching games with the visiting Chinese pro, Xue Lei 4p, who played 3-4 players simultaneously.

As a side note, I was surprised to find out that the Xue Lei had no problem playing several games simultaneously *and* could recall any particular game accurately hours or even a day later. All of the dan players could more or less remember their games as well.

I was especially interested in how the beginners were instructed and was pleased to find out that Feng Yun herself, a 9-dan professional player, actually taught around half of the beginner sessions while the rest were taught by Paul Matthews, himself a strong amateur player. Each of the beginners was given a book of problems which looked like material from a Chinese go instructional program. It consisted of an introduction to the rules of go, a few sections of basic problems (without answers), and a few sample openings. There were conceptual sections (corners, sides, center), meaning of the different lines, etc. and I was not that surprised to find out that it was very similar to the Korean books I recently purchased. The main differences seemed to be that the Chinese book was a little less entertainment focused (no cartoons), and had more exercises per section. Their lessons varied between working through the workbooks, playing each other, and playing handicap games.

I found out that the operator of the hotel is a go enthusiast and parent and had generously reduced the hotel rates which explains how the cost could be so low. At around $300 per person, including accommodation and meals for 5 days, the workshop certainly offers excellent value. The cost varies depending on whether you will need your own room or can double up with other attendees, but either way it's a bargain.

Probably the most difficult aspect of such a workshop (which it turned out was mainly for young players) is to balance serious study with fun. In my case, with such young children, I was only looking for them to have a better idea of how the rules of the game worked and some basic, beginner strategy. By far the most important thing was for them to like playing go and enjoy themselves. For some of the older children, some of the time, there were a few very minor discipline issues along the way, but overall I felt the right balance was maintained quite admirably.

I suppose the strongest endorsement of all comes from Richie & Alyssa who were both sad to leave. Richie wanted to know why we couldn't stay longer and Alyssa has said that she would like to come again.

It's too early for me to say if we'll be able to attend any of the upcoming workshops (which are held twice a year) but I certainly hope we can.

A Nice Attack for a 5 year old

2009-08-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

Richie hasn't been playing much chess this summer but over the last week we started playing a few games. He's very inconsistent right now. Sometimes he misses mate-in-one threats and he is generally playing more instinctively than actually calculating moves from what I can tell. During one particular such game, I tried to show him the folly of playing without thinking. He carelessly allowed is King to get too exposed when I had 2 minor pieces a rook and a queen in striking distance. I told him "with this much material nearby a checkmate is almost inevitable when your king walks to the center" The next day he played a game on ICC and produced this nice attack that showed he was paying attention. The beginning of the game has a few positional bumbles like allowing his pawns to get doubled but the material was still close. His opponent made a few inaccurate moves and Richie took full advantage.

I've had to switch PGN display methods as chesspublisher.com is now defunct. Unfortunately, after emailing Andrew, I found out that all of our stored games records are lost. This is a big disappointment because I don't think I had kept separate records. I'll try to go back at some point and replace the games that aren't displaying but I'm not optimistic that I'll be able to.

Fortunately chessflash is even nicer and as an added bonus the game will be directly embedded in the html source so even if chessflash goes down, I'll be able to recover the game records.

Gludion in Blogger

2009-08-14T00:44:00.000-07:00

I got gludion working in blogger! Sweet. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. All credit to this flash tutorial which pointed the way for me, except the google site maker they used is no longer current.

For anyone that wants to do this yourself, here are the steps I used.

1. I created a page on Google Sites. This is where I uploaded the executable swf file and sgf files.

2. Download Gludion. The only file you need is the file goswf.swf.

3. Use the menu in the upper right of Google sites to "manage the site" and on the left had sidebar there is an option to upload attachments. Upload the goswf.swf file and an sgf file.

4. In blogger, or presumably anything similar, you can embed the player using html like this:

And Presto!

Pokemon TCG, Good Thing Or Curse?

2009-07-29T01:39:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know TCG refers to Trading Card Game. Pokemon, the aggressively marketed, Japanese anime import has a variety of related product lines such as video games, TV shows and movies associated with it. But perhaps the most interesting among them from my point of view is the strategy/collecting card game. Pokemon TCG falls into an entire category of strategy card games most popularly represented by Magic the Gathering and Yugioh.

Like chess and go, TCG's are turn-based strategy games that are generally played between two players, but that's pretty much where the similarity ends.

Briefly, TCG's usually involve two players drawing cards from their own deck and battling with character cards based on rules of engagement/attacks/moves that are unique to each card type. A variety of rules govern interactions between cards which greatly affect game play. Because there are unseen cards and decks are randomized, TCG's are games of imperfect information. In addition, each player designs his/her deck prior to the start of the game, selecting a fixed number of cards from a pre-arranged universe of playable cards.

The marketing masterstroke, however, is undoubtedly the fact that the game designers periodically release new cards into the game and may even introduce new rules or clarifications to govern play with the new cards. This not only ensures that players continue to purchase products (cards) from the designers, but it adds a so-called "meta-strategy" to the game. As new cards are introduced, strategically powerful deck arrangements come into popularity. But if certain deck arrangements become too popular, it is possible to do well in competition by designing a deck which works well to counter the popular configurations.

Though the number of turns in a typical game is usually quite small (relative to chess and go), the number of potential card-sets/strategies is very, very large. When the game is well-balanced (there are no clearly dominant deck choices), the overall complexity seems to be quite high, perhaps even much higher than with perfect information games like chess and go.

As an old fogie that basically post-dated the popularity of TCGs, the whole trend is something I basically missed so I have very little knowledge of how to actually play these games.

But recently, Richie has become keenly interested in Pokemon which is widely recognized as the sort of "gateway" TCG game, targeted at the pre-teen set. Basically the young kids get hooked in from the cutesy cartoons and if all goes well, they (or more likely their parents) end up buying thousands of Pokemon, Yugioh, Magic, etc. cards over the next 15 years. The parallels with substance abuse is not accidental. In recent years, with the popularity of various forms of poker, we've actually seen quite a few former TCG champions emerging as tournament poker winners which isn't all that surprising considering that poker, too, is a game of imperfect information where strategy and meta-strategy can give a player an edge.

At this point, several of Richie's friends that are a couple of years older (he's 5 now) collect the cards but they don't actually play the game by the rules. They seem to be more interested in collecting their favorite characters or cards that appear to be strong cards, but they really don't know how to play by the rules.

So the question is whether I should this be something I let Richie really get into? There is probably as much of an argument for Pokemon as there is for chess as a mental development tool. But the whole card collecting aspect, where ever more high powered cards are needed to compete effectively is somewhat of a turnoff. To put it into concrete terms, Richie has decided that he wants a particular card for his upcoming birthday and is willing to spend $35 on it. This is for a card which will, in all likelyhood, be worthless in a couple of years at the latest.

Well, rightly or wrongly, I decided tentatively that we'd take the plunge and see how it works out. The main positive side-effect I hope to get out of this is that it might spur him to learn how to read a little quicker. Right now he basically relies on memory and by reading some of the key numbers on the cards but eventually, if he wants to play properly, he'll need to know how to read and understand the cards and the rules.

I have purchased a few "theme" decks, a rulebook and strategy guide, and of course Richie got his special card. I guess that will be enough to get started.

Summer Doldrums Redux

2009-07-13T01:26:00.000-07:00

Just like last summer, our chess activities dropped off significantly towards the end of the school year. The kids played just couple of tournaments after the supernationals with uninspiring results. In the last tournament Richie accepted a draw against one of his friends in a completely winning position and it reminded me of the scene in Searching for Bobby Fischer where Josh offers a draw to share the championship with his opponent even though he sees that he has a forced win in like 10 moves. We'll have to see what we can do about stamping out that weakness (kidding). We have enrolled them in a summer chess program at Darien High School for a few weeks but except for the very occasional home game I don't expect them to play much before the next school year. Unfortunately I believe their new school will not have a chess club so they won't be able to play anymore in school. For the last few months, Richie has declined to play chess with me at all, but the other day, he took up the challenge. I played quickly but fairly seriously so I was actually a little surprised to lose. I told him that I was no longer going to go easy on him because he had gotten too good for that. Based on that game, I guess he might have improved over the last few months, but it has been harder for me to tell without actually playing him and with his relatively poor recent tournament results.

Cornbread

2009-04-19T18:16:00.000-07:00

We visited Washington Square Park. It was our first time back since Richie was 4. The last time he was there he was just learning how to move the pieces! What a difference a year makes. I asked Richie to play a game against "Cornbread." I'm not sure what his strength is, but he pretty easily beat me through simple positional play when we went into a knight vs. bishop endgame and I ran low on time so I presume he's around my strength or higher. Richie was reluctant at first. So I played went for his weakness: he had recently depleted his savings on a trip to Target, as he loaded up on Bakugan accessories. So I offered him an exorbitant prize to see if that would get him in the saddle. I was 100% sure he would lose to be honest because Cornbread was obviously pretty strong at speed chess. Then Richie pulled a fast one on me and exclaimed "No time!" before sitting down to play. Cornbread was eager to earn his $2 fee so he agreed and put away the clock.

Richie went into his zone and played quite literally the best game I've ever seen him play. It's a shame that I didn't record the moves so all I can do is give the eyewitness account. The game started out unusually, with Cornbread as black avoiding any standard double king pawn formation and instead opting for a somewhat cramped but solid development. Richie reacted with an early Queen foray to b3, and I sighed inwardly when I saw it because I assumed that Cornbread would find some way to exploit it later. Richie placed his pieces well, however, and found away to establish the e4-e5 pawn duo after first pinning and exchanging one of Cornbread's centralized pieces. When Richie found the d3-d4 advance after spending a full minute in contemplation, Cornbread smiled knowingly and seemed to realize that he was in for a sterner challenge then he had imagined. A lot of kids can learn how to develop all their pieces--they often do so by rote, knights to c3 and f3, bishops to c4 or f4, etc. Finding a good plan at the start of the middle game takes a much more complete chess understanding and calculation ability. At this point, Cornbread tucked his King away but Richie's firm hold on the center probably gave him a small advantage, though material was still even. Richie's clear 3rd rank allowed for a transfer of his Queen to the Kingside, obligating Cornbread to shift some of pieces to avoid any tactics on f7. Then Richie doubled up his rooks on the c-file even though it was pretty clear that nothing could come of it immediately as Cornbread countered by defending his c-pawn with a rook. After another long pause, Richie seemed to think that he was ready for the attack, and many many games of playing the King's gambit, led him to a bold decision, f4! Cornbread seemed unfazed and even said that he thought Richie might have given him "the chance he needed" as he moved his Queen with check to the g1-a7 diagonal. I knew Richie was really serious about winning when he spent a good 30 seconds deciding how to handle the check, eventually opting correctly for a move to h8. Cornbread had already lost his dark-squared bishop so it would be difficult for him to find any mate on h7 for instance. A few moves later and Cornbread was induced to lose his e-pawn to prevent the f5 push and also weaken his kingside castle with g6. Then Richie found a really nice sequence of queen maneuvers. First he repositioned to bring in another minor piece to the attack. Cornbread defended deftly, but after Richie switched the focus to the queenside by eyeing the rook on c8 with his bishop, Cornbread was forced to abandon defense of his c-pawn or lose the exchange. Richie picked up the c-pawn gaining a concrete material advantage and control of the c-file. The rest was pure Art of Attack-like. First he penetrated his rook to the 7th rank. Then after bringing his queen back to the kingside, he spotted a puzzle-like mate-in-3 combination that was led off by a rook sacrifice. The game lasted a full 30 minutes and I was surprised to find a small crowd had gathered and were giving Richie an ovation. He smiled shyly but I knew that he was very proud of his game. Most chess lovers know the thrill of playing a game where your opponent avoids obvious blunders but you manage to convert several minor advantages into a decisive attack. If the finale is a sacrificial mating attack, it's really chess heaven. I think this game may mark a new turning point for Richie. I hope he realizes that games that are won "fairly" are more interesting and enjoyable than games that are won by unsound tactical tricks. If so I think he is going to get much more out of chess in the future.

Supernationals IV

2009-04-07T15:20:00.000-07:00

We had a great time at the Supernationals. The Opryland resort was quite a spectacle and was much larger than I had imagined. Richie competed in the K-1 Open section, but as a Pre-K he was at a bit of a disadvantage versus the field. He managed to garner 4.0/7.0 but he lost his first two rounds which meant that all of his remaining games were against lower rated opponents. That was a little unfortunate because I was hoping he'd get a chance to play some stronger players. I was a little surprised at how well his opponents rated around 300 to 600 played. To their credit they appeared to be playing much stronger than their ratings suggested they would. I guess most of the kids do some amount of preparation leading into the event and also they've had the benefit of a full academic year to strengthen their skills. Some are probably under-rated because they don't play in rated events that often as well. This seems to be less of a factor early in the year but towards the end there's more of a chance it seems that players will be mis-rated.My main goal for the trip was to spend some quality father-son time with Richie so we spent the time between rounds watching cartoons (Hikaru no Go, of course!), wandering the site, getting snacks, etc. rather than playing chess or preparing. I suppose if I were more serious I would have made more effort to make sure he was well rested and I would have asked him to play games or do tactics, but I felt it was more important this trip to make it more play and less work.

We did enter one of the simultaneous events given by Grandmaster Yuri Shulman. This turned out to be a nice experience. Richie and I had a little "last longer" wager which he won. He played a great sicilian with some nice thematic maneuvers that gave him surprisingly good counterplay against a Shulman's kingside assault before he lost to some tactics. Whereas I bungled the opening of my game and ended up being completely tied up and strategically lost by move 12 I'd say.

We played several games of Plunder Chess between rounds and Richie really took a liking to it. Of course we ended up coming home with a set. I don't really object to chess variants in general. I think they help in some ways because they force you to think creatively because you can't rely on the crutch of known patterns.

