Coaching

The Dorset Junior Chess Friday evening online chess coaching and tournament continues to grow in popularity and this week, including the coaches and parents, there were once again more than 25 people online. This is great to see.

We have continue to run online coaching in two virtual rooms with the extremely keen Rookies in one room and the hard working Improvers who are learning the slightly more advanced chess concepts in the other.

This week the Rookies practiced Queen and King Checkmates, learning to resist the urge to check the King but to rather chase him steadily into the corner with the Queen before bringing in the King to assist in the checkmate.

Meanwhile the Improvers were taken through the Larsen v Spassky instructive game in 1970 where Spassky demonstrated that classical development and central control was too strong for Larsen’s hypermodern approach.

Any juniors who would like to see this game again, here is an excellent youtube video where Daniel King explains the game: Massacre – Larsen vs Spassky | Match Soviet Union vs Rest of the World 1970

Tournament

After the coaching sessions, there was the usual Chesskid.com 5 minute tournament to round off an enjoyable evening. 17 juniors participated with:

Harry in 1st place,

Max in 2nd place

Jack, Matthew, Jess, Lohit, Florence, Raphael & Emmeline in equal 3rd place.

There were some very exciting games at some very close finishes. In the game between Himali and Jess, Himali was still battling it out with half a second left on her clock! Nail biting stuff!

Well played to all the juniors. Games are definitely getting longer and we are seeing some excellent moves. It is great to see them taking on board the techniques learnt from the lessons and most importantly, they are enjoying themselves whilst showing a little competitiveness!

Join Us!

These evenings continue to be very popular. If you know of any juniors who would be interested then please contact [email protected]. We welcome all junior chess players from across the Dorset and Bournemouth & District chess league catchment areas (and some who are just over the border in Hampshire!) irrespective of your school or chess club affiliation.

Reminder: Don’t forget to keep checking back at our Junior Chess Home Page and the Dorset Chess Home Page for more news and puzzles.