Chess With Jake
To my surprise Jake began inquiring about learning to play chess. Back in the early days of this website (blog) I had numerous online chess games on the site. My last games of chess were a few years ago though, I do not play online anymore and the last game I played on a board was against my friend Scott Wood before he moved to Charlotte. Most of my board gaming is when the kids want to play a game. I was thrilled that he was interested in learning chess. This is the end of our first game in which I really just tried to teach him how each piece moves. What I was wondering most is that if he would still enjoy the game after finding out that it was not checkers.
He seems quite taken, we played two more games last night and three today and while we are still working on piece movement, we are beginning to explore using pieces in combinations. He spent the afternoon setting up the pieces and playing games against himself. I thought this would be good while he is interested so that he could cement learning how the pieces move. It is fun having someone in the house interested in playing chess and what a great game for learning how to develop strategy.
Of course the tough part right now is that he really does not have the skill to beat an adult, which means there is some frustration. He does like to win and that is not really happening right now. Sure I can throw a game, and I have done that in order to up morale. We could set up scenarios and teach him to play through those, but I never really did that when I was learning. I am self taught and am not a strong player in my opinion. But at least he has someone to show him some tactics, something I did not have being self taught. I can teach him a few tricks that he should be able to use to grab some games
