How ChessKid Helps You Improve Over The Board
ChessKid is a wonderful tool to help your kids prepare for over-the-board tournaments. Online chess and over-the-board chess go hand-in-hand. ChessKid is a great supplement to your face-to-face practices and offers many resources to help your kids strengthen their play over the board.
Teach Your Kids How to Record Their Moves As They Play
As your kids begin to play in rated tournaments, they will need to record or notate their moves as they play. This is a good thing because it helps them slow down and have a record of the moves they made in a game that can be analyzed later. Be sure to have your kids record as they play during practice, to help them get used to it before playing in a tournament. Here is a ChessKid video explaining how to record moves.
ChessKid Scoresheets
You may purchase scorebooks for your chess team to use during practice or tournaments. These are helpful for your coach to analyze games during the tournament and during practices after the tournament. ChessKid has a free downloadable scoresheet that you may also want to print out to use.
Vision Trainer
If your kids are new to chess notation and recording moves, the Vision Trainer is a great tool to help them become familiar with the chess board and location of each square. On the left menu, go to LEARN and select Vision Trainer to play in a timed contest to see how many squares you can click on that correspond to the algebraic coordinate for the square on a chess board. This will help your kids learn notation skills and recognize where chess pieces are positioned on the board.
Chess Clocks
If you play in over-the-board tournaments, you will likely be using a chess clock. Tournament flyers usually indicate the time control that will be utilized during the tournament. In scholastic tournaments (such as those for K-12 players), a typical time control would be Game 30/d5. That indicates that each player will have 30 minutes with a 5-second delay to complete his or her moves. Teaching your students how to use a chess clock during practice will help them before a tournament. Here is our Beginner's Guide to Chess Clocks that may be helpful along with many other articles you can find on ChessKid.
Videos
Many kids are visual learners and love watching ChessKid Videos. You can search video topics to find helpful tips on an area of your choice. For example, if you are interested in learning more about chess openings, go to the menu on the right, select Learn, select Videos, and then use the drop-down menu under Categories to find video topics related to openings. A word search is also available if you have something specific in mind. A video can be a great way to start an after-school practice.
Play Online Games With Other Kids
Playing games online is a great way to practice for upcoming over-the-board tournaments. Want to try a new opening? Do it online before you play it over the board. Kids can challenge other kids to a single game by going to Play vs Kid.
To start a game, players can select the Time Control (5,10 or 15 minutes) and wait for their game to start. Our system will match them with the next available player with a similar rating.
Or your kids can join a tournament that is set up for clubs they are a member of, and play multiple games as part of the tournament. Their school or chess club may also schedule tournaments for them to play in, or they can join the ChessKid Official Club and play in multiple online tournaments that ChessKid schedules each day.
Play A Bot
Not only can kids play other kids online to help them improve their skills, but they also have a multitude of computer robots to choose from to play against online. Players get to choose the difficulty level and can challenge themselves to see how skilled an opponent they can defeat.
ChessKid Tip: If you have access to a touch screen monitor or smartboard, log in to ChessKid, select Play vs. Bot, and allow the class to collaborate and suggest moves to play against the robot. Kids learn from each other when they suggest a candidate move and explain the reason behind that move, and evaluate which one is best to try. And, it is always fun when the entire class helps to defeat a bot together!
Wrap Up: Here is a ChessKid article that shows you all your options to play online (fast, slow, bots, or tournaments).
Analyze Your Online Games
After your child plays online games, be sure to let them use the Analyze Games feature. From a kid account, you can analyze your game from the Game History screen by clicking on the magnifying glass or by using the left menu and selecting Learn, and then selecting Analyze Games. Games against kids or bots can be analyzed.
Work Independently On ChessKid Each Week Outside Of Chess Practice
ChessKid offers puzzles, video lessons and workouts to help you improve your skills. Attending weekly chess practice is great, but if you want to improve at anything, you have to work independently and practice!
Your kids can get a lot of ideas from coaches who write ChessKid articles sharing their tips on what they do to prepare for tournaments, and what their kids do on ChessKid. Getting the Team Ready Part 1 and Part 2 will give you some ideas to get started and explains how independent work is the key to success.
Here's another article on how to prepare for your first tournament. Parents and coaches can explore plenty of additional articles on how to improve and prepare for over-the-board tournaments.