Attack

Good day everyone!

I read the following articles on the website, chess-teacher dot com.

Attack is one of the most important and essential skills in chess. You cannot win a chess game if you cannot attack. But many chess players don’t know where to attack and how to start an attack. The right plan is required to deliver a proper and successful attack.

“Attack is the best form of defense” is a well-known phrase, and it means that to attack or to strike is the best way to protect oneself. Apparently, this applies to the chess game as well. However, most of the chess players do not know HOW to deliver a successful attack. 

Even the first undisputed world chess champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, used to say that “Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack.”

Today our guest coach CM Tryfon Gavriel has prepared a very instructive video lesson for you. In this video, he will show you a great game played by the 12-year old Magnus Carlsen, where the current World Champion had delivered a successful attack with an amazing Queen sacrifice.

Click on the following link: https://youtu.be/xqso5IYse7o

and

https://youtu.be/vPlzkrBzlko

Author information

Tryfon Gavriel is a FIDE Candidate Master (CM) with a rating of 2170. He has over 35 years of playing actively both online and offline.

He won the Lloyds Under-18 national UK tournament in 1989, and was awarded with the trophy by Grandmaster and PHD Mathematician Dr John Nunn. He also played twice in the main British Chess Championship.

Article: Using chess to teach life skills

Good afternoon everyone!

I recently came across this article, and would like to share it here.

It is about a chess Grandmaster, Maurice Ashley, who gave a lecture at an university of New York, and how the author of the article, who attended this lecture, applied the life skills he was taught through the game, on his personal life.

I think we can all learn from this article.  G

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Chess For Progress: How A Grandmaster Is Using The Game To Teach Life Skills

"My most profound lesson from learning the strategies and tactics of chess is the cognizance of the consequence of my actions. ... I learned that similar to finding every possible convergent square on the chess board, to think through all available options I have when faced with a problem or decision and to consider what may be the result of my actions."

Inspiring Others Through Chess Success

Ashley sees his accomplishments as a way of inspiring others, particularly those who come from similar beginnings. And he's encouraging everyone to follow their dreams, no matter how non-traditional. His focus, however, remains on teaching.

"Everyone should introduce their children to the game of chess," he says. "It's an inexpensive way of teaching your children lifelong skills that they will use for the rest of their lives."

I can testify to that. Ten years after my chess class with Maurice Ashley, I'm still putting to use the lessons he taught me. These sentiments, in another excerpt from my Thinking Chess essay, rings true today in my role as a journalist:

"The most pertinent strategy from chess that I can immediately apply to my profession is the concept of loyalty that surrounds protecting/securing the king. ... One must utilize the full army of pawns, bishops, knights, rooks and the powerful queen to destroy enemies and safeguard the mighty king. As a journalist, my immediate loyalties are to the company for which I work, my sources, my contemporaries, the ethics of my profession and myself in upholding integrity."

Read the whole article, by clicking here on this link.

:-)

Sport Quotas

Good day everyone

I would like to post the following, after the big discussion in the news regarding Transformation in Sport.

Re: TRANSFORMATION progress Western Cape Schools chess:

The Western Cape Top Schools TEAM (primary and high schools) that are going to the SA's in Pretoria in December of this year, consists of 66,6% brown/black players & 33,3% white players. Team management in the same ratio! Some teams consist of BOTH colour!

ALL other sport could use the "UNFORCED CHESS ROUTE" to transformation with tremendous success!  Each learner / administrator / educator has GOD-created POTENTIAL.  HOW is this potential unlocked?
(1) Taking schools chess TO a COMMUNITY
(2) Creating EQUAL OPPERTUNITIES on a MULTI-LEVEL process approach (district and regionals)
(3) PROPER MANAGING the process
(4) DEVELOPING / EMPOWERING and TRAINING passionate VISION, MISSION & GOAL driven administrators / educators.

Here's to taking the "unforced chess route."

~ Johan Alberts

Chess has numerous educational advantages

Good evening everyone.

