Teaching kids to play Chess

Any advice on teaching my 6-year-old daughter to play chess? Is six too young?

She’s shown an interest in the board and pieces. She likes to name* them and move them around - obviously she’s not ready for castling or en passant captures but I’d like to start teaching her some of the basic moves and don’t know how far to go with it. I didn’t learn to play until Junior High so I’m not sure how it’s usually approached with the young’uns, I’m hoping there are some fun variants out there that will interest her. I’m at work and can’t navigate to any sites pertaining to chess other than wiki and the like.

  • Some of the names she’s come up with: Minty, Tim, Rainbow Face…for chess pieces! I shake my head at the imagination they have.

I taught the Kiddo the basic moves when he was around 3.5-4 because he asked to learn. He received his first chess set (Harry Potter) for Christmas when he was 4.5. He has been playing ever since.

So clearly, I don’t think 6 is too young. Just be patient and practice moving the pieces over and over before trying to actually play. Oh, and get a copy of Lego Chess. The Kiddo really learned a lot from playing that.

Somebody on here is an actual Chess teacher…I think in the UK. Odds are good he or she will have some tips for ya.

I suspect that there are tutorial type programs available for various ages. Maybe something with a Disney theme or something similar would catch her interest. I don’t play chess, but if I were to learn it at tht age, I’d have liked something I saw called “Battle Chess”…the pieces were animated, and would actually fight while resolving the move.

Never heard of Lego Chess, I’ll check it out. When did you start teaching captures/strategy, etc.? I know it’ll vary from child to child, just trying to get a feel for what works for most.

ETA: A disney theme would definitely be for her, is I can find a Princess themed board I’ll be all set. She does enjoy playing with the pieces on a regular board though which is what prompted me to start teaching her some of the moves, I don’t want to go too far with it and get her frustrated with it.

That would be glee, who teaches chess at a school somewhere[sup]*[/sup]. Six isn’t too young if she’s showing interest - as with music, the sooner she learns the basics, the better the outlook for serious learning if she wants to.

Don’t expect her to emulate Capablanca, who was under five when he learned the moves by watching his father, and then beat the astonished parent first time.

  • I know where, but I’m being intentionally vague for obvious reasons

Somebody on the boards once recommended getting the programs "Learn to play chess with Fritz and Chesster. It’s really simple stuff (a six year old can handle it) that sort of blends aspects of a child’s video game and teaches basic chess moves. There are two games, the basic and then an “advanced” level. I’ve only done the basic one and I thought it was cute and fun.

Also, these do run on Mac or PC.

Battle Chess was hilarious. I knew a friend who had it back when I was 12 or so.

I think the best animation was when the King would pull out a gun and just shoot the other piece (I can’t remember which piece he did that with), followed closely by the Rook taking a Pawn (Rook opens mouth and swallows Pawn) and Pawn taking a Pawn (Pawn smashes butt end of spear into the other Pawn’s foot and while the other Pawn is hopping around in pain, the first Pawn sticks the business end of his spear into the other Pawn’s stomach).

There was also a freeform mode where you could set up different scenarios and play the game from that point. I used it to look at all the possible capturing/checkmate animations. (With 6 different pieces, there are 35 possible capturing/checkmate animations–King can’t checkmate King obviously.)

I believe it’s available as abandonware these days.

It is - nostalgia made me look it up some time ago. I still have it, and it works on WinXP. The animations get old after a while.
FWIW, my old man taught me the game when I was about 6 - only the way the pieces move and so on, no strategy. He says I oughta learn from my own mistakes, but I strongly suspect the bastard gets off on trouncing me soundly every time we play :slight_smile:

Ooooh - this is my kind of thread! :slight_smile:

Yes, you can learn chess at 6 years old. At that age I taught myself from a book. :eek:
I’m still a chess devotee (I play at international level and, as Malacandra says, I teach the game professionally at a school).

She should only learn the actual rules - and make sure the teacher completely knows them. (A pupil at one of my schools got upset because her grandad had taught her something wrong…)
Start with the moves of the pieces, then simple checkmates, throw in some simple puzzles and then try a full game. Castling and promotion are fine to learn straightaway, but perhaps en passant could wait a bit (it doesn’t come up very often anyway).

There are three ways to go:

  1. Have someone teach her (yourself if knowledgeable). This is good because there’s active support and any questions can be answered. Remember the teacher must know the rules!

  2. Use a computer program (I suggest Fritz and Chesster.) It’s always available and has animations. However there’s no personal contact.

