Children's Chess resumes at VIRL in Duncan

Children's Chess resumes at the Cowichan Branch of Vancouver Island Regional Library.

See the VIRL site for more details.

2012 Canadian Open Chess Championship

I'm registered in the under 2000 section. I bet that's the first time anyone from Maple Bay has been listed in a major Canadian chess tournament. As someone who spent time in "River City", I'm happy to see a number of Winnipegers, or former Winnipegers, as well. Jack Yoos, Kevin Li, Jeff Babb, Dezheng Kong, Jamie Campbell and John Remillard are all playing. Welcome to Vancouver Island, chess players! Here is the Monroi link for the tournament. There is also a Facebook page and the Victoria Chess Club has a page as well.

Children's Chess Club takes summer break

The Chess Club for Children will take a break for summer. I think it will be back in September, provided the library staffers still like the idea and I have the time. Thanks to all the children and parents who came by. Discover Chess at Vancouver Island Regional Library

Children's Chess Club begins on Jan 21, 2012

Hi chess friends. I may start a new blog but for now I just want to announce that I will be hosting a Children's Chess Club in Duncan starting on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at the Vancouver Island Regional Library ... time: 1145-1245 for now. Ages 6-15 and there will be lessons for those who don't know a thing about chess!

Best medicine in Mesa pediatrician's bag may be a chess set

I read this article about the benefits of chess and thought I would keep a record of it and provide a link for those interested.

The gist of the article is about how a Doctor for children makes use of chess in his bag of tricks to help them get well. There are also some interesting quotes not related to the main point.

First of all, here is the link.

"The hospital is all about being healthy," Saba says, "and that means having a strong body and a strong mind. Chess is another way to help children be healthy."

It keeps their minds active and their stress at bay while they're confined to bed, "and they can play for their rest of their life," he says.

Fun may be foremost, but chess can be good for players in other ways. Its positive impact on brain fitness has been documented in numerous studies, and anecdotal evidence suggests it helps the rest of the body, too. With the social interaction inherent in matching wits with others, emotional health likely is another beneficiary.

The American Academy of Pediatrics' "School Health Handbook" includes a section on the benefits of chess, inspired by a resolution Saba wrote in 1999 when he was president of the academy's Arizona chapter.

Furthermore, the benefit is not simply mental ...

And chess master Leroy Dubeck, a physics professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, remembers research by one of his graduate students decades ago. It showed that competing in a chess tournament delivers a surprising workout.

"We did find," Dubeck says by e-mail, "that players hooked up to physiographs had their breathing rate, heart rate, blood pressure, etc., increase (for some) as much as typically happens to a football player on the field."

There's more - including some romantic complications - but I will leave that to the readers of this blog to find out for themselves. What I do not want to leave alone is my own experience about the benefits of chess.

It's funny, really, that I didn't give chess credit for some of the health improvements in my own life. 37 years ago I was involved in a very serious motorcycle accident - a head on at speed with another motorcycle - that found me learning to walk again and getting rehab at what was then the Gorge Road Rehab Hospital in Victoria, B.C..

In my ward was a Yugoslav, Serbian I think, who had had his own horrifying trauma. He had one of his legs burned off just below the knee, serious burn injuries to one of his arms, in a construction accident in which he had been electrocuted with tens of thousands of volts. I think his name was Slavko or something like that. (I'd love to meet him again, if I could, and any Victoria chess player reading this might be able to help.) Anyway, Slavko and I played a great deal of chess in that hospital and, now that I think about it, that chess playing was the beginning of my road to recovery. It would be almost 20 years before I took up competitive chess seriously - much too late in life for really great results - but I see now that playing chess, long ago, with that burn victim, was a great help to me. My long walk to freedom had begun, I become oriented towards recovery, I walked again, and life went on.

Perhaps you, too, have a great, long forgotten chess story like mine. Such stories ought to be told for they form part of chess history and chess culture that has lasted for over a thousand years and will, undoubtedly, last another thousand years.

Long live our great and noble game!

Chess in BC public schools.

