Does primary school coaching generate the elite?

National developments, strategies and ideas.
Michael Flatt
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Re: Does primary school coaching generate the elite?

Post by Michael Flatt » Mon Sep 12, 2016 11:07 am

The term 'Primary school coaching' is too ambiguous. Is the emphasis on teaching chess in Primary schools as a subject on the normal curriculum or teaching chess to primary school aged children?

I am not at all in favour of chess being taught as a school lesson in he same manner as Maths or English. When running after school clubs some professional teachers comment that the chess club is too noisy and that chess is a quiet game that one can play in the library. It seems to me that these particular teachers have no understanding of the game nor what is that makes it an enjoyable activity to the children.

Chess in schools is more suited to Enrichment classes where children are introduced to different subjects in which they exercise choice as to whether they do one thing or another.

One of the aspects of teaching the game that I find important is getting the children to realise that they have to exercise a choice over which move they make, allowing them to make mistakes and encouraging them to work out what went wrong. The brightest children don't like being told what to do; they much prefer time to work things out for themselves.

Those children that find it an interesting game soon progress to competitions. An ideal first competition, which is becoming very popular, is the 'stars barred' where experienced players are excluded to give everyone the possibility of taking first place. Next, the Delancey UK Chess Challenge offers a challenge to children of all playing strengths. The beauty of it is that they are able to gauge their own achievement by how far they progress through each of the stages and to get experience of what it is like to play the top players in their age group.

Andrew Zigmond
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Re: Does primary school coaching generate the elite?

Post by Andrew Zigmond » Mon Sep 12, 2016 11:17 am

Gary Kenworthy wrote:Keep up the good work at Harrogate. In various periods there was no club.

When Harrogate had no club, some played for Bradford cc in the Woodhouse Cup, notably James Howell, later a GM, ferried by the Lloyds Bank Manager, Andrew Toothill (then resident in Harrogate). -- So see if you can also produce such strong players as Ray and James as well.
In years time, supposing a Harrogate junior (who does not need to be that strong) becomes the CFO, or CEO of a FTSE company, it then becomes more likely that they will sponsor with their company logo, a sport or similar. Creating candidate choices really helps for the future. From another area of the country, Sir Jeremy Morse made his choice of what to sponsor.
rgds (FM) Gary Kenworthy, Blecthley
Firstly, thank you for your kind words and we will indeed continue to work to bring on the next generation. A little bit off topic but I don't think it was ever the case that Harrogate had no club; the main Harrogate Chess Club was founded in 1884 and has been extant ever since. It is true the club has been through periods of weakness and hasn't always maintained a team in the Woodhouse Cup. James Howell was before my time but is well remembered by many in Harrogate and is an honorary life member of the club. Ray Edwards and Andrew Toothill are also remembered.
Richard James wrote: This isn't just the fault of the UKCC, EPSCA or the ECF, though. Another problem, which I've also written about recently, is that adult club chess, by the nature of when and where clubs meet, is just not suitable for children.
I've taken this from the UKCC thread as it probably belongs here and also highlights the thing that most contributors here are in a position to sort out.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to decide, `I know, let's invite a few juniors along to our club nights`. With the best will in the world they're going to lose concentration after about an hour, start talking and giggling and (if adults are trying to play around them) get told off and probably never come back. You need a dedicated club which can then filter through to the adult club when the time is right.

If you start a junior club there may well be surprisingly high demand and some of it will be parents looking for an easy way to get the kids off their hands for a couple of hours. I'd suggest keeping the maximum level low and concentrating on quality rather than quantity (and also gives you the threat of removing children for bad behaviour and giving their place to somebody else).

I can't speak here as somebody with a long track record of getting it right but I can as somebody who knows about getting it wrong!

A final point, and I think one that needs to be made, is that junior organisers are one of the worst sub groups within chess for not working together. Every junior club will be different and individuals have the right to do things their way. I also feel that some people with county or national ambitions sometimes want a unified structure with all clubs doing things a set way and reporting to them.
Controller - Yorkshire League
Chairman - Harrogate Chess Club
All views expressed entirely my own

Andrew Zigmond
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Re: Does primary school coaching generate the elite?

