Teaching Kids and Adults How to Play Chess
To learn how to play chess kids and adults can follow the same basic approach:
- Get a chess set on Amazon.com or at the offices of Chess Max Academy;
- Get a rule book – a good resource is Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_chess
- Learn how to set up the pieces.
- Learn how each piece moves by following the rule book.
- Practice moving each piece and capturing with the pieces on the board.
- Use online resources to improve your understanding of the basic rules: Watch YouTube videos or download a free comprehensive mobile chess app such as “Chess Max Academy” which offers step by step guide to learning the rules and making the first steps in practicing them, making it easy to learn at any age.
Once you learned all the rules, and decided that chess is for you and you want to find the best way to learn chess, you will need to find the best place to learn chess. If there are a number of chess schools in your area, you have to make a decision where to learn chess the best way. How to choose the best place if there is more than one chess school near you?
Our suggestion is to look at some obvious signs:
- Reviews: How satisfied are the customers with the service they are getting?
- Tenure: How long has the school been open? If it’s been around for 5 years or more, chance are things are going well as the clients are returning because they are happy.
- Who are the coaches? The level of private tutors is extremely important. If the school is run by Internationally acclaimed players, you are likely getting the best value for your investment, as getting taught correctly in chess works the same way as in all major life’s interests. Whether you are learning music, tennis, cooking or chess – mistakes made by bad coaches are the toughest to correct, as they become ingrained into the student’s thinking.
- Website: If the website looks like it’s professionally designed with all the chess school’s offerings pretty clear; whether you are looking for online tutoring with private tutors or group classes, to play in a chess tournament or to enroll in a camp – it means the owners are thoughtful not only in the design of their website, but also in how they structure their online and in-person group chess classes.
To sum up, to choose the best Chess School for you to learn chess check out the Reviews, the number of years the school has been in business, the level of the top coaches in the chess school and whether they have one of the best websites in the industry.
If you are looking for a Chess School in the New York or Greenwich, CT areas, where you can learn chess 7 days a week, there are only a few that are dedicated to teaching chess to young and adult players alike. Most chess businesses rely on either working with after-school programs or by appointment at peoples’ homes.
In New York City, for example, only Chess Max Academy and the Marshall Chess Club have a dedicated location to teach chess. While Chess Max Academy currently has three physical locations in the Upper East Side, Upper West Side and Greenwich, CT, the Marshall Chess Club has one in the West Village in NYC. Although the Marshall Chess Club has some after-school chess activities, they are limited to one or two classes a day, as the club mostly caters to its adult members. In Greenwich, CT – there are currently no other dedicated chess programs available outside of being a student in one of the schools where chess is offered.
Why Should You Learn Chess?
Learning chess for kids and adults is equally important, as it stimulates the brain cells, improves cognitive thinking, problem-solving, memory, patience, creativity and prolongs quality of life due to better brain function. It has been shown for example, that playing chess on a daily basis is a great deterrent to Alzheimer’s and similar diseases which attack the brain.
Learning Chess Strategy and Tactics
To learn chess for beginners we recommend our mobile chess app ‘Chess Max Academy’, which will take players from learning how the pieces move to understanding the basic tactics and strategy by reading through and then solving the puzzles in our free chess courses.
This serves an excellent backup to our online and in-person chess group classes which offer at either our NYC or Greenwich, CT locations plus through are versatile online Chess program which we conduct via Zoom.