This Friday (11th November) saw another highly enjoyable online chess coaching and tournament for Dorset junior chess players.

The evening started at the usual 5pm slot with a very enthusiastic interactive chess lesson led by Andy Baskett. Each session starts with recap from the previous week, in this case Forks. The puzzles were enthusiastically solved by the junior players, even the really tricky last one. This was then followed by a Chesskid.com video on Discovered Attacks and Double Checks.The video was paused at critical points to enable the juniors on the session to solve the problems posed by Fun Master Mike and embed the learning point.

There are a large number of excellent learning videos on Chesskid.com available for free and are highly recommended for the young players to watch on their own or with friends and/or family at any time.

The lesson was followed by another very close and exciting online chess tournament; rounds of 3 minutes plus 2 second increments. At least one game included a discovered attack! The tournament was won by Max with Jack and Harry in joint second place. Well done everyone!

Coaches on hand were Andy Baskett and Martin Simons with support from Nikki Forster. In total, 12 juniors attended and the whole evening proved both great fun and a fantastic learning experience.

The next session on Friday 18th December will be the last one before Christmas, so we’re planning to add some Christmas cheer! These evenings are proving 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.