Well, I'm back. I've got something to write about. It seems that the efforts of Arnie Nermo, a teacher from the Okanagan who now teaches in Abbotsford, have borne fruit. Nermo, along with fellow teacher Luke Campbell, has finally had his chess course approved by both the School Board and the Ministry of Education of British Columbia. Says Nermo:

What is the significance? Now that Chess is listed as a legitimate BAA course in BC (course number YLRA-12F) any teacher can apply to teach it in their school district. It will still take some effort on their part but the precedent is set and so it will be a much easier road. Although the course is the first of its kind in Canada that I know of, it is my hope that teachers in other districts and provinces country-wide may use Luke Campbell’s and my experiences to use the course as a template for the introduction and teaching of Chess into their high-school curriculum too.

For those interested in the substantiation, from the educators' point of view, of chess as a high school course, the following is also of interest:

As to the question of whether Chess has a viable place in high-school curriculum, extensive research has shown it to be an activity where even the weakest academic students can match their wits with the strongest and beam with success. It is a proven and valuable self-esteem builder! In addition, Chess demands that participants exercise their best powers of planning, memory, decision-making, judgment, creativity, and concentration. Interestingly, chess is known to assist cognitive development for students in four areas– logic, memory, awareness/analysis, and pattern recognition (Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal WGCTA). The educational benefits of chess are already recognized by its inclusion in the required curricula of over 30 countries including Canada (Quebec and New Brunswick).It is evident that chess is more than just a game.

Here are a few links for further investigation ...

Nermo address fellow teachers through the BCTF website.

British Columbia Chess in Schools: World Chess Federation (FIDE) report

Chess Federation of Canada Discussion Board - Chess Approved as a High School Credit

Chess Kids Australia takes notice of Canadian breakthrough.

The Australian website is useful because it provides links to: (a) A Short History on How to Start a High School Chess Course (.pdf file), and (b) Chess 12 BAA [Board Approved and Authorized] Course Outline (M/S Word .doc file)

Susan Polgar thinks this is important as well ...

Chess in Moldovian Schools

Chess in Schools in the Philippines

"Chess is a game that improves individual organizational and analytical skills. Children when exposed to this game at an early age achieve academically better, or even faster than those who have not been engaged in the game. Likewise, chess is among the activities that help build memory skills, concentration, self-confidence, self-esteem and in making disciplined decisions. Playing chess provides opportunities to practice such values as perseverance, honesty, and sportsmanship," Secretary Lapus stated in the Memorandum.

The Department of Education (DepEd) shall adopt chess as another strategy to promote the development of higher order thinking skills and values among Grades 3 to 6 in the Physical Education department. Chess will continue at the secondary level....

In the Philippine public school system, there are around 35,000 Grade Schools and some 6,000 High Schools. There are over 2,000 private High Schools. Brother Dizon said they aim to train 35,000 chess teachers by November 2009.

This is good news for chess in British Columbia, in Canada, and in the wider world.

Jonathan Berry lecture at the Grand Pacific Open

While I wasn't able to participate in the tourney, I managed to attend a chess lecture by Jonathan Berry on "A Few Endgames". The crowd was small enough to make it open and intimate.

Before I forget, I should add that Berry made mention of a very handy website for chess endgames. It's called an Endgame Tablebase and can be used for ANY endgame with six pieces or less. Basically, you place the six pieces or less on the board (including the two kings) , note which side is to play, and the website will churn out an endgame solution. There is a similar Nalimov Tablebase over here.

Jonathan Berry's endgames follow. I will add them as I am able.

I first heard about the Chess Viewer Deluxe on Susan Polgar's Chess Discussion Board. The Board was moderated by Nikolai Pilafov. Nikolai has obviously been doing some more work on his Viewer and you are seeing the results of those efforts. Now if I can just figure out how to display a game fragment or problem ... Here are Nikolai's instructions on how to publish a chess game on your blog if you are interested in trying the same thing on your own.

Firstly, an endgame problem that shows some basics from a simple king and pawn ending.

After that is a very long game (153 moves) in which rook, bishop and pawn prevail over rook and bishop. On 55... Rb2 check, it really looks as if White should settle for the draw by trading the rooks and so on. However, Kovalevskaya played on and managed, instead, to trade off the opposite-colored bishops for the win.