To connect to the previous post, I would like to continue to publish some articles stating what educational advantages chess have.
The following I got from Mr Johan Alberts.  He is our District North Tournaments organiser, but he does so much more than just that for Chess in the Western Province.

Chess as a Community Activity Program in Fighting Crime ~ JJ Alberts
The ultimate objective of chess is to put your opponent in checkmate.  However, it is not about checkmate only.  Research shows that chess plays a critical role in improving academic ability (as a pedagogical tool it has numrous educational advantages) and develops various life skills and values, such as:

• better judgement
• character building
• confidence
• courage
• critical and logical thinking
• decision making
• improved concentration
• improved school attendance
• patience
• perserverance
• positive behaviour
• problem solving
• response (choice) and consequences
• respect and responsibility
• self-discipline
• self-confidence
• toughness

Learners, ...
... you are not pawns with the least value, but see yourself as pawns with inherent value to move forward in life and promote from pawns to powefull "Queens, Rooks, Bishops or Knights", i.e. becoming someone of VALUE! To be someone!

... keep your THINKING straight and focused, set GOALS and use your TIME well and wisely.  Study, play sport, become involved in the community and be a pawn in the was against crime!

... THINK ahead before you make a move in life (as on the chess board) - every move counts!  Think possibilities and outcomes. Understand that for every move you make on the chess board or CHOICE you make in life - there is CONSEQUENCES!

... there are positive ALTERNATIVES to conflict, crime, drugs, alcohol, violence and gangs.  Take the 'cri' (CRY) out of crime and you have 'ME': I must change my life (my thinking)!

... cherish, respect and protect our WOMEN (the "Queens"), bacause their powerfull presence and importance on the chess board are as powefull and important in life!  Learn to RESPECT yourselves and others.

...know that I am proud of you!

:-)

10 Big Brain Beniefits of Playing Chess

Good afternoon everyone!

The following I got on a website named africanchesslounge.  They got it from onlinecollegecources.

Click on the links above to go to those two websites.

Just from my side: good luck to all the learners writing exams next week.  Remember to play a game of chess in between the studies - it may just help you!

:-)

Not for nothing is chess known as “the game of kings.” No doubt the rulers of empires and kingdoms saw in the game fitting practice for the strategizing and forecasting they themselves were required to do when dealing with other monarchs and challengers. As we learn more about the brain, some are beginning to push for chess to be reintroduced as a tool in the public’seducation. With benefits like these, they have a strong case.

1. It can raise your IQ

   Chess has always had an image problem, being seen as a game for brainiacs and people with already high IQs. So there has been a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation: do smart people gravitate towards chess, or does playing chess make them smart? At least one study has shown that moving those knights and rooks around can in fact raise a person’s intelligence quotient. A study of 4,000 Venezuelan students produced significant rises in the IQ scores of both boys and girls after 4 months of chess instruction.

2. It helps prevent Alzheimer’s

   Because the brain works like a muscle, it needs exercise like any bicep or quad to be healthy and ward off injury. A recent study featured in The New England Journal of Medicine found that people over 75 who engage in brain-stretching activities like chess are less likely to develop dementia than their non-board-game-playing peers. Just like an un-exercised muscle loses strength, Dr. Robert Freidland, the study’s author, found that unused brain tissue leads to a loss of brain power. So that’s all the more reason to play chess before you turn 75.

3. It exercises both sides of the brain

   In a German study, researchers showed chess experts and novices simple geometric shapes and chess positions and measured the subjects’ reactions in identifying them. They expected to find the experts’ left brains being much more active, but they did not expect the right hemisphere of the brain to do so as well. Their reaction times to the simple shapes were the same, but the experts were using both sides of their brains to more quickly respond to the chess position questions.

4. It increases your creativity

   Since the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for creativity, it should come as no surprise that activating the right side of your brain helps develop your creative side. Specifically, chess greatly increases originality. One four-year study had students from grades 7 to 9 play chess, use computers, or do other activities once a week for 32 weeks to see which activity fostered the most growth in creative thinking. The chess group scored higher in all measures of creativity, with originality being their biggest area of gain.