Heading to Supernationals IV

2009-04-02T20:12:00.001-07:00

Richie and I are off to the Supernationals IV tomorrow. It's actually a bit of an accident that we're even going at all. I had made reservations for the Opryland hotel just in case we decided to go but I was 90% sure we wouldn't. The main reason I wasn't interested in going this year was that Richie is still in Kindergarten. (Actually he I should probably refer to him as Pre-K since he will be entering Kindergarten next year) but they only have a K-1 section. He has pretty much no shot at winning and only a small chance of getting the all important trophy so I was inclined to pass and just wait for next year. But, and let this be a lesson to myself for the future, I naively listened to the booking agent who originally told me I could cancel with 48 hours notice. That's apparently true for normal hotel reservations but not for conventions like the Supernationals. So I was basically stuck with the reservation and had to scramble to make other arrangements so it didn't go to waste.

It's nice though to go to the tournament just for the experience (at 5000 players it's the biggest chess tournament in history). I won't be so concerned about preparation because the results are not as meaningful this time and I can focus on making sure Richie is getting an enjoyable and edifying chess experience. It's actually awful that I care so much about the results at tournaments to begin with but to be perfectly honest with myself, they always matter to some degree. Having said that, the most uplifting chess parent moment I've had recently was when I showed Alyssa a grandmaster game that involved opposite side castling and a spectacular double edged race to land the first blow. At the end of it she said, "that game was so cool, I like that one a lot." She's always been more of an artistically minded person, so I had hoped that the creative side of chess would appeal to her, and it seems like the seeds of chess appreciation are taking root.

CT State K-1 Open Champion

2009-04-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

Richie recently competed in the Connecticut State Scholastic Chess Championships and was fortunate enough to take the K-1 title. He scored 3.5/4.0 in the preliminaries and 3.0/4.0 in the finals. Due to the limited number of participants, however, he was playing in a combined K-3 group and ended up finishing with the highest score for Kindergarten or 1st graders. He won on a sort of technicality, however, because the actual highest 1st grade finisher (Julian Wang), was awarded the K-3 Open title which left Richie as the next highest finisher.

After it was all over, I guess it was worthwhile but I have to admit I had my doubts after the preliminary round. Unlike last year, which attracted probably over 200 players and was held at Yale University in a single day, this year's event was curiously split into two rounds. Only the top five resident finishers (and players rated higher than a pre-determined rating cutoff) were eligible for the finals. Also the finals were held in Storrs, CT which was quite a long way from home. I'm not sure if it was the tournament structure, or the effect of the recession, or what, but sadly the state championship only had about 60 players in all age groups. It was actually smaller than an ordinary weekend tournament in NY. The kindergarten and 1st grade sections had only six players (!) in the preliminaries which almost assured Richie of making the finals. Thankfully in the finals they combined his age group with older kids so at least he got to play a couple of rounds with opponents rated near his level.

He did have an enjoyable time, in part because a few of the players from his chess club (Alex Zarikos, Julian Wang) also did well.

As for his playing, I would have to say that it was a mixed result. He still appears to be unable to compete with 1000+ rated players. I'm curious to see what changes will occur in the next few months that will make him stronger than 1000 in practice. I already believe firmly that he is playing at a level at least on par with some of those kids but he doesn't seem to put it together during a tournament for some reason. His playing style is becoming more of an attacking, slash and burn style which is good against unrated opponents who offer little resistance, but some the soundness of his attacks is often more strictly tested by the slightly more seasoned 1000+ players.

In a warm up tournament in NYC, Richie had his first perfect score in a Reserve section tournament (for players rated over 800). In his play, I saw some more confident attacking skills coming into play like purposeful exchange sacrifices and creation of open lines with pawn moves. I would definitely characterize him right now as dangerous. Certain types of positions he can probably play like a 1200 player but clearly other types of games expose big holes in his knowledge base.

It will be interesting to see how he fares at the upcoming Supernationals.

Dangers of the In-Between Move

2009-03-06T00:39:00.000-08:00

Richie is quite fond of the so-called "in-between" move where a player needs to make a certain move (e.g. save a piece) but can make a forcing move beforehand and improve his position. This is a somewhat advanced play for a Kindergartener to make because to pull it off it really requires that the player understand what a forcing move is and check all possible opponent responses to make sure that he benefits. Unfortunately Richie isn't always careful enough in evaluating if it makes sense. Sometimes when his piece gets attacked, rather than save it, he attacks somewhere else, intending to save his piece after the in-between move. He sometimes fails to find his opponent's best response which can leave him with 2 pieces en prise for example.

In this case it works out for him but it shouldn't have.

By the way. This is his first game that I've seen with the closed Sicilian which no one has ever showed him.

Can you spot the in-between blunder? Highlight below for the answer:
19. .. Bxd3? 20. exd6 Bxe2 21. Rfe1? {Nxe2 wins a piece} Bxf3

NY City and State Championships

2009-03-06T00:12:00.000-08:00

We recently attended both the NYC and NY State Championships. The NYC championship was held at the New Yorker hotel in midtown Manhattan. The venue was quite nice since the playing area was in a ballroom with high ceilings. It was a step up from the normal playing experience. Unfortunately it was also extremely crowded and there was limited seating area for parents. Richie did well and finished as the highest Kindergartener with a score of 4.0/5.0. That was good enough for 10th place. His one loss came against an unrated opponent who turned out to be pretty strong and played patiently and methodically. I thought it was interesting that afterwards Richie wanted play that boy in some skittles games and at a faster pace had little difficulty winning. I mentioned to him that the reason he lost in the tournament was most likely that he was moving too fast. I'm not sure if the message sank in though because he is still a quick player and doesn't have the patience still for extended thought on important moves. I guess the maximum he's spending is 10 or 15 seconds on a move and the longer games he plays are probably a result of his opponent taking longer for their moves.

At the NY States, Richie didn't have as much success, finishing with a score of 2.0/5.0 against a pool of Kindergarten and 1st graders. He came into the event rated in the top 10, so I thought he had a chance of getting a trophy (top 20 got trophies), but a few critical errors against lower-rated opponents ended his chances. Generally speaking, Richie is unsuccessful against higher-rated opponents and rate of upset is relatively low. I would have actually thought that he'd have more mixed results against higher rated opponents and random results against lower rated opponents because I think his peak playing level is pretty high (maybe 1100) but he's inconsistent especially if he's tired. But the results speak otherwise. Richie may have gotten a little over-confident and wasn't interested in playing games or doing tactics before his matches (and hadn't really played in the preceding days). Even though we told him he didn't win enough games for a trophy he wanted to attend the award ceremony just in case. He was visibly disappointed when they finished calling out the winners. We felt badly for him but the upside is that he showed much more interest in playing again.

Interestingly, Alyssa managed to win a game against a 1000 rated opponent. She was thrilled with the result even though she was 2.0/6.0 I think her confidence was pretty high afterwards. I really admire Alyssa's fighting spirit. She has kind of come around to the game and seems to be enjoying the challenge more. She played one game that lasted over an hour and though she lost you could tell that she put all her effort into winning it. I couldn't be happier. I hope she her effort starts paying off with some more wins and higher finishes. Someone mentioned to me that his daughter really had a good time at an all-girl's event. I don't know if we can find one in the area but that would probably be a good experience for her.

I tried to inject some excitement into the game by teaching them a new opening. I called it the "secret opening" and its... a secret! Alyssa really liked the idea of springing a surprise on her opponents. Unfortunately her opponents went out of her "book" by the third move. Still she got good opening positions and really lost her games in the middle and endgame, so I guess the secret opening is sort of a success.

Alyssa is getting stronger

2009-01-14T18:41:00.000-08:00

Alyssa has improved by leaps and bounds recently. She is still a little inconsistent, but when she's focused the results are much better than before. This is a nice example of the counter-punching potential of the French Defense against an over-ambitious white side. Alyssa plays black and makes some fine defensive moves to parry the initial attack and then aggressively seizes the initiative while her opponent goes pawn-grabbing. I was so impressed with it that I awarded it with our household "Great Play!" prize for the week. This is a new concept which I am starting today. I made did a little editing to change a free online award certificate into a chess certificte. I think it came out pretty nicely.

Periodically, I will select one of their games for the Great Play award. The conditions are that it must be a recorded game (ICC 15 minutes or longer, or tournament game), and it should demonstrate relatively strong play at all stages of the game. By relatively strong, I mean of course relative to their current skill level. Finally, to receive the award (maybe a choice of Blockbuster movie, or proceeds towards a book, or two hours of weekday Wii/PS3 time or equivalent), the winner must present the game to the rest of the family by demonstrating the moves over the board and telling us what is going on. I don't know yet how this is going to go, but I think I want to foster a sense of pride for creating exemplary games. Chess

83rd ACTA Scholastic Chess Tournament

2009-01-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

The kids recently played in another ACTA tournament. This one was unrated and was unique in that all 65 or so kids won trophies (winners choose first)! It was very successful in terms of entertainment value. Richie, who played up in the Primary section, ended up being undefeated which would have been a performance rating of around 1050, I guess, had it been rated. Alyssa played a great tournament and won 3.0/4.0. She was very proud to have earned to right to choose one of the larger trophies. Richie reached another milestone as he recorded his first tournament game by hand. Surprisingly the game score was completely accurate. When Alyssa started she made several errors, skipping moves or making other mistakes.

In other news, I noticed that our friend Julian Wang has made it onto the Top 100 list for age 7 and under! I'm not surprised at all, but it's still a cool thing to have achieved.

What the ...!?

2009-01-11T20:24:00.000-08:00

The title of this post refers to a phrase that Richie has become fond of using lately. When he's surprised by something he says "what the ...!?" I'm not sure where he picked this up from but it's always amusing to me when I hear it because he's learned it in this abbreviated form, rather than it's cruder extensions.

Anyhow, it happens to be the thought going through my mind recently in some of our chess sessions, especially since we've started playing blitz.

I suppose its a natural course of things for Richie to surpass me at chess, but I really wasn't expecting him to get close for at least a few years. A few months ago I was constantly throwing games, purposely missing better moves in favor of inferior moves that would lead him to a winning position. Once in awhile, I'd blunder badly and give up a queen or a piece but generally I didn't have much trouble equalizing. I could give him odds of a queen and still win most of the time. But gradually, the blunders were becoming more regular. They started feeling less like my mistakes, and more like situations forced on me by my diminutive opponent. The easy opening advantages became more rare. If I'm down a piece in the endgame, I am forced to concede defeat rather than embarass myself with a futile struggle. Of course I thought this was due to sloppiness on my part. Or maybe it's the fast time control, but today, for the first time, I made a real effort and still lost almost half my games with him! What the ...!? Losing to a 5 year old? You've got to be kidding.
I have to officially revise down my estimated rating. Apparently, I would struggle to win a Primary K-3 open tournament so that probably puts me safely below 1200.

It worries me that I might not have much more to teach him. I guess it will turn out that I might "know" more than him and be able to "explain" more than him, but he'll probably soon be able to "do" it better than me. For example, we recently played a quick game where we removed all except the K, pawns and two knights for him, and the K pawn and two bishops for me. I intended to demonstrate the power of two bishops by opening up the position, but my lesson plan had to be postponed after he non-chalantly forked a piece and a critical pawn then rolled through his pawns... Then I tried to punish him for using a "funny" opening (1. g3) and lost ignominiously after he punched through my overextended center and went up a piece after I miscalculated the exchanges. What the ...!?

So my first real (blitz) defeats have started occurring regularly at age 5 years and 3 months. How much longer do I have before my victories become rarities? I've spoken with other parents who have proudly mentioned that they cannot compete with their children, but I always assumed that this was just because they were complete novices themselves. I mean surely that wouldn't happen to me so soon. I've probably played thousands of games of chess in my lifetime. I'll be able to hold the line until he's 7, right? I don't know what Dee's been feeding the kid over the last 3 months but something fishy is going on here.

This post deserves some video evidence which I will try to provide in awhile.

The Value of Blitz Chess

2009-01-10T04:14:00.001-08:00

I think there are differing opinions out there about whether young players should play speed chess. The most famous of these may be from the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer," when 7 year old Josh Waitzkin's coach requests that he no longer be allowed to play speed chess in the park because it is teaching him bad habits, stating that it would make his job (of training Josh) harder. In the movie, Josh's mother ends the debate with the simple conclusion, "then I guess your job is harder."

I have to say that I side with the mother in the film. I only recently started playing blitz chess with Richie and it has had an immediate positive impact on his general playing ability. The reason for this is really simple, in my opinion. At the initial stage of learning (say rating under 600), the most common problems have very little to do with a lack of strategic knowledge, tactical strength, or even ability to calculate variations, but fall into the category of what I refer to as "sight" errors. Players become distracted or confused during the game and simply disregard the opponents last move, leading to hanging pieces or mate in 1 type errors. The best and surest way to reduce this type of error is practice. And blitz chess gives players an opportunity to practice this much faster than in slower time controls. Because blitz is fun, I found that not only do we play faster but we play longer than when we play slow chess which multiplies the number of moves played by 3x to 6x per session.

I'm sure there will come a time when blitz might begin having a negative influence, but I guess that's a ways down the road. Incidentally, many of the historical players I admire (Capablanca, Fischer, Kasparov) were fiendishly strong blitz players and are famous for their ability in post-mortem analysis for the rapidity with which they demonstrate variations. I have a theory that "intelligence," as difficult as it is to define, has a lot to do with how fast a person's brain can cycle through "variations." I have observed that even in my academic experience as a mathematics student, that my peers who had this sort of high calculation rate (as opposed to accurate or deep analysis) were generally the most successful. Of course, this may be an artifact of the correlation between practice (which would increase the cycle rate at any particular endeavor) and success. But I would suggest that there is also an inherent or innate cycle rate that gives some people a better chance of being "intelligent" than others.

