I'm not a chess coach, but I play one on TV

[thewayne]

We had a little family reunion in Las Cruces Saturday. Pretty good turnout, about 30, the only ones missing were my parents, sister's clan, and the Oregon branch. Well, we were probably missing more, but that's good enough. VERY good food, lots of fun talk, I took a lot of pictures which I'm probably not going to bore people with.

But I did spend some time being a chess coach!

I'm not much of a chess player, my rating might be in the 1000-1200 range, which makes me a duffer/weekend warrior. I helped run a lot of tournaments and photographed a few more. I have autographs from Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, and many people whose names I can barely pronounce.

At the reunion, I had two second (or third or fourth or fifth) cousins who were playing at chess. It got so painful for me to watch that I sat down and started teaching them better movies, combinations, etc. The sad thing was that the didn't know what en passant was, much less how castling worked. They were also clueless regarding stalemate.

So I gave 'em a lot of education in an hour. I also suggested they get a copy of Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, one of the best intro to chess games ever written (IMHO). It was reissued back in '82, but my first copy was in the early 70's. I'm also going to pull out a pair of sets and boards when I'm in Phoenix this weekend and drop 'em off for them. The set they were playing with was rather sad: it was a combo chess/checkers set with red and black squares and it was missing a white pawn and a black bishop, they were using quarters as replacements.

But man, it was a lot of fun! Makes me sort of consider seeing if I could find a chess coach gig here, but I'm really not good enough. The question is: am I good enough to teach?

Comments

[silveradept]

Surprisingly, you probably are. One of the side effects of expertise, we find, is that the processes being used by the experts become increasingly difficult to teach and/or document - the automaticity that happens actually impairs the teaching mechanic. Having to slow down and actually think about what gets done is difficult. So you're probably in a good place to teach, at least the beginning parts of it. From then, you pass them to someone with a slightly higher rating and have them teach, if they're still interested in it.

[anyeone.livejournal.com]

Ok, the alien with the trombone is simply adorable!

I miss playing my trombone...

[silveradept]

It's always interesting - that icon seems to produce a reaction from two people without fail - people who realize what the thing is that's holding the trombone (one of Princess Mononoke's kodoma), or, far more often, (ex-)trombone players. Thank you for the compliment - I just swiped the image from one of the draft proposals for a trombone season shirt that eventually got made (freshman year of college, it was).

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I should give it some thought. I could certainly teach intro, probably I'd be fine for elementary school and intro at the HS level.

Hmmmm. Maybe I'll haul all my sets and boards up from Phoenix.

[anyeone.livejournal.com]

I love chess, I don't get to play it nearly enough. I'm not that great as an adult, though when I was a kid I was one of the best kids around.

But the real reason I'm responding is to squee over your Snape :)

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

LOL! I LOVE my two Snape icons! They're just basic PhotoShops. I also want to do a Snape ROFL.

In grade school, I placed 3rd when in the 5th grade in an all-school tournament, in the 6th or 7th grade, I don't recall which, I swept the tourney. And that was about the end of my history of playing chess.

It's a lot of fun to play with move permutations, and that was the main thing I was teaching my cousins. Things like 'never attacking with one piece, always have your attacks supported by two or three pieces', etc.

[anyeone.livejournal.com]

I have a really funny Snupin icon somewhere... I need to dig it up and post it.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

My wife was a huge, sorry, HUGE Snarry fan/slash writer until she discovered Stargate: Atlantis. Now she's a HUGE McShep fan/slash writer (though sometimes she writes non-slash). I just hope SG:A stays on long enough for the next Potter movie and the final book to be released.

[anyeone.livejournal.com]

Hahah, I never got into Snarry though there were a couple interesting stories. My favorite pairings are Snupin, trio (but not Harry/Hermione or Ron/Hermione alone), and (adult) Hermione/Snape. I don't like any pairing that puts an adult with a kid...ewwwww...

Oh yeah, and Bertha/Peter but you don't see much of that :)

I used to write HP fic, mostly het, gen and femmeslash. I never wrote any m/m slash because I can't relate and don't think I'd do a good job. So the only story I wrote with my favorite "pairing" was actually a gen story, no romance at all.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Most of the slash that my wife wrote were for other fandoms like The Professionals or The Sentinel. Her Snarry slash was a time-travel one, so it wasn't adult/kid. It was interesting. I don't care much for slash overall, but my wife does some awfully good work.

[anyeone.livejournal.com]

Now I'm curious as to whether I've read any of her stuff... what's her pen name and where does she post?

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I think she's pretty much exclusively written under Quasar. This is her blog.

Enjoy!

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Oh, feel free to copy my Snape icons.

[magic-rat.livejournal.com]

I don't doubt that you'd do just fine teaching the rules of chess (and yes, there are a number of players who don't understand en passant). I think that a good judge of how well you could teach chess strategy and tactics (at least on a beginner's level) is to see how well you do at speed chess. That's an excellent way to understand and learn opening strategies, although you almost never reach the mid-game or endgame.