  3. Buy her a book. This is sound, but old-fashioned.

As you know her best, you can decide which method to use.

If you have more questions, I’ll be happy to answer them here. :cool:

6 is definitely not too young. Last year, my sons’ elementary school had The Chess Man come to each class for an hour a week, all grades, including kindergarten. When he was done teaching the basics (about 3 months), the school set up after school sessions, which kids in all grades can sign up for, competing within their own grade. My younger child, who was 5 at the time, surprised me by both castling and capturing a pawn en passant. “Oh, they taught you that already?” “Yep”
They taught the rules, and some very very basic strategies. (My 9 year old keeps trying to draw me in with Fool’s Mate, and I keep telling him, “not gonna work, I already know that one”)

Six is not too young. One of my earliest memories is finding a chess set in a house my family moved into when I was three. We thought the object was to capture all the opponent’s pieces, but it was a start.

Thanks for all the advice everyone, I’ll order Fritz and Chesster right away, that sounds perfect for her. She’s loves those types of programs.

A couple of simple + fun exercises you can do with her:

  • each player has a King, starting on it’s original square (e1 / e8). White tries to get to the other end of the board (a8 - h8). Black must block.
    Try it with first White, then Black to move first…

  • White has a knight on g1, Black a Queen on d8. (White moves first). Black must capture the knight…

A few years ago my niece and nephew were staying over and challenged me to a game of chess since they had been learning it in school. OK, we started, early on in the game one of them moves their Bishop to the end of the diagonal, switches direction, and keeps going. I called foul of course, and they both argued they were taught to do that, they called it “bouncing” the Bishop.

After we settled that issue, they were determined to move the Rook all the way to the end of the board and then come back on the board on the other side. This is what they were being taught in their chess club :eek:

There were some other issues as well, they thought you could only castle king-side, thought you could castle through a check (at least they knew they couldn’t castle out of check). It was a thoroughly disheartening experience.

I didn’t know at the time if this was just a bad teacher or if that was a generally accepted approach to keep them interested in it.

My granfather started teaching me chess when I was about three. I remember knowing what pieces moved in what way very early on. We would always play real games, but my grandfather would always remove a couple of pieces from his side to give me a bit of an advantage. I think it was the queen and one of his rooks. Opening moves were always P-K4, P-K4. I was always white. Later, I don’t remember how old I was, we played even-steven.

As a young child (5,6,7 somewhere around there) one of my grandfather’s chess-enthusiast friends walked me through a Knight’s Tour and got me hooked on chess- and to this day, the Knight is still my favorite piece :slight_smile:

Once she has the moves of the pieces down, teach her the relative values (point count is a good-enough “lie to children” at this stage: p=1, b=n=3, r=5, q=9) and that it is a good idea to stay even on material or better. If you can also encourage her to bring pieces into action without moving too many pawns first, and that (as a guiding principle) it’s a good idea to deploy Rooks by bringing them along the back rank to files that have been cleared of pawns, she will be strategically ahead of a number of adults I’ve already seen on gameknot.

I remember going to a great deal of effort in one game so that I could observe what happened when a pawn was the piece giving checkmate (which, just for the record, involved the pawn using his staff to flip the king’s crown onto his own head, after which the king would throw a little fit).

I also remember a glitch the game had. It didn’t understand what to do with multiple check. The computer would think for a while, then return control to the player without having made a move.

My dad taught me chess when I was a kid, and I used to babysit two girls, who were 6/7 and 9, and taught them to play chess. My advice is: let them win and keep it fun. Point out where they’re making bad moves and the like. Show them which are some good opening moves and why (nothing too complicated, my favourite is moving the pawn out in front of the king to get the queen out and give the king an ‘escape route’). Anthropomorphise pieces; the king can only move one place because he’s very old, etc.

Knights are quite tricky to grasp, tell them to think of them as horses that can jump in an L shape in any direction.

Nah, this is just bad teaching.
Given that the rules of chess are known all over the world and that the game is both full of surprises and lasts a lifetime without repetition, it’s crass to teach beginners variants.

This is all good advice, although as usual you need to teach at her pace.
My opening guide for beginners is:

  • develop your pieces
  • control the centre
  • get castled

Sorry, but this isn’t correct.

If White plays 1. d2-d4, then your suggestion of 1. … e7-e5 is a blunder.
e7 is not an ‘escape route’ for the king. After 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Qd1-h5 (?) Ke8-e7 ?? 3. Qh5xe5 is checkmate.

(The reason e2-e4 is good is that you control the centre and can bring out both the bishop and queen…)