Matthew Effect in Chess

2008-12-14T19:50:00.000-08:00

Jennifer Shahade has written an interesting review of Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers. I saw a video of one of his speeches where he talks about the "Matthew" effect. In a nutshell, the effect is seen in certain activities such as hockey in Canada, where a disproportionate number of professional players are born in the early months (January, February, March) of the year. The explanation is that the grooming system for young players favors those who are largest, strongest, and fastest for their ages. Since Jan 1st is the cut-off for birth in hockey, those with early birthdays are generally more developed than their age peers. They are singled out as "talented" and groomed with coaching, encouragement, more playing time, and so on, which perpetuates into "excellence." Jennifer (who incidentally had the misfortune of being born December 31st) tracks a similar occurrence in chess (on a small sample admittedly), but it's clear that age effects are quite possible in a competitive game such as chess where cognitive development and practice time are so critical in acquiring various skills and knowledge necessary for skillful play. There's a body of research that supports the notion that higher level chess invokes memory of positions and themes rather than purely calculation. This would imply directly that having had, say 9 months more practice than your opponent would have an important impact on relative winning chances. And at younger ages, those extra 9 months would be a larger proportion of total practice time and so would have progressively larger impact. This would logically lead to the conditions necessary for the Matthew effect to occur as young players deemed to be talented and successful are encouraged to continue while their birthday-challenged peers might gravitate towards other activities.

I read this with some interest since I have found that in my limited personal experience, there does appear to be a bias in chess towards birthday beneficiaries. Of course I don't mean to say that age is the only factor and all credit to the students and their respective supporting organizations and families. It's an interesting problem, with probably no easy solutions. Players could be grouped into smaller buckets to limit the effect but that would probably split the field up too much.

The other observation that I made recently is that the vast majority of top scholastic chess players are playing rated tournaments weekly. Malcolm makes the point in his book that practice time is a necessary requirement for excellence. There are almost no cases of "born" field geniuses. My guess is that chess is that way as well. There may be differing aptitudes for learning, but at the end of the day, it appears that those who play the most are the most successful.

In some ways that's a little disheartening because it basically means that in order to play at the top level, even in scholastic chess, the time involved would crowd out other worthwhile activities. I guess at the end of the day, nothing can replace passion for the game. There is simply no way to stay at or near the top without extreme dedication. I suppose I will continuously question whether the effort is commensurate with the value of the experience.

2008 National K-12 Championship

2008-12-14T19:26:00.000-08:00

We just finished the K-12 Nationals in Orlando Florida. Richie scored 5.0/7.0, tying for 2nd place on points and receiving 6th place on tie breaks (there was a cluster at 6.0 and a cluster at 5.0). Since the top 10 finishers received (very large) trophies, this was a very nice result. I have been emphasizing the importance of work so I was hoping that some concrete gains would reinforce this concept with the kids. Richie was so happy with his trophy. He was "a little" nervous going into the final day since he knew he needed to win both games after a slight upset loss on the 2nd day. He managed to pull it off, though. Congratulations, Richie!

Alyssa scored 2.5/7.0. The competitive bar is much higher for 2nd grade, so I was actually glad that she wasn't completely swept. Actually she managed a first round win versus a much higher rated opponent which really boosted her confidence. I think she has been improving by leaps and bounds recently and is now on par with Richie. Considering the gap between their play as recently as a few months ago this is pretty impressive. I guess there was just a small aspect of her play that changed which made a big impact.

Heading into the event, I had found that there were at least two 1000+ rated players in the Kindergarten section. There turned out to be one more that I missed because he was 6 yrs old already. All three of these strong players, Arun Khemani, Awonder Liang, and Zane Ice, finished tied for 1st place. Congratulations to them! We met Arun's father (Arun finshed 1st on tie breaks) in the skittles room. He recognized the kids from our blog and we had a nice chat. I expect we will see more from these young talents in the future.

We decided that it was too much distraction for Richie to keep game scores. I didn't see many Kindergarten players writing moves so this wasn't unusual. Unfortunately this means it's hard to really analyze what has been going on in his games. Alyssa kept all her scores and that will certainly lead to further insights into playing strengths and weaknesses.

Ready for Nationals

2008-12-08T00:15:00.000-08:00

We have started on an online program of instruction with NY Chess Kids. So far I have been pleased with the way the online lessons have turned out. I have written in the past about some of the advantages. The technical execution of the lessons is very smooth. It's virtually the same thing as having a live lesson but more efficient. It helps that the instructor has a prepared lesson plan each time and all game scores and tactics pre-loaded into a database from which he teaches (and gives us afterwards). We have one recorded lesson which is a good example.

Alyssa seems to have benefited the most. She has gotten much more focused recently and I think she realizes that there's a direct correspondence between her win ratio and the effort she puts into following the lessons. In a recent tournament game she got to apply one of the first lessons which was drawing with a K vs. K + Pawn. She probably wouldn't have been able to do that a few weeks ago. Alyssa's rating has shot up a few hundred in recent tournaments and the quality of her games has improved noticeably.

We have been stepping up the number of tournaments and lessons they have been getting ahead of the National K-12 Scholastic Championship in Orlando, Florida on Dec 12th-14th. This will obviously be our first national event so everyone is looking forward to it (and to Disneyworld afterwards). I looked a few past events and current top player lists and my best guess is that Richie will be somewhere around 5th-15th highest in rating for the kindergarten section but there's a lot of variance. There's definitely at least two much higher rated 5 year olds. Alyssa, of course, will have an uphill battle but with her recent strides I'm hopeful she can enjoy the tournament. She recently toppled an 800 rated player who probably got frustrated with the resistance she put up while a piece down and eventually blundered away the lead. If she plays with that kind of fighting spirit, I'm pretty confident she won't get zero points at least.

New Jersey State Grade Championship for 2008

2008-11-24T19:09:00.001-08:00

Richie had a very nice result at the New Jersey State Grade Championships. He scored a perfect 5.0/5.0 in the Kindergarten section to take 1st place ahead of a small field (13 players, I think). Richie seems to be "in between" levels right now. He had an easy time with unrated or inexperienced players, but has quite a bit of difficulty against 1st-3rd graders rated over 500. We made the trip out to NJ, hoping to give him a chance to play stronger competition in his age group, but from that perspective this tournament turned out to be no different than local tournaments. There were only two rated players and the rest were early beginners so the experiential value was a little less than I had hoped. Alyssa scored 2.0/5.0 in the 2nd grade section. There were quite a few players that are objectively stronger than her and her results pretty much followed expectations based on ratings.

Inline with my recent realization that Alyssa and on occasion Richie are still making simple sight errors (not having anything to do with strategy, but simply overlooking a chance to win a free piece easily, or moving her pieces in a way that they can be captured immediately), I asked both of them to try their best to avoid these two types of errors on every single move. That's quite a bit of concentrating to do over a whole day, so I'm proud of them for their efforts. I believe that until this much can be mastered, working on other skill development may be premature.

Most of the time these errors are the side-effect of a good thing: trying to plan ahead. Usually at some time during their previous turn they plan something, often something that follows some generally recommended action (castle, or develop a piece, for instance), but they execute the move without pausing to consider the opponent's most recent move and how that move changes the dynamic of the position.

I am going to experiment with speed chess as a practice routine. The goal of the exercise is not to win the game (they are hardly dexterous enough to win a close game at 5-minutes), but to focus on a short set of thoughts that should be made every single move. For example, play through a 5-minute game making an effort on every move to check a. if the piece they just moved is free, and b. if it attacks something that should be moved. If a. or b. they should respond appropriately with a capture or an evasion, otherwise they should make the first safe move piece move they can think of (or pawn move if no piece move seems obvious).

[Edit: I had previously called Richie the 2008 Kindergarten Champion, which technically incorrect. That title is reserved for NJ state residents. The NJ State Kindergarten Champion is Jai Narayanan. Congratulations to him and congratulations to Richie for taking first place.

NY City Public Schools Chess Tournaments and Online Lessons

2008-11-19T01:53:00.000-08:00

For a change of pace we recently entered the kids into a NY Public School chess tournament run by NY Chess Kids. I had heard that the NY City players were stronger and they definitely were. Richie had to enter the Primary section because his rating exceeded the 500 maximum for K-1. So he and Alyssa actually played in the same section. Alyssa went winless while Richie scored 1.5/4.0. His win was against a very inexperienced player though, and he lost to all players with an established rating (even those much lower than his). Credit to the NY chess programs. They really do a good job of teaching the kids. Overall I feel that Richie, in particular, will benefit from playing up out of the K section. There's a very big difference between playing someone with less than a few months experience and playing someone whit a year or more experience. From a learning perspective the former is almost a zero value experience. So at the risk of letting him get a little discouraged, I am going to start putting Richie into tournaments where he has a chance to play players stronger than him more often. The upcoming NJ state championship will probably be an exception. Based on last year's turnout, I am going to guess that Richie will be among the top rated Kindergarteners in the tournament.

We are looking into taking online lessons from one of the instructors from NY Chess Kids. I will post more about that if it happens. We had one demo and it was conducted online using Adobe conferencing. It was very well run and quite nice. I was able to log in from work to observe while the kids had web-cam set-ups and could see the instructor while watching. I'm convinced that online lessons are actually more efficient than in person lessons for several reasons, some obvious and some not so obvious.

The most obvious reason is that material can be presented much more quickly. Tactics puzzles can be prepared in advance, for instance, and do not require time to set up on the board. Use of arrows, highlights, quickly reviewing variations, etc. all help kids absorb information quickly. Kids are naturally visual learners so the more "pictures" that are associated with verbal words of advice, the better. Whole games can be run through quickly, and without errors, and games can be played and recorded so that they can be immediately reviewed.

The less obvious reason is that for some reason, kids pay more attention in front of the computer. Maybe they're used to television or video games, but they aren't as easily distracted and tend to focus more on the lesson. In person, there is more tendency to lolligag, play with objects nearby, wander away, and so on. In chess clubs, they get distracted by the other kids and have to spend time setting up boards to play, and so on.

So I'm optimistic that this will be a great way to learn the game and am looking forward to starting them up with regular lessons soon.

81st ACTA Scholastic Chess Tournament

2008-11-19T01:37:00.000-08:00

On November 1st, the kids participated in the 81st ACTA Tournament. Richie ran away 4.0/4.0 to take first place for the Kindergarten section. In general it seems the competition in CT in the Kindergarten age group is not really much challenge currently. I'm very proud to report that Alyssa scored 3.0/4.0 to take 2nd place in the Primary Novice section. More importantly, she was very proud of herself and even started to say that she "kinda likes chess now." I had told her many times in the past that it was just a matter of time before she started winning more. We've recently worked a little bit on tactics (or "tictacs" as she calls them) which has helped her quite a bit. She is still strangely reluctant to use her queen. She fears losing her major pieces and therefore plays passively, but she is a little more careful nowadays. In her final game, for instance, she lead by a queen and a minor piece at one point, but never moved her queen off of d1 and eventually lost it for free on that square to bishop!

The more I watch them kids play the more I realize that the following skills are most important (in descending order):

1. moving pieces when directly threatened if that piece can be taken for free
2. capturing an opponents piece that has just moved if it is now free
3. not falling for simple counting errors (3 attackers to 2 defenders)
4. not trading pieces for pawns

Surprisingly, Richie, for example, who is sometimes quite strong at tactics and can spot mate in two with a clearance sacrifice, for instance, still sometimes overlooks a chance to win a the most recently moved piece with a pawn.

Someone should make a drill for K-1 age players which repeatedly makes threats and the only task is to save the threatened piece (by capturing the attacker if it's free, or by moving to a safe square if it's not). This is so basic that it's not even covered in tactics books or software, but it really requires practice.

It's pretty hard to make kids play slow enough too. I still struggle with finding away to remove these types of hasty errors from their play.

ICC

2008-11-10T17:54:00.000-08:00

I signed Richie up on ICC so he can play real people. I'm not sure why but most computer programs I've seen that try to make opponents rated 1200 or lower don't seem to be able to mimic the typical mistakes and playing strength exhibited by real human players.

This is Richie's first unassisted win. I find it interesting that the opponent played generally well in the opening but lost a queen to a capture from the bishop coming from c8--a mistake I've seen Richie make several times. Is that a hard one for kids to see? (I'm presuming the opponent was a boy aged 9 or so based on his handle.).

Richie inexplicably gives away a knight for free early in the game, even though there's another obvious candidate move for that knight that takes a pawn. I'm not sure what leads to this type of error. After the queen capture, I was impressed by Richie's moves from that point forward, especially his queen maneuvering which was done with very little time per move. And the recapture of the rook 36. Rxa7 Qxa7 which is a hard one to see usually because the queen is moving backwards. He played this move instantly which makes me think he had planned to guard the pawn when he moved to f2.

Richie is playing black in this game. His online rating is 985 but this is overstated since it starts at 1600 and has been coming down with his losses. His opponent is rated 1050.

Video: a new frontier for Kids Chess and Go

2008-10-31T00:56:00.000-07:00

We recently got a DXG-567V HD handheld video recorder. It's pretty neat and I may do a separate review later. The best thing about it is that it's really small and convenient to use. I perched it from the overhead light in our dining room and captured this short video of Richie playing Go with me. As an added bonus if you listen carefully you'll hear Alyssa practicing piano in the background. I even signed up on YouTube to host the video. I feel so proficient.

Video of Richie Playing Chess

2008-10-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

I uploaded a recent video of Richie playing chess with me.

Richie Turns 5!

2008-10-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

On the eve of Richie's 5th Birthday I thought I'd give a short state of the union address. For just about the entire summer, Richie played almost no chess at all. After returning we put him back into chess club but decided for the time being not to continue with individual lessons. It was unclear that he was getting much out of it towards the end of the last school year as his enthusiasm waned. After the break, however, he seems to have begun enjoying the game once again. He still prefers Lego Star Wars over chess, but now he enjoys occasional games against Dee. (At the moment she holds a small edge over him it seems, but it's not one-sided at all). I also find it interesting that he now plays Chessmaster quite willingly and has become aware of his rating. As he turns five, his current Chessmaster rating is around 700. (He hasn't played a USCF tournament since last school year but his rating at the end of Pre-K was around 550). He has played about 100 rated games over the last year on Chessmaster but they were really done in about two spurts of activity: the first 80 games in his first few months of playing and the last 20 or so games in the last few weeks. Interestingly despite the nearly 3 month break from playing, his rating was pretty much unchanged at around 550 when he resumed. Then in the last 20 games it shot up 150 pts. To be honest I don't think he's actually improved from 4 months ago, but he does take his Chessmaster games more seriously.

