Free junior club cards e-book

Submitted by DrDave on Sat, 19/09/2009 - 00:00

Here is a set of cards that you can have up your sleeve while running a junior chess club. Sometimes you have a spare player -- and sometimes players get a bit bored playing the same old faces each week – so here are some ways to mix things up.

There are four sorts of card:
	BOARDSIGHT
		Chess uses a big board and it's hard to see how things join up – these tasks will help you get your eye in
	EXERCISES
		Practice for a chess skill
	GAMES
		A variation of chess – maybe one that will help you practise an important chess skill
	ENDGAME
		Target practice for finishing off a game

Draw a card for everyone to have a go at when they arrive, or draw one later for one or two players who are at a loose end. The number of possible ideas is enormous, but these have been tried and tested.

I've left out perhaps some of the better-known ideas, like blitz chess, doing tactics puzzles, and crazy lightning. In the unlikely event that you haven't heard of these, you will find them on the Internet.

I don't think any of these ideas are completely original, but I don't know where they all came from. Credits are due to Gerry Quinn (Detective chess), Jeff Coakley (Winning Chess Exercises) Steven Addison (100 other games to play on a chessboard) David Pritchard (The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants), Raymond Smullyan (The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes) and Martin Gardner (Mathematical Carnival).