Teaching chess to kids

The rules take twenty minutes. What to do in the six months after that is the actual question, and the answer is a shorter list than most people expect. Here is the order we built the course in, why it is in that order, and the free worksheets that go with each step.

Teach these two things first, and be patient about it

How to finish. A child who cannot deliver checkmate does not win games they are winning, and nothing is more discouraging than being a queen up and running out of moves. Mate in one first, then mate in two, then king and rook against a lone king on a real board until it is boring.

How to stop giving pieces away. Watch a beginner game and it is usually decided by an undefended piece rather than by a plan. The habit is one question asked before every move: is anything of mine attacked, and is it defended? It is duller than a fork and it is worth more.

If you teach nothing else for two months, teach those two. A child who finishes and does not hang pieces beats a child who knows the Sicilian almost every time.

Then the patterns, in this order

This is the order the free worksheets are best used in. It is not arbitrary: each one is built on the one before it, and the first three keep paying back long after the child has moved on.

After those six the useful ones are mate in two, double check, smothered mate and discovered attacks, with deflection and trapping pieces last, because those two need a child who already sees the board rather than the piece.

Leave the openings alone

Opening names are the most seductive thing in chess and almost the least useful thing to teach a beginner. A child who has memorised eight moves of the Italian and then hangs a bishop on move nine has learned nothing they can use. Three principles cover the whole opening at this level: get pieces out, castle, do not move the same piece twice for no reason. That is it until they are consistently not losing material, at which point the opening tactics guide becomes worth something.

Paper, board and screen each do a different job

• Paper forces calculation. Solving a worksheet with the pieces out of reach means the whole line has to happen in your head, which is the skill that transfers to a game. Solving with a board in front of you quietly becomes moving pieces around until something looks right.
• A real board teaches the thing screens cannot: sitting opposite somebody, touching a piece and being committed to it, losing and shaking hands. That is most of what a club is for.
• A screen gives instant feedback. The one advantage it genuinely has over paper is that it tells you within a second whether you were right, and at volume that matters.

Most sessions that work use two of the three. A worksheet as a ten-minute warm-up with the boards away, then games on real boards, is the shape that keeps turning out well.

Handling the moment it goes wrong

Two situations account for most of the difficulty, and both have a technique rather than a speech.

They lose and it lands badly. Do not tell them it does not matter, because they can tell it does. Ask what the last move was that they would take back. Answering that question turns the loss into a puzzle, which is a thing they already know how to do.

They will not think. Almost always the position is too complicated, not the child too impatient. Give them a puzzle instead of a game: a puzzle has one answer, and finding it feels like winning. Then go back.

Is chess good for children?

We are not going to tell you it raises test scores or builds concentration. Those claims are everywhere in this corner of the internet and the research behind them is genuinely disputed, so anyone stating it flatly to sell you something is either not reading carefully or hoping you will not. What we will say is narrower and true: chess is a game with a right answer, and children who like it get a great deal of practice at looking for one before acting. Whether that generalises to anything else is not ours to promise.

What to teach from

The 36 free worksheets are 432 real positions with answer keys, three difficulty bands per pattern, free to print and photocopy. The Reflex Chess trainer covers the same material on a board, with the first 3 skills and both practice modes open without an account.

The worksheet printing guide · Running a school chess club · What the app asks for · The beginner guide

Questions