Some may take issue with this so I hesitate to mention it but the main reason for his newfound zeal is related to another lesson I've been trying to teach him. Recently we have been emphasizing the concept of money and saving so we decided to give a small allowance to the kids to let them get an understanding of the value of money. But it occurred to me that without work, there is no association between work and value. So we have asked them to do some minor chores and let them know that we expect certain behavior out of them and if they fill these duties they will be awarded with an allowance to spend as they please. This turned out to be a HUGE hit with them. They really enjoy the idea of having some control over what goodies they can get and when. Then it occurred to me to try to motivate Richie to play good chess, so I offered him a small amount for each win he could produce against Chessmaster. Well obviously this reward system had a big impact on his playing frequency. He often plays several games straight now and is displaying much of his original enthusiasm for winning. He has matured over the year and is less tempermental about losses too so that is another big change that has made it easier for him to play the computer.

As I mentioned, I don't see much change in his play, really, but I think the motivation to win has made his rating go up. Or maybe he is improving but I can't tell.

Here's an example game he played as Black against Anders(859) who is described as a timid attacker.

Single Digit Kyu

2008-09-04T01:13:00.000-07:00

Apparently I've officially crossed the threshold to single digit kyu (SDK) on KGS. It's taken me almost 10 months (less a 2 month break).

I thought I would outline on this occasion some of the things that I thought were most helpful to me on my way up the ranks.

26k to 20k -- I played against the computer on 9x9 go. I was fairly quickly able to get to the point where I could win with a 2 stone handicap.
20k to 16k -- I started to play 19x19 go on KGS. Many of my early games were very peaceful set-ups with each player mapping out huge moyos then turning them into territory then failing at invasion.
16k to 14k -- Around this time I got my first go books: Fundamentals of Go by Kageyama and Janice Kim's Learning Go Series. Both of these were very helpful. I began applying some opening concepts like: play in open corners, enclose, extend. I still could not invade anything but a huge moyo and would often lose entire groups in the corner. Most of my improvement came from just playing a lot of games, over a hundred in the first few months. Mainly I learned a little bit about ladders and some basic concept of making enough space to make eyes.
14k to 12k -- I picked up some more books. The most useful at this time were Tesuji by Davies, and Attack and Defense. Much of my improvement here came from getting a little better at local fighting, a little better at life and death in the corner, and I started preventing my opponent from getting large territory through reduction and invasion.
12k to 11k -- Here I think the most important thing I learned was a little bit more about opening theory, I experimented with moyo type openings. My middle game improved a little and I learned to take indirect profit from attack, how to make more optimal extensions. I would credit most of my strategic improvement to Audio Go Lessons, where I took the full beginner course and many others just for fun. I would especially recommend the lessons on how to attack by Jennie Shen and of course Go Juan's lessons for beginners.
11k to 10k -- I think I got a little better at middle game play here and my opening improved a little. I also read Get Strong at Invasion. I also played several 9 stone handicap games with a dan player and tried to study ways to make use of the handicap stones properly.
10k to 9k -- I felt I got a little better at using thickness properly and became a little more flexible in my game plan. I make slightly better choices about whether to emphasize territory or influence. I am getting a little better at finding big end game moves and getting a little better at playing sente moves when it matters. I am now better able to appreciate pro games and currently am studying Invicible (a Shusaku game collection).

There is so much more to Go than what I know now. It will be interesting to see how I develop from here.

Ponnuki Go

2008-08-31T16:33:00.000-07:00

In the last few days I've experimented with playing Ponnuki-Go AKA Atari-Go as a learning method with my children (and wife). See Sensei's Library here for more information. Basically this is a stripped down version of Go, which has only the capture rule: i.e. if a stone or group of stones is completely surrounded it is captured. The first player to capture N stones (I used N=1) is the winner. There is some controversy in the go community as to whether or not this is a good teaching method. On one hand it is simple to understand even for very young children, it leads to quick games with no need for counting, it has more understandable and concrete goals so strategy is simpler to grasp, etc. On the other hand it tends to produce players who are pre-occupied with capturing which may become an hindrance to proper development later when making the transition to "real" go.

I suppose I personally subscribe to the view that it is fine to learn Go in stages. It's more important for young children to enjoy playing and trying to explain "eyes", eye-space, false eyes, ko rule, snap-back, along with some strategic notions can become overwhelming. Ponnuki-go is a very natural game to be playing on a go board with stones so I can see little harm in trying it out.

After a few quick games where my kids missed defending against atari (threatening to capture in one move), they quickly got the hang of things. They were still apt to make judgement errors which left them with an easily captureable weak stone (most often by playing "underneath" my stones in an attempt to capture something). But on the whole I was pretty pleased with how this version of the game taught them to make some basic extensions and other defensive moves.

Contrary to the concerns addressed earlier, I found that they were beginning to understand the value of staying connected. This is a concept which I had difficulty explaining during my earlier attempts to teach them "regular" go where they were focused on trying to surround territory. In my experience, getting good at staying connected is probably more essential to early development than learning how to efficiently surround territory. I don't have any real justification for that, it's just my impression based on my current level (around 10k).

Here's a game I just played with Alyssa where she capitalized on a reading error on my part. Much to my surprise she actually said "I win, thanks" as soon as I made the losing move, which implied that she was reading two moves ahead. Just for clarity, I did allow her to take back several moves along the way and also suggested some moves early on (such as defending with a 1 point jump or knight's move and not allowing me to easily cut her stones.

Unfortunately I don't have a way to display a 13x13 game so this is on a 19x19 board display. The borders of the game would be the lines attaching the 4,4 handicap points in all four corners.

Good Shape Utility and Playing Some Go!

2008-08-28T23:27:00.000-07:00

I am very happy to report that my wife and kids have returned from their trip to Thailand. And I am even more happy to report that in the last week I have played 4 games of Go with Richie, 2 games with Alyssa, and even 4 games with Dee. (I hope they all get addicted... MuuwhHaaaaHaaaHaaaHaaHaaaaaaa).

Everyone really likes the new board and stones I bought so I think that's helped my cause. So far all games are on 13x13 and we have played both regular go and Ponnuki Go which I think is a great way to ease new players into the game. (More on this later).

Anyway, on this happy occasion I've realized that I had not found a way to post a Go record on this website.

After a little bit of search, the only suitable application I found is Good Shape courtesy of Hiroki Mori (http://playgo.to). Since I don't have a game record yet from my family games, I've decided to post a historically famous game.

The game is Ito Showa 6d (White) vs. Kuwahara Shusaku 1d (Black). Shusaku is regarded by many to be one of the greatest players of the pre-modern period. In this game he is 11 yrs. old. According to my score estimator Shusaku is ahead by 3 points at the end of the game.

I will record the next game I play with the kids to give an idea of how their young minds approach the game. I'll throw in some with Dee if she let's me too which is an interesting comparison. Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to make the board 13x13 so I'll have to fudge it.

Go in New York City and Stamford, CT

2008-07-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

For a couple of months now I have been semi-regularly attending the classes of the IgoAmigo Go Club/School. I mentioned in a previous post that I accidentally stumbled into one of their classes at the New York Go Center on my first visit. I had originally thought that it was part of the NYGC, but actually it's a completely separate organization. They used to meet twice a month on Saturdays at the NYGC, but due to some disagreements with the NYGC (I don't really know the details) they have moved their class to Columbia University. It's really a shame that in the small circle of NY Go players, it's not possible to reach some sort of amicable solution that would enable the club to meet at the only dedicated go facility in the city. At any rate, I have decided for the time being to try to continue attending.

If anyone is interested in attending, the daily fee is still going to be $7, I believe. The teachers are 7d and 1d. Most attendees are Japanese but there are also English speakers and both teachers speak English fairly fluently.

I also am on the brink of finding some players to play with in the Stamford area. I have been looking for an opportunity to play in person somewhere around my home to no avail. Last Saturday, I randomly dropped by Starbucks in Stamford, near the Ferguson Library and came across a few chess players. I had my laptop and a book on Go which I started reading. One of the players noticed and asked if I played a lot. I learned that he was close to my level (he said 10k) and that he had a friend that was looking for people to play with. Another kid there said he used to play with his mother when he was young but didn't play anymore. Well, counting myself, the guy and his friend, the kid and his mother, and one other acquaintance, I know of 6 Go players in the Stamford/Greenwhich area. It also turns out that the 7d player from IgoAmigo also lives in Rye which is not too far.

I have also been exchanging mails with a guy named Mark, who also has a daughter near the age of Alyssa and a Go Blog. He lives in CT, but a bit far so it's unlikely I will be able to play him, but one can hope.

It would be awesome to play in Stamford so I am going to start hanging out at the Starbucks in my free time to try to stimulate some local interest. I think I'll need to hang a sign out that says "Ask me to Teach You, 5 minutes to Learn, a Lifetime to Master" or something like that.

Motivation

2008-07-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

I guess it's in my nature to experiment with different ways of doing things, so sometime ago I tried to find out how well material reward would work in motivating the kids--not just for chess, but in general. It started harmlessly enough: Richie and Alyssa were showing signs of disinterest in chess. In particular, they started being reluctant, I would even go so far as to say resistant, to chess lessons with Michael. Since I had already committed to paying for the lessons I had to come up with some way to get them to participate. Of course, most parents will know the temptation of the quick fix: bribery. I offered to take the kids to Wal-Mart to buy one small toy each if they did their best during the lesson. Before I knew it everything, and I mean *everything* we wanted them to do came with a cost. Chess lesson? Small toy from Wal-Mart. Brush their teeth? A coloring book from the bookstore. Kumon homework? Build a toy airplane for them. Go to a tournament? Unlimited Wii game-playing for a night.

Of course I didn't think much at first, I mean, we give them those things anyway, so I thought I was getting a free lunch. But gradually I realized that they were purposely behaving badly or refusing any request to try to entice some sort of "good behavior reward" out of us. Clever little buggers.

So I did what any good panicked dictator does in this situation: I massively debased the currency! I drew a grid of forty squares on a piece of paper (one for each of them), and found some ink stamps and told them that if they did one good thing they would get one stamp. And after their page was full I would take them to Wal-Mart to pick out a small toy of their choice. This slowed down the flow of goods considerably, and I think it made them look forward to the reward more. They were very excited about the new system. They began carrying their stamp pages around with them and constantly asked if something they did was stamp-worthy.

Do I feel bad about bribing the kids for things that they should learn to do as responsible individuals (like homework, or cleaning up their toys)? Maybe a little. But I guess I'm just pragmatic.

It's worked so well, I'm looking around for some stickers which I think would go over very well indeed. I wonder how many stickers it costs to get my car washed?

Harvard Square Chess

2008-06-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

I wrote this a month ago but forgot to post it:

Leave it to a scheming chess dad to figure out a way to squeeze some chess into a family vacation. This time, the wedding of my college roommate (congratulations Joe and Trish!), afforded us an opportunity to pass through Boston and Cambridge. This was the first time I've been to Cambridge since I left in 1995 and I was pleased to know that aside from some cosmetic changes and rotation of stores in Harvard Square, the general atmosphere is exactly as I remembered it. I have fond memories of playing chess with Murray the "Chess Master" in front of Au Bon Pain as student and I was eager to stop by and say hello, only discover that he wasn't around. There were plenty of other chess players around, though, so it wasn't a total loss. Richie and I played a game there (which drew some bemused looks) while we waited for Dee to wrap up her souvenir shopping. As fortune would have it, we had to make a second pass through the Square on our way home a couple of days later because Dee needed to exchange some items she picked up from the Coop and this time Murray was camped out at his usual table, looking pretty much the same as he did 13 years ago. This time I had Richie take a 15 minute chess lesson with Murray and played a game with him myself (I lost). Richie's lesson consisted of a short game where he got checkmated quickly and then a review of several opening options. The vocabulary was well over his head which probably meant very little of it made sense to him, but he was attentive and surprisingly unintimidated by the experience. I suppose he's gotten somewhat accustomed to playing chess with strangers and with adults, so I guess an adult stranger isn't really much of a leap.

Summer Doldrums

2008-06-10T20:36:00.001-07:00

The local chess tournaments have ended for the year. They'll restart next academic year but it looks like there will be fewer opportunities for the kids to play this summer. This may be a good thing because lately, Richie has shown more interest in non-chess activities. I think his loss of interest coincided with his growing interest in video games (we've had a game system for awhile but only recently has he started playing it much). With respect to chess I fear that it got a little too easy for him to win trophies so he's not really motivated to find better ways of playing. I suppose the novelty has worn off a bit too. Alyssa actually has come around to chess and still enjoys solving mate-in-N problems (and prefers puzzles to actual games).

They'll be spending around 6 weeks in Thailand this summer with my wife so that's going to be a natural break for them. I plan to set them up Yahoo accounts so I can play with them over the internet but I don't know if they'll actually do it.

Visiting the New York Go Center

2008-05-11T18:16:00.001-07:00

It has been awhile since I wrote a post on Go. Obviously compared to chess it's so much harder to find a place where for children play can play Go. I do live within striking distance of Feng Yun's Go School in New Jersey but it would be at least an hour drive each way and I don't think it's practical long term to go there. I had held out some hope that she would re-open a class in Flushing, NY which would be a comparatively easier 40 minute trip (which I could easily combine with other purposes since we got to Flushing for Chinese food fairly regularly). So far, though, it seems they lost their old venue. I happened to call up the NY Go Club to last weekend because we were in the city. It turned out that they were having a tournament that day so I the guy I talked to said it was a good day to stop by.

