Chess Club

St. Raphaela's Primary School runs a Chess Club, available only to pupils of this school. It meets each Wednesday evening from April through to June. It takes place in the Chess Room upstairs in the school and sessions start at 7pm and end at 9pm.

Pupils from 3rd Class and upwards are eligible to join and may take part for as many or as few weeks as they wish. There is no charge.

Those playing must bring their own board and pieces - and remember to count the pieces carefully to make sure you have them all with you before you go home.

The club is run with the help of parents who are willing to give up the odd Thursday night. A basic knowledge of chess is all that is required to supervise. Gerry Doyle (Tel. 283 1930) is the person to contact if you can help out.

So that the room is left in the same condition as we find it, no refreshments other than water may be brought to the club. You'll survive!

For pupils:

The weekly lessons, which are conducted by Transition Year students from St. Benildus College, are a great help to advance your knowledge of how to better play the game. But just like any skilful sport or pastime, regular practice brings improvement. Coming along to the school chess club night won't be enough on its own.

If you want to play well against other schools and in open competitions, you really should play at home on another day too for an hour or so.

Maybe one of your parents will give you a game? If not maybe you can buy an inexpensive chess program for a PC - if you have access to one - or play free programs available through the internet (see useful links below).

St. Raphaela's Primary School will be challenging other local schools to chess matches during school hours. We will look to enter a few organised competitions too. There are lots of kids just like you out there who like to play chess!

When the school's new Electronic Whiteboard is up and running we'll bring in some software and those who want to can pool their knowledge with other club members and try to beat the computer.

For parents:

There is much discussion and many ideas about how to get children, especially the younger ones, involved in chess. A common problem is how to maintain a child's interest and enthusiasm while they develop the skills needed to actually start winning. Here are some tips.

• Play simple endgame scenarios, such as giving a child a King and Queen against a King. These can be good as they involve few pieces and don't require the child to look ahead at many moves.
• Set "mate in two" type puzzles for the child to solve. These may have more pieces and more complex combinations, but a limited number of moves.

When a child does play an adult of much higher skill, or a computer chess program, there are still ways to keep the child's interest.

• Give the child some odds. Time odds (in which the child has perhaps 10 times as long to play as the adult) are generally better than piece odds (in which the adult starts with some pieces missing), because piece odds distort the game more.
• Turn the board around one or more times during the game. This could be after a set number of moves, or at the child's request up to a set number of times (perhaps 2 or 3) during the game.
• Allow the child, but not the adult, to undo moves and take them again (but perhaps only once per move).

You don't need to deliberately let a child win. The above suggestions will give them a fighting chance at winning, but they still need to work for it.

Useful chess sites

Chesskids Academy ; www.chesskids.com is an excellent UK site.

Chess for Children ; www.chessforchildren.com . This is a very good site based in the United States and has a number of chess computers to play against - they work very well even using intranet dial up. The computers are at various levels, if you're careful in the opening moves then the easier programs start to make errors here and there - just like a real opponent does!

The Irish Chess Union Site ; www.icu.ie is good for local events. In case you're interested there is such a thing as an Under 8 Irish International team! And Under 10, Under 12 etc.

There is a Leinster Schools Chess Association ; http://www.geocities.com/leinsterschoolschessassociation/ . The page hasn't recently been updated but there is a list of local chess playing schools in the fixtures section.

The Leinster Chess Union ; http://www.leinsterchess.com/Links.aspx has a list of clubs. Just a word on clubs - it is rare to find a chess club with a girl as a member. That's just how it is I'm afraid, it's a cultural thing. If this puts you off, there is a solution - play people on the Internet, but make sure to have your parents check out any such sites before you use them. You won't have any idea who you are playing - it could be someone from Cork, China, Russia or Australia!