Does it work or does it not?

On this blog, I will be posting interesting things about chess, interesting details of my students and all I want to talk about chess.

My 1st post is about one of my students. He missed basic backrank mates...Read below.

Does this program work? I don't know but my student has definitely improved by working heavily on tactics in the past 2 months. My 8 year old student hit USCF rating  ~1,000 within 6 months of starting to learn chess, and within 2 months of playing rated chess games. He learnt chess in the summer of 2013, and by Jan 2014, his rating was at 1054 USCF. We were shocked, for sure on the sudden rise to this rating. He just started playing OTB tournaments, chess was so new to him, how can he scale a rating of 1,000 within few months of getting introduced to the game? We did not know how to work on learning the lessons of chess. We did not know what was important to actually play better. He was still making blunders. He was resigning due to lack of confidence, he was resigning a lot. Games that he could win, games where he was only down a couple of pawns. He was playing fast. He missed basic back rank mates...No amount of instruction (before the game) helped. When the game started, he would play fast. Most of it was emotional. And lose. He was slowly sliding down the ratings. Not much though. 10 points in a tournament. Like that. This went for a long long time, like 6 months or so. We were reading books heavily. None of that was showing OTB. His blunders continued. He blundered at most games, drew games he should win, lost games he should draw. Most of his opponents were going up like a couple of hundred points while he was stuck there.

What was the reason?

I did research on the learning methods of chess. What was important to reduce blunders? What was important to slow down the really fast players? We didn't know. He was working hard. Doing chess videos, learning new ideas, playing games - almost 3 to 4 hours per day. Nothing helped.

Well, a couple of months back, I turned to tactics. I asked him to start doing Mate in 1s. The good thing about him is he will obey what he is told to do. Though he scorned at the idea of doing Mate in 1s, he did do them seriously. He got them 100% correct. Then, we moved to Mate in 2s, Mate in 3s, Double attack, Discovered check etc. He worked hard.

His hardwork on tactics began to show in the games. He was seeing chess games differently, I could see his confidence levels rise. He needed some pyschological teaching as well. When not to resign, how to time games, how to relax during games, how not to exchange all the pieces and oversimplify etc. After all, he had a 6 month slump.

His rating still slided. He had a couple of tournaments where he had bad luck. He started one tournament after 2 rounds. He gained a measly 2 points in that tournament. In another tournament, we showed up late. So, he had to play with his time cut into half. Obviously, he lost points in that tournament.

Recently, he played in a tournament. And I was impressed. He lost his first game, but I was watching him lose on time = he was thinking. He did not exchange madly. He did not oversimplify. I was satisfied. The quality of his game is showing up. I patted him for playing well. He won the next 3 matches, and his rating went up again to 1,000 now.

Results will come, but lessons should be learnt in a proper manner = Lesson learnt. My job now is to find him the right kind of tournament to play, so that his rating will get good jumps. I need to pace his training, and tournament participation in such a way that he will make optimal use of the resources he has.

The hardwork continues...meanwhile.....Right now what book is he working on? He is doing the puzzles from Coakley's Chess strategy for kids. Yes, "for kids". Nevertheless, I am confident that working on these sets of books will enable him to see the board, pieces, and tactics clearly and hence, will improve his game and rating.