This was my first visit to their facility and I came away with a favorable impression. I was actually surprised by how much space they had (3 small floors with a courtyard in the back). Despite the $7 daily fee, I think it's worth it. The tournament had around 16 players I think. That's pretty small by chess standards, but I wasn't really expecting much else. All in all there were probably about 35-40 peole at the club which was probably the annual peak if I had to guess! If I lived in the city and had lots of time it would be a great place to play. I was looking to find out if they had kids instruction classes, and it turns out that there are always a couple of teachers on hand to give lessons (to adults and children) but no formal kids classes. I was hoping for something more organized so that was a little disappointing. I did go downstairs and stumbled in on a Japanese language instructional class for beginners. They were players of many levels (32 to 1 kyu) and the Japanese instructor was 7-dan, I think. They meet twice a week. There weren't many children (one was 7 years old), but there were at least a few kids from 7 to 16. I had the opportunity of playing a 1-kyu with a 9-stone handicap. I got decimated but I actually had a fighting chance since I was hemming in a large group which I ended up allowing to escape in exchange for a corner but was told later that the corner was probably less valuable than killing the group I was chasing. I also found that I was playing much more timidly than normal because I was worried about looking like an idiot. When really, with 9 stones, I should have been attacking more in some situations. It was still fun though. And I picked up two books for my birthday: Attack and Defense, and Tesuji by Davies. These will be my bedtime "falling asleep" reading for awhile. Of course I haven't solved the problem of how to get my kids to learn Go in a more fun environment. Maybe I'll have to make a trip out to NJ after all.

77th ACTA Scholastic Chess Tournament

2008-04-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

Alyssa and Richie both played in the Stamford city championship. Kindergarten and 1st grades were combined into a single playing section but prizes were separate. Richard scored 2.0/4.0 but since he was the high scoring Kindergartener he received 1st place for Kindergarten and is the Stamford City Champion for 2008. Alyssa narrowly missed getting a trophy but seemed in pretty good spirits anyway after scoring 2.0/4.0. Together they placed 4th as team and got a trophy for that as well. I don't have much to report about this tournament except I was a little surprised that one of Richie's games he lost to Scholar's mate. It seems there's always a danger of falling for that one for the young ones.

With the weather so fine, they enjoyed the day out more than the chess!

76th ACTA Scholastic Chess Tournament

2008-04-03T05:02:00.001-07:00

Richie and Alyssa both recently played in an ACTA chess tournament. We could see that the participants in both the Kindergarten and K-1 sections were relatively inexperienced so we thought it would be a good tournament to reintroduce Alyssa to competitive play. She is sensitive about losses so it was important, I think, for her to gain some confidence. Fortunately, a few players she faced were very inexperienced and she played well enough to score 2.0/4.0 games which was enough for 5th place and a trophy. After her wins she was noticeably more excited about chess which was really all I was hoping for. Richie came in 2nd place and scored 3.0/4.0.

I was especially impressed with both Alyssa and Richie for taking their time in their games. In at least 3 out of the 4 rounds they took almost a full 45 minutes to complete their games and were among the last of the kids to finish. Of course they still made some obvious blunders but I stressed to them that the only important thing I wanted them to try to do at this tournament was play as slowly as possible and to think of as many continuations as possible each move, even if it seemed like a forced line. Of course I didn't phrase it that way to them. Instead I came up with this story: "Imagine that it's Halloween and you are going trick-or-treating. But instead of a big Halloween bag, you only brought a small bag that was so small it could only hold a single piece of candy. So you go to all the trouble of putting on your costume, but you come home with just one little piece of candy. Now let's say that candy was a chocolate bar. What happens if you really wanted a pixie stick. Or maybe you were in the mood for a lollipop. Well tough luck, because you didn't prepare well. Instead of just a little bag, you should bring the biggest bag you can find, and collect as much candy as you can. Then when you want one you have all different types to choose from and you'll get just what you want. Playing chess too fast, without thinking is like trick-or-treating with a little bag instead of a big one. Fill your bag of moves with as many as you can find. The more you look, the more choices you'll have and the better your chance of finding a really fantastic one."

I did manage to get Richie to record the beginning of one of his games using a MonRoi device which I picked up a month ago. See my review. He still made some errors inputting the game and decided in the later rounds that he didn't want to play with it. Here's his first round game.

After their success at this tournament both of them seem a little more interested in playing again, after going to through a period of relative disinterest.

Unexpected Benefits

2008-03-25T03:39:00.000-07:00

It's not often that I play a game that I actually feel pretty good about. More often than not, win or lose, the blunders on either side are so gross that the gulf between my games and high level chess seems so wide as to hardly qualify as being part of the same game. In this 15 minute game I played against an internet player rated around 1850. I played the black side of the Ruy Lopez which is an opening I have used to play with Richie for the last couple of weeks because I like logical progression.

It seems some of what I practiced managed to permeate deeply enough for me to apply in a real game. Maybe there's hope for me to improve yet.

Trajectory of Elite Scholastic Chess Player Improvement

2008-03-14T01:01:00.000-07:00

After reading that Nicholas Nip has become the youngest US master, I dug around a little and tried to map out the ratings progress for him and several other exceptional young players (and Richie just for kicks). This was a good excuse to play around with Google's charting API which I have to say is pretty nice.

The exercise emphasized to me that chess strength has a lot to do with experience up until maybe 1500 or so. As you can see when we re-map so that the X-axis is scaled based on years of chess played, almost all of these elite players reached roughly 1500 after about 1 year of play regardless of starting age. Maybe that breaks down for really young kids like Richie, but it's hard to say since I don't have that many data points.

CT State Championship

2008-03-12T01:58:00.000-07:00

Richie and Alyssa took part in the Connecticut State Scholastic Chess Championship which was held at Yale University last Saturday. There were at least a couple hundred kids participating in the event with around 20 in the 1st Grade section and 10 in the Kindergarten section. The sheer numbers of kids and parents was pretty exciting for the our kids who hadn’t been to such a large tournament before but I have to admit it was a lot less fun than I imagined it would be. I think the main problem was that the event, which was supposed to run from 10:00 am to around 3:30 pm for 5 rounds, ended up started around 90 minutes late. Including inter-round delays, it didn’t actually finish until 6:00 pm. I felt that the waiting and long round time detracted a lot from the fun and made it very difficult for the younger children to enjoy themselves. In fact, Richard fell asleep during the break before the last round and I debated whether it was worthwhile to wake him up to play the final game. In the end I did wake him up but regretted it afterwards. He ended up scoring 2.5/5.0 and was contesting 2nd place in the final round. He lost the last game but his score was good enough for 5th place and qualified for a trophy which was all that mattered to him anyway. He was a little unlucky in that he had a particularly tough draw (he played all 4 players that finished ahead of him) and he actually had wins against two higher finishers and another finisher ended up moving ahead due to a full point bye with only 1 actual victory. The bad news is that Alyssa got swept and finished with no points. I wasn’t altogether surprised by this since she’s no longer playing for fun or practice and has all but given up on getting any better. I am disappointed because I feel that with just a minimum of effort she would easily pick up strength since her tactical puzzle solving abilities seem good, but I fear that my plan of sparking a competitive interest in her has backfired completely. I am fairly sure that the better that Richie does the less she will want to play to avoid comparison. We are no longer going to enter her into tournaments but she will continue to attend chess classes for the time being. I hope that she will come back around to the game some time later.

One nice thing about this tournament venue was that there was a viewing area from which parents could observe games in progress. Usually parents are in a separate room so you pretty much have no way of knowing how games are going and in the Kindergarten class they don’t even write down the game scores. This time I was able to watch Richie’s games for a change. Overall he played fine although he completely ignored my advice to play slowly. The two things that I think he really will need to work on have to do with hastiness. In his one drawn game, he was winning by a queen and two rooks but stalemated his opponent. He was moving quickly at the end, and didn’t bother to check if his opponents king had escape squares (a different type of problem than calculation errors I think). In another game against the eventual 1st place finisher (Julian Wang, as predicted) he exchanged his queen for a bishop on move 5 because he took the bishop instantly after it attacked his queen without checking if he could be recaptured. I will have to think of some ways to encourage slower play.

In general I agree with my sister’s coach’s assessment that Richie has reasonably good piece coordination and board vision for attacks but he does not defend well or handle aggressive opponents well. I think this is partially my fault since in our home games I tend to play defensively against him rather than putting him to the test with a lot of early pins and mate threats that are easily countered with correct play.

As an aside, I had the pleasure of playing a very strong 1st grader who used to live in the same building as our family in NYC. I believe he’s rated almost 1000. He had a super-aggressive style that at first I sort of laughed off and went up material in both games we played early on but he had the last laugh since I got blasted in mating attacks both times 10-15 moves later! It was pretty eye-opening.

I question the generally held view that scholastic players should learn opening principles rather than openings. At least for 4-5 year olds I think learning occurs through sort of fuzzy pattern recognition rather than through reasoning. I think it would take relatively little effort to learn at least a basic opening repertoire by rote which will keep them out of early trouble and give a good example of how to maintain equality in the opening. Openings are also interesting for them because they have cool sounding names.

75th ACTA Scholastic Chess Tournament

2008-03-03T22:53:00.000-08:00

Richie played in the 75th ACTA Scholastic Chess Tournament last weekend while Alyssa opted out. We were a little unsure if it was wise to enter him since we were told that there were no kindergarteners in it (let alone Pre-K) which meant that he would have to play with 1st graders. The organizer let us know that Richie would be eligible for the kindergarten trophy regardless (i.e. guaranteed 1st) so when Richie heard that he decided he wanted to play. Our reservations proved unnecessary, however, as Richie actually ended up scoring 3.0/4.0 points which was good enough for 2nd place. He lost his final match against the event winner. I heard from an observer that the final game was back and forth and that at one point Richie was up a Queen after his opponent blundered, but he eventually returned the material. Apparently his opponent was a fast player and Richie was matching his pace which may have contributed to the blunders on both sides. The only thing I stress to him before games is the he should take his time and think before he moves. It's very difficult, though, for a 4 year old to avoid getting swept up in the heat of the moment. Richie ended up resigning when it was apparent that his opponent would be promoting a pawn to a queen. I'm not sure whether this is something I should address now, but it's probably better for him to fight out even seemingly hopeless situations for the chance of a blunder or stalemate. Richie was a little disappointed by the final round loss but he actually handled it quite well. I commended him on his good sportsmanship.
Afterwards told me that he wanted to practice more. But not before getting some well earned rest. I doubt he'll play much more chess before the upcoming state championship. I expect he'll run into some trouble at the state's if he plays Julian who I believe is probably the favorite to win K-1. I observed some of Julian's games at a recent chess club meeting and he continues to improve. I am not sure what he has been doing to improve but I've noticed, for instance, that he seems to know the basic opening moves for several variations that are not typically played at his level (Sicilian, Queen's Gambit, King's Gambit, Scotch Opening, Scotch Gambit, Spanish Game to name a few). Of course there are undoubtedly some players from outside this area that are also strong.

Vacations are distracting!

2008-02-29T13:48:00.000-08:00

We took a two week vacation to visit Los Angeles to attend Kumi's wedding and get a little R&R. (Congratulations again Kumi and Dan!). Of course I brought along the chess set and laptop, thinking that the kids might want to play sometime, but it turns out they'd rather spend vacation time visiting the zoo, going to Disneyland, playing at the beach, playing poker in Vegas (or maybe that was me...) What's up with that? At least we got in some Chess Master games in on the airplane. Don't they realize they're playing in the CT State Scholastic Chess Championship in one week?

4 Month Check on Kids Chess Progress

2008-02-11T21:15:00.000-08:00

As promised, I've included a recent game between Alyssa and Richie with no interference. Their progress in the last 3 months is evident. While by no means blunder free, there are several aspects of improvement: sounder opening moves which seek development, fewer hung pieces, more purposeful and aggressive moves with a semblance of planning. Actually many pieces were lost in sacrificial attacks which is something I hadn't really seen before this game. White (Richie) in particular shows directed force at the Black King rather than aimless time wasting moves. Now we just need to tame down the aggression a little. But that's much preferable than excessive passiveness I guess. One thing I noticed about this game in particular which is not obvious from the replay is how quickly Richie made his end game decisions. He wasted no time at all removing Alyssa's remaining rooks even at the cost of his queen and executed the finish very efficiently which is actually a pretty recent development. This game says a lot as it is, but there's the added bonus of an en passant capture. For her part I actually thought Alyssa's game was quite nice up until she sac'd two pieces in a row. I'd like a chance to review this game with her and show her that she was ahead. I hope that will make her look forward to challenging Richie to another round.

3 Month Update on Dad's Go Progress

2008-02-01T02:01:00.000-08:00

Well if KGS rank has any meaning, it seems that I managed to improve slightly since last month. I am now barely 12k online which surprises me because I remember thinking a month or two ago that most of the games I had with 12k were hopelessly one-sided. In fact I don't think I actually won many games against higher ranked players, but I've become more consistent about winning against 14k and lower so I guess that's improved my rank some.

Shamefully, I have less motivation to actually study anything or do tsumego problems while my rank is still progressing just from games. I did pick up a copy of Fundamentals of Go by Kageyama which is a nice book that I would recommend highly. I like his conversational style and I found his examples to be quite interesting and enlightening. The unusual thing about this book is that many of the reviews of the book suggested that it is useful to read several times at different stages. Essentially reviewing this book helped a lot of people get over developmental blocks at successively higher levels of strength. They made comments which in effect said that the material is basic enough for someone like me or around mid-teens kyu to get something out of, but when you are much stronger, you can come back to the same exact material and find deeper insights still.

I especially liked the emphasis he puts on reading. I have to admit that I am sometimes lazy over the board and play many moves based on my meager intuitive grasp, when if I just sat and concentrated I could probably read out a solution.

In a game today against a 14k, I recalled specifically the first lesson in his book which requires reading out a ladder across the board. I had a similar situation in this game where I had a center facing stone caught in a ladder. I played an approach to the upper left corner which I had read out to be a ladder break. But my opponent failed to realize the ladder break was in place and proceeded to chase me for about 10 moves in a broken ladder. Of course, once he realized his error, his entire game fell apart as my diagonal thickness and his excess aji were too much to overcome. He resigned shortly afterwards.

Is Richie a Chess Prodigy?