5. It improves your memory

   Chess players know — as an anecdote — that playing chess improves your memory. Being a good player means remembering how your opponent has operated in the past and recalling moves that have helped you win before. But there’s hard evidence also. In a two-year study in 1985, young students who were given regular opportunities to play chess improved their grades in all subjects, and their teachers noticed better memory and better organizational skills in the kids. A similar study of Pennsylvaniasixth-graders found similar results. Students who had never before played chess improved their memories and verbal skills after playing.

6. It increases problem-solving skills

   A chess match is like one big puzzle that needs solving, and solving on the fly, because your opponent is constantly changing the parameters. Nearly 450 fifth-grade students were split into three groups in a 1992 study in New Brunswick. Group A was the control group and went through the traditional math curriculum. Group B supplemented the math with chess instruction after first grade, and Group C began the chess in first grade. On a standardized test, Group C’s grades went up to 81.2% from 62% and outpaced Group A by 21.46%.

7. It improves reading skills

   In an oft-cited 1991 study, Dr. Stuart Margulies studied the reading performance of 53 elementary school students who participated in a chess program and evaluated them compared to non-chess-playing students in the district and around the country. He found definitive results that playing chess caused increased performance in reading. In a district where the average students tested below the national average, kids from the district who played the game tested above it.

8. It improves concentration

   Chess masters might come off like scattered nutty professors, but the truth is their antics during games are usually the result of intense concentration that the game demands and improves in its players. Looking away or thinking about something else for even a moment can result in the loss of a match, as an opponent is not required to tell you how he moved if you didn’t pay attention. Numerous studies of students in the U.S., Russia, China, and elsewhere have proven time and again that young people’s ability to focus is sharpened with chess.

9. It grows dendrites

   Dendrites are the tree-like branches that conduct signals from other neural cells into the neurons they are attached to. Think of them like antennas picking up signals from other brain cells. The more antennas you have and the bigger they are, the more signals you’ll pick up. Learning a new skill like chess-playing causes dendrites to grow. But that growth doesn’t stop once you’ve learned the game; interaction with people in challenging activities also fuels dendrite growth, and chess is a perfect example.

10. It teaches planning and foresight

    Having teenagers play chess might just save their lives. It goes like this: one of the last parts of the brain to develop is the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for planning, judgment, and self-control. So adolescents are scientifically immature until this part develops. Strategy games like chess can promote prefrontal cortex development and help them make better decisions in all areas of life, perhaps keeping them from making a stupid, risky choice of the kind associated with being a teenager.

Reasons Chess Should Be a Part of Every Child’s Education

I found the following article on the internet (click here to go the blog):
Thanks, NM William Stewart for the link on your twitter feed!

Reasons Chess Should Be a Part of Every Child’s Education

Imagine a world where people all have excellent problem solving skills, where they are patient and respectful of each other on a daily basis. A society where citizens live for the future and plan long term, thinking of where their children’s children will be, following through, seeing each goal to its conclusion with ease. Now add to that an indefinable quality of artistic imagination, dreaming for more than can be reasonably expected, reaching beyond the status quo.

Chess can teach our next generation all these skills and more!

I learned the game when I was young and to this day I see the world as a giant chess game where any barrier can be conquered and any victory can be achieved. No goal is impossible and when I have a target in sight there is no stopping me. The same glint I had in my eye when I faced an opponent at a chess tournament still exists today when I face a challenge, along with the insouciant grin that comes from the pure joy of the experience.Intuitively most would agree that chess improves a student’s grades and ability to study. Numerous studies have been done over the years throughout the world that show this to be the case. IQ increases, reading test results improve as do math and science scores. However there are so many other skills children pick up naturally from learning and becoming good at chess.

Imagination is a must in chess. You cannot form strategies and tactical plans without being able to envision your goals. It is impossible to win a game without first imagining the victory. You are the one to make the pieces dance to the rhythm you choose. Without the player the pieces just sit dormant on a dusty board.

Chess helps build self-confidence in children

A child’s self confidence soars as the victories pile up, especially when...

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