Coaching

Another excellent and fun, Dorset Junior Chess Friday evening online chess coaching and tournament evening took place this week. This regular Friday evening event continues to grow in popularity and the junior chess players taking part are becoming increasingly confident, both in their chess and with chatting. All the juniors are talking to each other about their games, good moves and blunders, and even sharing what they are having for tea!

We continue to run online coaching in two virtual rooms to cater for all levels and abilities. In one virtual room are the extremely keen Rookies who are rapidly learning core chess concepts and rules. In another room are the hard working Improvers who are learning the slightly more advanced chess concepts in the other.

This week the Rookies practiced Castling, and learnt the five situations when castling is not allowed.  Can you name them?  See below…

The Improvers continue to study instructive games, tackle some tricky puzzles and pawn promotions. Here is one of the problems they covered. It’s Black to play and win (answer at the end).

Tournament

After the coaching sessions, the two rooms came together at 5.30pm on Chesskid.com for the regular Friday evening tournament to round off the enjoyable evening. 16 juniors participated and we had a 4 way tie for 1st placewith all four on 4 points out of 5. Well done to Harry, Jack, Max and Florence and well played to all juniors who took part.

Whilst the tournaments are being played many of the juniors continue to chat to each other so it is great to see them enjoying themselves.

Join Us!

These evenings continue to be very popular. If you know of any juniors who would be interested then please contact [email protected].

Puzzle Solution

1…Qxd1+! 2.Nxd1 c2 and White cannot stop the pawn from promoting to a queen as the white queen is unable to defend both the d1 and c1 squares so Black will be a rook up. This is a clever tactic when there is a knight on the back rank which can be attacked by the advancing pawn.