2008-01-29T20:34:00.000-08:00

After the Stamford Times article, I got to thinking about how Richie might be perceived by others. To get straight to the point, I'm pretty sure Richie is not a prodigy. He's a pretty normal 4 year old in just about every way. Generally prodigies exhibit exceptional talent in many different areas. I suppose that Richie stands out in that he has taken to chess at a pretty young age. But other than that, he's actually a perfectly ordinary 4 year old. He learned to walk at a normal age of 13 months or so (Alyssa was actually walking at around 9 months). As far as I can tell, his cognitive skills developed at a non-exceptional rate. He does not know how to read, or have an unusually advanced vocabulary. He doesn't know arithmetic beyond 3+3=6. His memory is good but not photographic or exceptionally good. If he has an unusual trait, it's that he's been able to focus on a single activity for long stretches of time since he was young which makes him suitable for a strategy game like chess.

The reason I bring these things up is that I think that parents shouldn't assume that their children must have an IQ of 180 to play chess at the age of 4. All they really need to do is introduce the game in a way that will make their kids like it, and from there learning takes care of itself.

Having said these things, I do believe that Richie is going to be strong for his age as long as he maintains interest. That's really a result of having played more games and seen more chess situations than most of his competition. At his current rate, I'd be surprised if that didn't remain true for the foreseeable future. To give an idea of how much playing he does, I estimate that he currently plays 3-5 games a day during the week and probably 10-15 games on the weekend. Most of his games are with me, or with kids in chess club/class but he's also started playing more with the computer. He also enjoys solving chess puzzles.

I did some research online and found a few cases of kids that were playing competitive chess by age 4. One case in India was actually a 3 year old girl. I also looked at the tournament records of some well known scholastic chess players who are recognized as top talents in the game as well as some of the national tournament winners in K and 1st grade and just about all of them had unremarkable starts to their chess careers but they all played many tournaments and showed fairly fast progress. Chess talent develops through interest and experience. Kids don't just spring from the womb knowing the main line of the Ruy Lopez or how to take advantage of a weak dark square complex. I suppose chess ability is rather more like language ability which at this age can be acquired subconsciously and at a much faster rate then an adult might even though an adult has the advantage of more developed powers of reasoning.

73rd ACTA Scholastic Chess Tournament

2008-01-27T15:36:00.000-08:00

We had our 2nd chess tournament, the New Canaan City Championship, this weekend. It drew a slightly larger player pool than the last one we went to so Kindergarten had 7 players and 1st had 13 players, I think. Alyssa ended up getting 2.0/5.0 pts which put her in 8th place. She enjoyed herself, but had more fun running up and down a sloped hallway than actually playing. (After commenting that she was a pretty fast runner, she proudly revealed that she's the 2nd fastest runner in her class, which is something I never knew). Her confidence is growing over the board and I think it shows in her result. The 1st and 2nd place winners were two twin girls which was sort of interesting.

Richie surprised us again by scoring 4.5/5.0 pts in the Kindergarten section which tied him for first place. The other champion was none other than Julian Wang. The draw against Julian was especially surprising because I had watched them play 3 or 4 fast games in the waiting room and Julian won all of them easily. Apparently in the tournament game, Julian blundered his queen early but must have played strongly from there to reach a bishop vs. bishop ending which was declared a draw. Julian was a little unhappy with the result for awhile but they were all smiles when they received their trophies.

As I watched their practice game, I noted a few things about his game that I consider to be still undeveloped in Richie. The first was a willingness to put pawns/pieces en pris when the exchange was deemed to be favorable. For example, he often advanced his Queen pawn into the center whereas Richie would tend to move his pawn to d3 instead of d4 if the opponent was already on e5. Secondly, he plays an active, attacking style where he purposely sets up mate threats or forks and pins. Richie is aware of these tactical techniques but generally finds them by accident over the board, rather than planning 2 moves ahead to reach a position where he can employ the tactic. He is also much more inclined to move his pieces into the opposing side's territory, where Richie tends to keep his pieces back in safety. As a generality I would say that Julian is attempting to force mistakes more (e.g. trapping), where Richie generally capitalizes on unforced errors. I think there's a significant gap in strategic and tactical awareness there so I am guessing that their draw was a fluke.

Today I tried to show Richie & Alyssa a game from Logical Chess Move By Move. The example was the Guico Piano which Richie had never seen. Shortly afterwards, I saw him playing a game with Dee and he used the idea of advancing the pawn to c3 to set up the d4 advance. He also used a tactic of moving his queen to g3 to attack the g7 pawn and eventually ended up with a mate in 1 opportunity that he overlooked. Interestingly the mate was exactly like the Scholar's mate, but even after I mentioned that he had a mate in one the board, he was unable to see it because the King was in a slightly different position. Nevertheless, it was pretty neat to see him applying ideas that I taught him just a day or two ago to his own games already.

I realize that since their first recorded game just a few months ago, both Richie and Alyssa have come a long way. I will try to record and post another game soon. It really is night and day and will make an interesting comparison to that game, I'm sure.

New Haven Go Group

2008-01-27T02:28:00.000-08:00

There's a small group of Go players in New Haven which meets regularly. I've been waiting for a chance to go down and visit and last Friday I convinced Dee to go with me. We brought the kids too, although it was really more for me than for them since I knew no other children would be there. The group met at a coffee shop in downtown New Haven. The premises are a little cramped to play comfortably, but anyway including me there were 5 people that came. One of the players, Mark, is 4d, I think, and I very much looked forward to meeting him and others to play with in the area. Both he and Greg were very nice and I think Mark, in particular, has a lot of experience teaching high kyu players so that's a real boon. He's now watched a few of my games online even and given me some helpful reviews. At the meeting I played with Greg who is about 11k, I think. I am a weak 13k so we played with a 2 stone handicap. I lost the game after I failed to prevent a snaking reduction from ruining the central influence I was aiming for. I think he is at a very good level for me to learn with since he's somewhat stronger but I can still make things competitive. I watched Mark win a 13x13 game with a 7 stone handicap against another member who seems a bit less experienced than me. That was pretty impressive.

Alyssa and Richie played a couple small games which Mark watched. I was a little engrossed in my own game so I wasn't able to pay too close attention to it, but Alyssa was seemed to be dominating the board by the end. Mark mentioned that it was neat to watch them play--I don't think he has any experience teaching such young kids--and that he could see them learning new basic concepts by the second game.

I'm hoping to enroll Alyssa and Richie in Feng Yun's go class for kids in Flushing which is supposed to start up in February. I'd like them both to learn a little more about the game. I actually think that knowing some Go will help with chess and vice versa, but maybe it all becomes too overwhelming. One of the players mentioned that a 7 year old girl was competing in the North American Oza tournament and was doing very well in the beginner section. I guess there are some youth players out there though I don't know how they learn since there's so few opportunities relative to chess. Fortunately for us, I think Feng Yun's school is the East Coast center for go instruction for kids as far as I can tell which is convenient.

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids

2008-01-27T01:36:00.001-08:00

I have to admit that I've had a lifelong fascination with the subject of intelligence, genius, development, etc. I suppose it must have started when I was in grade school and started browsing through my mothers books on child psychology and development... So I was greatly interested to read this article in Scientific American, which I think parents will find eye-opening and practical. The somewhat counter-intuitive conclusion of the article is that parents that praise their children for being intelligent or talented may be misdirecting them to believing that those aspects are fixed rather than developed. This fatalistic view towards their own potential can cause motivation issues in school.

I'd like to relate a story from my own youth that illustrates the point.
I was aware from early in my academic experience that my older sisters were both "smart" and there were expectations that I too would be a good student. Certain things came naturally to me when I was very young and I had no experience with struggle before the age of 8 or so. At that point I had a pivotal moment. It was pivotal in the sense that, without exaggeration, it changed completely my outlook on my own intelligence and probably began a positive feedback loop that continued throughout my primary and secondary education.

When I was in third grade, I transferred classes in my elementary school and my new teacher had moved her class along in mathematics much further than my former teacher. This had a jarring effect on me because it was the first time that I had ever experienced self-doubt, or the feeling of being "dumb" since I was quite far behind the other students and had no idea how to do the work I was assigned. The task for me at the time was to memorize the times table. It sounds silly looking back on it, but before then I had never consciously memorized anything and to say that the problem seemed formidable is an understatement. I was literally in tears, believing that it was impossible for me to know "all those things" at once and I despaired at being relegated to the back of the class forever.

Fortunately, either Kumi or Mom (we're a little vague on who) came to the rescue with a little learning toy that allowed me to push buttons in the times table and helped me with memorizing the math facts. After working on this for awhile (I can only assume I got obsessed with it but I don't actually remember), I learned the times table and ended up being one of the fastest students in the weekly arithmetic drills.

This little event did wonders for my confidence in school and I never really struggled with math (until college at least), because I always believed that no problem was insoluble, it was simply a matter of working it out. In retrospect, I realize that that's an incredibly powerful belief to be able to fall back on.

Well I'm getting a little off topic here with this post, but to bring it back to the subject of chess and go, reading this article made me realize that I should recall my own formative years and guide my children in a way that teaches them the value of hard work. They should know that intelligence and talent are not fixed at birth but rather that mastery is a result of dedication, devotion and hard work. Chess, too, is a skill which is developed through exposure. There's a not insignificant amount of memorization, pattern recognition, and so on that is impossible to be born with. And in Go, there's a proverb or saying that the quickest way to learn the game is to lose 100 games.

I think Alyssa may already have begun to feel that she wasn't going to be good at chess and had begun to shy away from playing. I've been telling her that it's only a matter of time before she starts winning as long as she works at it. Today she contributed her first outright win to her team's victory at the advanced chess class and it was a very happy moment for her.

Ferguson Library Chess and Stamford Times Article

2008-01-27T00:58:00.000-08:00

Every January, the Ferguson Library in Stamford, CT runs a chess program for children. It runs for 4 weeks on Saturdays and consists of 2 hours of play and instruction. This year Richie & Alyssa's teacher, Michael, ran the program so we brought them there during the month. There were a few interesting things about the Ferguson program that were great to see. First, because of its association with the library, perhaps, the program attracted a very broad cross-section of players in terms of skill level, age, and ethnicity. Despite the presense of scholastic programs in many public schools in the area, it seems that the vast majority of young players in the area are young male caucasians. The former is probably just a consequence of the combatitive/competitive nature of the game, while the latter has more to do with the general population composition in the area as well as income effects. It was refreshing to see such a diverse group of kids all enjoying the same game. Some were rank novices, but most had basic knowledge of the game and by the 2nd session they began a ladder tournament which gave everyone a chance to play many games against various strength opponents.

The local newspaper ran a story about the program and in it Richie and Alyssa are mentioned. If you read the article, I should caveat that I don't think I ever actually said that I thought Richie was talented, only that he seemed ready to play the game (when he turned 4). I think talent is not so easy to determine in such young players because they develop so rapidly. Just learning the moves may seem a hurdle one month but a few months later, almost every kid begins to develop a set of strategies. It is only later when games are won and lost based on more sophisticated strategic or deeper tactical considerations that I think real talent is observable. At this stage, and probably for a year, games are lost by the player that loses a piece by moving it en prise, or that misses a mate in 1.

72nd ACTA Tournament

2008-01-07T16:23:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, Richie & Alyssa entered the 72nd ACTA Westport Championship scholastic chess tournament. Richie wanted an opportunity to win another trophy. Alyssa, on the other hand, was reluctant to play. I had mixed feelings about entering her since I didn't want to her to develop negative feelings towards chess unnecessarily, but in the end I decided to put her in and hope that she gets acclimated to the scholastic chess environment. She's typically a bit hesitant to try new things (food, activities) and she shies away from confrontation. I think chess could be a confidence builder for her but she needs to get over her initial reservations about competition. It's hard to know if we're pushing her unnecessarily, because she sort of needs some a bit pushing for a lot of things (getting ready to go to school, talking to strangers, trying new foods or activities etc.). Richie, on the other hand, despite being 2 years younger than any other kids in his section, showed no anxiety at all and was eager to play.

Alyssa ended up finishing with 1/2 a point which qualified her for the smallest trophy in the 1st grade division (5 players) (i.e. everyone gets a trophy!). Her half point came from a stalemate (she only had a king left), though in one of her games, Michael told me she had a 'won game' with material advantage and a mate in one but failed to see it. She did something similar in a practice game the other day, going up two pieces, only to go on to lose after forgetting to remove her pieces from threats. She is generally not very willing to use her pieces to get material advantage, and prefers to leave them back in protected positions. She also has not been playing many complete games so she does not really know how to convert a material advantage into a win in most situations.

I find that with the kids that it's hard to get across the idea that exchanges of pieces can be a good thing once you have a material advantage and vice versa.

Richie had a surprisingly strong showing in the tournament, winning 2nd place in the Kindergarden group (out of 4 players). His only full point came from a victory over a young girl who I think was also playing in her first tournament. He had several draws and also had to concede a draw in a winning position (Q vs. Bishop) when he had to interrupt his game for a bathroom visit. (Note to parents: take advantage of breaks between rounds to use the restroom). He played with a lot of confidence and wasn't intimidated at all by the bigger kids.

The winner of the K section was a young boy named Julian. He also studies with the same teacher and we had heard that he was very talented. Indeed he is a strong player in his age group and pretty clearly dominated the others. He said after the game that Richie was "tougher than he thought he'd be" which got a laugh out of us. They seemed to get along well. Julian is quite theatrical and full of youthful energy--he makes an interesting contrast to Richie, who most people consider a "serious boy" because he's rather quiet and watchful--he's always been very careful and deliberate in action. From what I can tell, Julian seems to be the real deal. According to his parents, he has fallen in love with the game and will likely eclipse them in playing skill soon at the rate he's improving. He appears to be gifted with natural aptitude for learning chess so it will be interesting to watch he progresses. Since he and Richie learned the game at about the same time, without getting too caught up in comparisons, I think it will be useful to use his development as a benchmark--we sort of get a peek into the future for how chess skills are acquired. I am curious to know what concepts he may be able to grasp that prove too difficult for Richie at the current time and what methods prove most effective for eventually learning those concepts.

It was nice to meet another enthusiastic young chess player. We hope to set up the kids for a chess play date sometime in the future.

