Tipping Points & Tournaments

At this point it’s important to note that many of these benefits will never happen if your player or players begin to get bored with the board due to a lack of challenge. This is where small, local tournaments can be key to your success.

If you’ve told these stories to a child and he or she has begun to play there will quickly come a tipping point.

When players get good enough they become a big fish in a small pond. They run out of opponents both at home and in the sphere of your club. With no more mountains to climb the player is quickly bored and chess can just be a passing fad.

Overall, the tipping-point solutions I have found run in the following progression:

·       Tournaments – Unrated & casual chess club “ladder” style.

·       Cross-pollinate by either taking the player to other clubs or bringing in a rotating group of visitors and guest players.

·       Add online play - my personal favorite for a kid-safe environment is ChessKid.com. Kids play other kids online in a safe, curated, environment. This site is also a goldmine for parents and teachers to find dozens of lesson plans.

·       Add Variants – Buy a Solitaire chess set, teach them to play the Knight’s Challenge and introduce them to variants such as Bughouse (partners chess) or Siriwan Chess.

Tournaments

It’s an individual call. I recommend trying a few unrated tournaments or going to a chess club where they use a Chess Ladder rating system to get the player accustomed to friendly competition to start.

How to Run a Chess Ladder according to Chess.com:

THE CHESS CLUB LADDER

You can make this work using a simple notebook paper list or create a swanky device where you slide names into slots on a triangular board.

A ladder gives players an opportunity to challenge higher-ranked players. It often helps to initially divide players into age groups. As the group gains experience (and ratings) reform the ladder groups based on ratings.

LADDER RULES1. If you challenge someone above you and win, you move to that player’s spot on the ladder, pushing them right below you.

2. You may challenge anyone who is one, two, three, or four spots above you on the ladder.  If you are challenged to a ladder game, and you are not already in a game, and if there are at least 30 minutes available to play, you must play.  (A refusal to play is treated as a loss.)

4. Ladder games must be played with a clock.

5. Once a player has successfully defended a challenge, that player is not obligated to accept another challenge from that same person.

The player making the challenge plays White. The person being challenged plays Black.

6.  If the lower-ranked player wins, the lower-ranked player takes the higher-ranked player’s spot on the ladder, and the higher-ranked player moves down one spot.

7.  If the higher-ranked player wins, there is no change in the players’ rankings.

8.  If the game ends in a draw, the lower-ranked player takes the spot just below the higher-ranked player.  Draws by agreement must be approved by a coach.

9.  After a ladder game is played, at least one of the players must play a ladder game against someone else before they are allowed to play each other again.

Once you’ve tried a ladder competition and an unrated tournament it’s time to get a USCF (United States Chess Federation) student membership and allow the player to play in rated tournaments.

In rated tournaments a player is matched with an opponent via computer based on ratings. Novice players begin around 100 points. Every time you win you gain points. When you lose you lose points.

There is a fine balance to be found and respected here. If you take a child to a tournament and it’s fun and builds engagement, then go for it. Tournaments provide a host of opponents and opportunities for growth both as a player and as a person.

Pros

Like any other sport, competition forces us to move to the next level of effort. There are multiple payoffs ranging from trophies, medals and scholarships (at higher levels of play) to confidence and self-esteem boosts. It’s also a great place to make friends who share their interests and expand their social circles.

Tournament chess can expand a player’s range of experience. It will also stimulate the player to focus harder on chess study and practice, thus building more and more of the neural net connection and life skills we just examined.

Cons

When a player is evolving to a higher level of competitive play you need to be sensitive to the child’s sensibilities and emotional limitations. Some players can rapidly become disenchanted if they get too stressed-out over tournaments. While anything worth achieving takes a certain amount of hard work, dedication and even sacrifice, there are new tipping points to keep an eye on.

As in any competitive endeavor, if a parent pushes too hard or misses the signs that their player is suffering anxiety away from the board, worrying constantly over the next tournament or is unable to let go of mistakes made at the last one – particularly in very young players – you get burnout. I know this because over the past 10 years many parents have brought their players to our low-key chess-whisperer environment to help them recover.