Amazingly, after a full day of chess, after we got home that afternoon, Richie wanted to play Dinosaur chess some more.

Chess Tactics for Beginners

2008-01-03T08:00:00.001-08:00

I bought Chess Tactics for Beginners. This a program in the Chess Assistant Family by Convekta. It's pretty much what I hoped for in that it offers a lot of basic tactical problems that can be quickly reviewed and it keeps some basic statistics. It's much easier to practice tactics on the computer than over the board because you don't have to spend time setting up positions. This particular program starts at a complete novice level with 1 move checkmates and works up. As a case in point, Richie went through the first 50 tactics in about 20 minutes. That's about 10x faster than he was doing with me or with Michael over the board. I'm pretty sure this is the best way to review tactics even for young kids. My only gripe with the program so far is that it arranges the problems by piece to move (e.g. rook checkmates, then knight checkmates, etc.) Even Richie figured out that this was happening and it sort of eliminates the need to think about which piece to move, you just need to find the right spot for it. Maybe I need to spend some time with the program and see if there's a random mode or something.

2 Month Update on Dad's Go Progress

2008-01-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

My pace of improvement at Go has clearly slowed. There's fewer easy fixes to my game. My losses are coming less and less from close-fighting blunders or forgetting to connect some group and more from strategic lapses so it's harder to make improvement form just playing. I bought Kageyama's Fundamentals of Go and I'll be trying to work through that book. I am also still periodically working on Go Dojo. I went through Contact fights and now I'm working on Sector fights, although on this first pass, I'm really just browsing the material, rather than studying it. It's sort of the way I used to study math. I'm more curious what there is to learn than actually interested in learning it. It seems in Go, though, that progress without sweat is an impossibility so I'm going to have to buckle down if I really want to improve. I am now around 14k on KGS. I think my experience is not too dissimilar from some others that started around the same time as I did. It will be interesting to see where we hit our walls.

An area that I could definitely improve on is the opening. I'm not exactly sure how Go compares to chess in terms of the number of 'rote' openings one needs to know. I think it's a much wider game tree, but there are 'building blocks' of opening joseki or standard sequences that you sort of fit together to form opening plans, it seems. Of course, I'm just sort of winging it right now but when I play GnuGo I routinely get trashed in the first 15 moves so there's probably some work to be done there.

Online Go at 361 Points

2007-12-26T16:10:00.000-08:00

This is cool. You can play a "full" go engine, Gnu Go, at 361 pts. No software required, except java maybe.

Chess Fever

2007-12-26T08:06:00.000-08:00

The chess bug is spreading through the family like a virus. We had Auntie Kumi visiting us this week and learned that she's taking chess lessons. She's a natural puzzle afficionado (Sudoku, number puzzles, etc.) so it doesn't surprise me that she's started enjoying chess, especially chess puzzles. She gave us a book by Lazlo Polgar called appropriately enough 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games.

Thanks a lot, Kumi. That's 5334 more things on the To Do List.

Even Grandma Yoko has gotten bit by the bug and has been learning chess so she can play with some of the kids she works with at her job. We even rented Searching for Bobby Fischer which Richie took some interest this time around. (He had seen it before he knew how to play and wandered off to do something else 15 minutes into it).

Right after the movie Richie wanted to play chess. I brought out a chess clock for fun because there are a lot of scenes where the players are dramatically banging the clock after their moves. Richie played some excellent aggressive moves and was banging the pieces down on the table like they were (!!) worthy! I have noticed a definite step up in his strategy lately. He requires fewer prompts and is finding out on his own the effectiveness of bringing the rook down to the opponents 7th or 8th rank, and even more sophisticated, in endgame situations he has been able to keep threats on both sides of the board against a lone King.

He's started inventing some games on his own. He wanted to play Kumi with his side missing bishops and her side missing knights. And last night he wanted to show me a checkmate puzzle so he put down a bunch of pieces around the King until it was checkmate. Then I got the idea to start removing unnecessary pieces so I'd point to one and say "Do you really need this, or is it still checkmate if we get rid of it?." The results were sometimes surprisingly elegant checkmates.

Dinosaur Chess

2007-12-26T07:34:00.000-08:00

We got Dinosaur Chess from Convekta for Christmas for the kids. I'll start by pointing out this comprehensive review to which I'd like to add my own thoughts. As Robert rightly highlights, this product gets good marks for presentation which is graphic, engaging, and fun. Since my children have already learned almost all of the basic rules of chess, I was less interested in the introductory lessons and more interested in the game engine and tactical training. Unfortunately, for me, the real strength of the program is for introducing the game to complete novices right from how the pieces move. In order to grow your dinosaur, you must do the lessons which I thought were nicely done but the training exercises were short and there were only a few of them per lesson. I give the authors credit for building up playing strength through very basic sub-games (e.g. just pawns, or just pawns + knights vs. pawns).

The game playing engine adjusts to playing strength. I think this is probably the highlight of the program for our purposes. I tried having the kids play the weakest levels on the ICC Dasher program who is rated 1000 and that opponent is simply too strong for them right now. Dinosaur Chess starts with advantage games that are appropriate for day 1 players and the full game engine (T-Rex) also starts at a weaker level as far as I can tell than 1000. I have no basis for this, but I think it's probably a good milestone for a child to be able to play a complete winning game on their own against T-Rex before they are ready for tournaments.

The kids really were engaged by the lessons, Richie more so than Alyssa, but both of them disliked the exercises with little raptors walking around on the board. They didn't like the pressure, or they were "scared" of getting touched by the raptors and didn't want to do the exercises. They knew everything already, except for en passant, so it was only marginally useful for them.

My biggest gripe with the program, however, is that there is no exercises for introducing the tactical topics that I had hoped for. I was really hoping they had lessons on pins, forks, skewers, discovered checks, and basic mating patterns. I think these could be best learned with software, but I've yet to find a good program for very young kids (3-5) that has them. I believe Chessmaster may have it but that is aimed at slightly older children.

OK, here's a multiple choice question.

Which person spent the most hours consecutively playing Dinosaur Chess since we got it?
A. Richie
B. Alyssa
C. Auntie Kumi
D. Grandma Yoko
E. None of the Above.

Highlight below for answer:
Grandma Yoko! She didn't even know how the pieces moved before and got obsessed learning how to play and trying to beat successive levels of opponents. Maybe there really is a chess obsession "gene"...

How kids think about Go

2007-12-18T14:44:00.000-08:00

Lately, Richie and Alyssa have been taking interest in Go again. After a brief respite where Richie only wanted to play chess, in the last few days we've played at least 1 game of go a day and I've also seen them playing each other.

Go is a simple game to explain the rules to, so they basically know how to play already, and I think they even know the concept of Ko now, as well as how to score the game. They like to play on the 19x19 side of the board. I guess even kids have pride and think that the 9x9 game isn't the real thing.

But as anyone who plays the game knows, the strategic aspect of Go is very deep, and it's hard to know how to start explaining it.

Without any instruction from me, I noticed two tendencies of their play that needed to be addressed: 1) too much focus on capturing/contact and not enough almost no attention paid to making territory and 2) no concept of efficiency of play, or preferring solid structures.

I think some of the first problem I was able to address by showing them several times how we count points at the end and after I demonstrated a few times that a 2-point jump, for instance, could surround territory faster than solid connections and was just as difficult to break into.

Initially they had difficulty understanding that the opponent couldn't just cut through the space made by the jump, but eventually I showed them some variations where they could wait to fill the space until I approached or tried to cut and still end up with a solid territory line. I called this "dot-to-dot" fence building. I said they should build fences using dot-to-dot and connect the dots later if someone came close. I admonished them not to play too close to the enemy since that ends up making the enemy stronger but I am having a difficult time explaining when conditions are good to attach. They also have a tendency to want to save stones that are dead but it's hard to explain why that is the case.

They were excited to learn to learn that there was a "knight's move" in Go as well as chess and that double-atari was like forking in chess too.

The Inventor of Trophies was a Genius

2007-12-18T14:33:00.001-08:00

At the last chess class Richie got the idea that he had "won enough games" to get a "Piston Cup"*. Here's an interesting dilemma, do you tell a 4 y.o. that he can't have a trophy until he wins it in competition? Or do you allow the chess teacher to award him with a trophy for participation or some minor milestone?

Well actually his chess teacher decided for us by offering him a trophy based on his progress so far, so Richie (and Alyssa) were thrilled. They got to choose the colors of their trophies and displayed them proudly in our house.

In chess they have started working on 2-move checkmates. Michael introduced the problem by noting that they had already solved some before (Alyssa protested that they would be too hard), and then worked backwards from a 1 move mate to a position where the 1 move mate would be forced after a simple check on the king. They also learned how to notate the moves. Alyssa took particular interest in this part, and later on was attempting to write down moves of a game between me and Richie.

They got homework of 6 chess problems to solve. We'll have to do them on the board together as they don't have as much interest in solving the puzzles from looking at them as a diagram.

* My son loves all things related to the Disney movie, Cars, and naturally thinks all trophies are "Piston Cups" which is the what the top racing prize is called in that story.

Chess Variant for Kids and Encouraging Multiple Move Considerations

2007-12-10T01:20:00.000-08:00

Michael recommended that I play a game with the kids where I give them all of the pieces vs. my lone king. The idea is that it is difficult for young children to coordinate several pieces or visualize the lines of force from multiple attackers. It also reinforces the concept of stalemate which can be hard to avoid when there are too many pieces in play.

I played a few times with Richie, who really likes this variant because of the huge advantage, I guess. On Michael's suggestion I enforced the touch-move rule. The first game ended in stalemate and I captured one piece that was left hanging. The second game he checkmated me by getting a second queen.

After that I decided to remove his two center pawns and Queen, and I told him he was not allowed to make a new queen. At the start of the third game, he hung a piece again and was a making a few aimless moves when there were "obvious" better moves available. So tried a new experiment which worked out pretty well, I think. He was in the habit of touching a piece before actually deciding where it should go. That's pretty natural for new players. I can remember doing this myself--keeping my finger on the piece after I moved while I "looked around" to see if it was a good spot. But in order to slowly get him used to planning his moves a little more, I asked him before each move to point (without touching) to the piece he wanted to move and then point to where he wanted to move it. Then, I asked him to pick another piece (or I suggested another piece to consider), and I asked him to point to a move for that piece. Finally I asked him which of the two choices he preferred and asked him to move. Interestingly, when I did it this way, he was reasonably likely to choose the stronger of the two moves, usually picking the move that checked the King. At least once, though, he preferred his initial move.

The last game ended with R to f8 checkmate which he found after I said "you can checkmate me in one move!" but it was a bit of an accident as he didn't immediately see what prevented me from escaping to d2. I think he's figuring that checkmate usually happens when he moves a piece next to the king! I also was surprised when he used a discovered check on me for the first time on purpose.

Alyssa's attempt using all pieces demonstrated a preference for symmetry which I found interesting. All of her moves were made to preserve symmetry up until the end.

I produced the ending position diagram with this editor. I recommend it as it's very easy to use. "You can set up an arbitrary position (as many queens as you want or black pieces at the bottom) and generate a JPEG image of the chessboard. Everything happens online through your browser. No downloads, no applets."

Chess Lecture vs. Ice Cream

2007-12-09T05:36:00.000-08:00

Richie and Alyssa enjoyed another chess lesson this weekend. Michael started by having the kids play through a game where he suggested the moves for both sides. Then he reviewed some Q and K checkmates, along with introducing a few new patterns involving a Bishop and Q versus a castled king position. He touched on escapes, and he introduced the concept of stalemate. At one point he was about to demonstrate the strength of a rook battery to create a back rank checkmate against a castled king when Richie surprised him by grabbing the first Rook and quickly playing through the 3 move sequence. This didn't surprise me too much because he often says "if I go there then you go there then I'll go there and eat you!" but Michael was pleased.

On Michael's suggestion we decided to try Richie out in Alyssa's afterschool chess class. I arrived at the end to pick them up and learned that Richie was a mini-celebrity. Michael played a small prank on his class by telling them that Richie was the world's youngest chess master. They got a thrill out of having him visit and several mentioned to me that they thought he was so "cute" and were surprised he could play because he's so young. I thought that was pretty funny coming out of the mouths of 1st and 2nd graders. Richie got an ovation at the end. I think he's enjoying his star status.

Later we stopped by another of Michael's weekend classes for advanced scholastic students to see if that format might be a good addition or replacement to their private lessons. The class was held at Norwalk community college, which turned out to be a really nice venue, and the lecture room was perfect for the 20 or so students. Overall I've been pleased to see the levels of participation in scholastic chess in the area and I'm beginning to realize that Michael's organization, ACTA, is probably the driving force behind everything. There were no kindergardners in the class which makes Richie the youngest by a big margin. I thought this might be a problem but he took to it like a fish to water. There class starts with a free playing period and then transitions into a lecture.

This week's lesson featured an ending combination that the kids were asked to find. I have to admit that I couldn't see the forced victory which involved a bishop sacrifice followed by a knight fork on the king. Richie was enraptured by the lecture, to my surprise. I thought he'd only be interested in playing.

Alyssa was bored by the lesson but seemed to have a fun time playing and was pleased with herself after she checkmated another girl at the class.

Of course the real highlight for both of them was the 15 minute snack break where everyone brings a dollar or two down to the cafeteria and gets to buy an ice cream or cookies from the vending machines. I'm realizing that Michael is a clever motivator. As a funny aside I saw all the kids playing chess with a few dollars in front of them at the beginning of class and was a little disturbed because I thought they were gambling! But at the break everything was illuminated.

Disturbing Event

2007-12-02T22:23:00.000-08:00

This is my first post using email to blogger.com:

We were at a chess tournament this weekend and I witnessed a very disturbing thing. To be honest I don't know if it's fair of me to write about it since I don't even know the people involved. But anyway, I feel compelled to mention it nevertheless.

I remember watching Searching for Bobby Fischer and thinking that the part about chess parents being worse than the kids was satirical. Well, this weekend I saw that there's more than an element of truth it. We were allowed into the tournament hall to quietly observe since our kids were not in the tournament. We had gone just to meet some other chess parents and maybe set up some play-dates for our kids and give them a chance to play some friendly games. Inside the tournament hall I was watching one boy who was kindergarden-aged and seemed a likely candidate for a playmate for Richie. He was having a truly grand time playing a game with another boy. He was clearly quite talented and was up in his game a substantial amount of material. Towards the end he was up at least 2 rooks and a queen. I think he didn't really want the game to end, though, so as he played a move he would suggest to his opponent moves for him, even going so far as to allow him to take back moves to prolong the match. I stepped away for awhile and when I looked in again, it appears that they had both eliminated all the remaining pieces, ending the match in a draw. His father, who had seen how far ahead he was earlier, was not pleased. What began as a stern lecture, devolved as the boy started to cry. This brings up the difficulty that chess parents may have in becoming too invested in the results of their children achieve.

It was a humbling experience, and a reminder for me that there are much more important things than playing chess or winning tournaments.

On the bright side, Richie and Alyssa both seemed to enjoy themselves. They played several games with older kids. I saw a toughness in Alyssa that I haven't seen before. She fought on to the end in a lost game but never stopped trying--it made me quite proud to see. And Richie made me happy as well--at the end of the day he told me, "I love to play chess!"

1 month update on Dad's Go progress

2007-12-02T11:31:00.000-08:00

I wonder how far I'm going to get without learning any Joseki. I'm still at the point where I'm getting better just from playing games, without too much study. I used to frequently lose large groups because I wasn't staying connected and that's happening less frequently. I'm also starting to get a little better at keeping groups alive by making eyes I think. I've been watching a few of Guo Juan's audio lessons which are excellent. I highly recommend them. I think I'm on number 5 now in the beginner lessons. I enjoy watching them a lot which I guess means that's a good way for me to study.

Richie's First Chess Lesson

2007-12-02T03:40:00.000-08:00

We had Alyssa's school chess teacher, Michael, come to our house to give the kids a chess lesson. Alyssa has been in his after-school class since the start of the school year. Richie, who is in Pre-K at the same school is not in the same class since the starting age is Kindergarden. I had talked to Michael after class about enrolling my son since he started to show interest in the game a few months ago. When he started trying to teach to our nanny, and some kids we had over for a play-date chess, I figured he was ready to ge some instruction himself. But Michael said he needed to see Richie himself since in his experience kids don't usually have a long enough attention span to benefit much from 1 hour lessons until they're a little older. Anyway, after Richie continued to show interest, I decided to have a test lesson to see how it goes. Yesjavascript:void(0)
Save as Draftterday was the first one.

Michael began the lesson by explaining how the pieces moved. Throughout the lesson he used little rhymes to teach a point or he would animate the pieces (this bishop is a cow eating grass on this square, the rook comes and eats him, chomp chomp, but then this other rook says hey you just ate my cow, now I'm going to get you!) The kids liked that a lot.

I think he was a little surprised that Richie already knew how the pieces move, but when Richie started to get distracted by a toy on the table, I think he figured it out and moved on.

Next he explained the point value of the pieces. This was setting up a later discussion about whether or not a trade is a good trade. I haven't really emphasized this at all, that might explain why both kids have shown willingness to sac pieces for pawns.

After that he showed them a few basic checkmates and had them play a game. He pretty much directed them on which pieces to move. He did enforce touch-move and at one point Alyssa hung a bishop because she dropped it down on the wrong square and he allowed the play to continue. Richie captured and was up a piece. During the middle game several opportunities to initiate exchanges occured. Michael tried to have them count attackers and defenders to emphasize that if there were more attachers than defenders it was a good exchange sequence.

He introduced the rook battery, as well as making a few rules that he wanted them to follow such as always opening with the King pawns, moving knights and bishops before the queen, and castling early.

He flattered us by mentioning that he was pleased with Richie's grasp of the game already and said that it was rare to see such a young player pick up this quickly which he thought meant that Richie would probably take to the game well and could compete in the K-1 nationals later next year or the following.

He mentioned that he had one other student who he thought highly of that he'd like us to meet to set up a play date.

Coffee shop chess

2007-12-02T03:26:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago we went to the new Barnes & Nobles bookstore in the Stamford mall. It's really huge. I think it might be the biggest one in Connecticut and it has a Starbucks inside of course. We brought the chess set because Richie wanted to play. I put him at a table and told him to set up the board while I stood in line to get a coffee. After a minute or two, some curious kids--obviously wondering what this little guy was doing playing chess by himself--came over to talk. When I got there with the coffee, they asked if they could play with him. Richie loved it and was very happy with his game which he won by taking all the opponents pieces. He didn't know how to checkmate. His opponents were a trio of kids in the 4th to 6th grades. Both sides barely knew how the pieces moved (though Richie gleefully pointed out when his opponent made a move he knew was illegal) but they older kids still got a kick out of being run over by a 4 year old. I hope the praises they gave him encourage him to play more. Since then he's been asking to play chess at the bookstore a lot. I picked up Janice Kim's series of books on Go. So far like them a lot. They're full of diagrams are easy to read in short sessions.

First Recorded Game

2007-11-30T02:25:00.000-08:00

This is the first game I've recorded between Alyssa and Richie. I tried to avoid giving any advice except to point out rule violations (of which there were a few). About 5 moves into the game I started asking them to tell me after the opponents move whether any of their pieces were threatened. My idea is to gradually build up a move thought process and impress on them they should think a little before each move.

In response to my question before each move where I asked them to identify if the last moved piece could capture anything, they answered correctly about 25% of the time. I think they may be getting confused between whether it's a legal move or if it's a "good" move, meaning one that isn't immediately punishable by recapture. Of course they are looking at most 1 ply ahead.

At this point I ended the game. Richie was inconsolable because he thought he was losing and that I was helping Alyssa (even though he's actually winning). Not sure exactly how to get them to play out to checkmate. Maybe I need to start with fewer pieces, but the problem is that they like having the whole army.

Thanks to this tool, though, I showed the kids the game again and we talked about some of the opportunities each of them had to make better moves.

They thought seeing the game was cool and both want to play again! As a little test, I showed Alyssa the moves and asked her if she recognized the game, but she didn't. I guess that's not surprising. Once I told them that it was their game though, they were able to recall some of the things they thought of during the game. Neat.

The game was generated using this text PGN without headers:

{This is the first game between Alyssa and Richie that I've recorded} 1. e4 Nc6 {They're geniuses!}
2. Be2 Nf6 3. e5 Rg8 {I have told Richie that he should move his center pawns and
minor pieces before trying to move rooks, but he seems to have forgotten}
4. Nf3 b6 5. exf6 {I started asking if anything can be taken here and Alyssa spotted it} exf6
6. O-O {Alyssa has remembered to castle early} Nd4 7. Nxd4 d6
8. Bg4 Ba6 9. Re1+ Be7
10. Qe2 {After Qe2 I asked if anything could be taken. Richie spotted that the Bishop was attacked.
But then confused himself by asking if he could castle and got distracted} Rf8
11. Qd1 {Alyssa was paying attention, but didn't see the better move} Rb8
12. Nc3 h6 13. Ne6 {A daring foray. But there was no plan behind it as far as I can tell} Qc8
{Both said No when asked if anything was threatened}
14. Nd4 Qb7 {R: If you move your knight you can eat my Q!}
15. Ne6 {If at first you don't succeed, try, try again! Neither one can see Rook under attack} Ra8
16. {This is a critical point, they've both run out of ideas and don't know how to proceed, I made the suggestion
that A should move the minor piece that's furthest from the center, a variation on a blitz rule of thumb,
when in doubt reposition your worst piece} a3 {But she couldn't tell which one was furthest.
I said just move a pawn but not one in front of your king} d5 17. d3 c5 18. Nxd5 Rh8 19. d4 cxd4 20. b4 fxe6
21. Nxb6 Qxb6 22. Bxh6 gxh6 23. Rxe6 Qb5 {Here I showed a few variations of what could happen with different Q moves but
Richie got upset because he thought I was helping Alyssa and not him}
24. c4 Qxc4 25. b5 Bxb5
26. Rc1 Qd3 27. Qxd3 Bxd3 {Richie is inconsolable because he thinks he's losing when in fact he is
winning but I can't convince him. We ended the game here.}

Chess comic

2007-11-28T23:46:00.000-08:00

And now to complete the round-trip back to chess via comics, I recommend this chess comic strip by Scott McCloud. It's nicely done. I usually enjoy these auto-biographical comics for some reason. I find the characters quirky and amusing I suppose. Anyway there are some eerily familiar things in this story made me smile as I reflected on my own experience with chess. I even lived in Cambridge, MA for awhile so the reference to Au Bon Pain gave me some happy memories. I wonder if the Chessmaster, Murray, is still there? I used to play him for kicks. I never won a game but I had a "won" game once when I used the 4 pawn attack and came out ahead piece but I lost on time when he made some tricky stalling moves. I suppose the thing I have most in common with narrator, though, is a tendency for serial obsessions.

Empty Triangle Comics

2007-11-28T07:01:00.000-08:00

While on the subject of Go related entertainment, I thought I'd mention this strip which I found through ChiyoDad's blog. Empty Triangle is nice and I like the perspective of a novice (and a girl) in the Go world. Very well done. I wonder if I can commission the artist to do a drawing for my kids? They would definitely get a thrill out of that...

Hikaru no Go

2007-11-28T06:59:00.000-08:00

One day while searching on Netflix for some cartoon movies to rent for the kids I came across the Hikaru no Go series. I knew almost nothing about Go at the time, though I did learn the basic rules when I was in high school. Since I never had anyone to play against, I had pretty much forgotten about the game until seeing this anime series. Strangely, Netflix didn't have the first disc available so I ended up starting with the second disk. My kids both really liked it as did I so I ended up just buying the series from Amazon. I really liked the way they dramatized all of the games and it had the nice effect of inspiring all of us to give the game a try. After having Chinese food in Flushing, NY one day I tried to drop by a local Baduk club. It wasn't very English friendly, unfortunately, but the proprietor was able to point me to a local Korean grocery store when I asked where I could buy a baduk board. We found the store without much trouble and picked up a cheap go board. I searched online to remind myself of the rules and went through the exercises on Hiroki Mori's site, the Interactive Way to Go.
I also used this teaching guide but it turned out that after watching Hikaru no Go, the kids had sort of picked up the rules already. I didn't bother explaining eyes, but they do manage to sort of play games. I actually found that using a chess board (9x9) in Go was the best balance. Much smaller than that and it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense and of course bigger than that is too much to handle for them. But at 9x9 I can play Alyssa with a 4 stone handicap and if I correct obvious mistakes where she misses that I'm about to capture a large group because she's failing to make an easy connection, she gives me a pretty good run for my money. It's surprising how easily they seem to grasp basic defensive plans. Strangely, enough they can play games with each other and (after correcting major oversights) Richie seems to usually get the upper hand over Alyssa. I've tried to teach them about scoring the game but they seem to lose sight of the goal of the game sometimes and will typically make "dead" moves near the end of the game as they start running out of open space to fill. They also seem to prefer building long walls and prioritize taking prisoners over taking space. Well anyway, I don't try to instruct them much, I'm just having them play as many games as I can right now.

Richie and Alyssa both enjoy playing. We got in a few games over Thanksgiving at Ben and Christine's house.

Posting Chess Games with Java Applet

2007-11-28T06:01:00.000-08:00

Here's a test game posting using Chess Publisher by Andrew Ooi. This is a really nice free service that gives me an easy way to embed a game into the blog. Thanks and great work!

Right now I can only seem to get version 1 to work. Version 2 looks nicer and has some improvements.

While searching for a publishing tool I ran across this chess teaching blog.

Stopping by an ACTA chess tournament

2007-11-28T00:24:00.000-08:00

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Michael ran a scholastic chess tournament. It's a USCF rated affair which apparently runs every other week or so. Michael's organization ACTA runs the tournaments so he invited us to stop by. I thought it would be a great idea to show the kids what a tournament looks like and maybe get them excited to learn. I wasn't disappointed. The event was held at the Stamford Holiday Inn which is just 15 minutes from our house. We stopped by around 10:00 am and found the event to be lively as expected with something like 30 kids of all ages competing in different rooms. There were a lot of parents at various spots in the hotels waiting for their kids to finish or playing games with them. Interestingly there was only 1 kindergarden-aged contestant who had to be moved to the 1st grade pool.

The highlight of the visit, however was the awards ceremony for kindergarden and 1st grade I think. There some really nice lighted trophies on a display table and every child got a participation ribbon. Michael graciously gave Alyssa and Richie ribbons and medals even though they weren't officially entered in the event.

The trophies left a big impression on Richie especially and he's been asking to be taken to a tournament to play because "he wants a trophy." I plan to wait until an event in December or perhaps a later one in January that "guarantees" a trophy for him. I imagine that if he missed getting one he would be devastated. Perhaps I'm being too soft but I want to keep the good vibes going.

A cute anecdote: we asked Alyssa to play chess in a friendly game with one of the kids there. There was a boy there and we talked briefly with his mother. She asked him to play with her. He seemed reluctant at first since he appeared to have more pressing matters to attend to downstairs, but eventually relented and agreed to one quick game. Then Alyssa refused to play. This didn't surprise me too much as she can be shy at times and was probably nervous about "performing." We tried to tell her that the outcome didn't matter but she wouldn't budge.

Surprisingly, though, Richie volunteered in her place. The boy, Sean (I think) who is probably in 1st grade or maybe 2nd, said something funny to me like "don't worry, I'll go easy on him." I was glad to hear that as I wondered how Richie would react to losing, and breaking his "undefeated" streak (since I've always let him win our games in the end before the tears start rolling). Sean proceeded to purposely hang most of his pieces, even pointing out as he moved his queen en prise that Richie could take it if he wanted to. They played out and with a little help from me we maneuvered Richie into winning with a bank rank mate. Richie was thrilled with his "win" and left with a glowing smile on his face. And was it a tiny spark of genius or an accident when on one move he ignored my wife's recommendation to take a pawn with his bishop and instead snapped up a rook across the board?