Post by Andrew Zigmond » Mon Sep 12, 2016 11:22 am

Michael Flatt wrote: Those children that find it an interesting game soon progress to competitions. An ideal first competition, which is becoming very popular, is the 'stars barred' where experienced players are excluded to give everyone the possibility of taking first place. Next, the Delancey UK Chess Challenge offers a challenge to children of all playing strengths. The beauty of it is that they are able to gauge their own achievement by how far they progress through each of the stages and to get experience of what it is like to play the top players in their age group.
The UK Chess Challenge format works best for establishing a chess club within schools; you probably know that Joe Bloggs whose Dad takes him to a few competitions will be the one who gets through to the megafinal but it generates the player base and gives you the nucleus of a school club when the competition is over.

I have a tremendous respect for what Mike Basman has delivered over the years (and am a past gigafinalist myself) but having used the format within a junior club I'm not quite the fan I want to be.
Controller - Yorkshire League
Chairman - Harrogate Chess Club
All views expressed entirely my own

Michael Flatt
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Location: Hertfordshire

Re: Does primary school coaching generate the elite?

Post by Michael Flatt » Mon Sep 12, 2016 11:50 am

Andrew Zigmond wrote: The UK Chess Challenge format works best for establishing a chess club within schools; you probably know that Joe Bloggs whose Dad takes him to a few competitions will be the one who gets through to the megafinal but it generates the player base and gives you the nucleus of a school club when the competition is over.
Qualification to the Megafinal from school clubs, independent junior chess clubs and last chance saloons is simply a filter to ensure that children have at least some experience of playing in competitions.

Allowing children to qualify as best in the age group (boys and girls separately) can produce a large number of qualifiers from a single club having players with a wide age range. Children have multiple opportunities to qualify. Quite often the very youngest players barely know the rules, but that doesn't dampen their enthusiasm.

The real difficulty is getting players beyond the first two years of secondary school age. Often the U15 to U18 age groups have insufficient entrants or even none at all, so that they have to be run as a combined sections.

One of the biggest and most competitive age groups is U10 boys. The U7 boys and girls used to be a very small but in recent years they have become viable as separate competitions.

Having separate competitions for boys and girls has definitely encouraged more girls to participate.

All competitions have their own limitations, but the Delancey UKCC is about as inclusive as any competition could be.

Andrew Zigmond
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Location: Harrogate

Re: Does primary school coaching generate the elite?

Post by Andrew Zigmond » Mon Sep 12, 2016 1:05 pm

Michael Flatt wrote:
All competitions have their own limitations, but the Delancey UKCC is about as inclusive as any competition could be.
Just to clarify my comments above, when we ran the UK Chess Challenge at my club we ended up with a slightly unpleasant aftertaste. We lost a few players from the lower end of the club during the cycle (although this was during Spring when children may have been taking up other activities) and it made the club very competition/ prize orientated. Obviously the UK Chess Challenge has its 17 point/ 4 point qualification threshold and we had an upset when one boy just failed to qualify and something similar in the megafinal with one our players. I am definitely not of the mindset that children should be sheltered from this kind of thing - they have to learn to deal with failure and somebody also has to just miss out on a prize - but I'm not keen on such an obvious success or failure line.

The lady who founded the club declared early on that she did not want an ethos that was based on competition and I've swung round to her point of view. We would do the UKCC challenge again but not follow their structure as rigidly.
Controller - Yorkshire League
Chairman - Harrogate Chess Club
All views expressed entirely my own

Gary Kenworthy

Re: Does primary school coaching generate the elite?

Post by Gary Kenworthy » Mon Sep 12, 2016 1:35 pm

My first junior chess tournament, involved 120 boys at the Bradford Latvian Club. Organised by Mike Baumber and Andrew Toothill. On the first night I got knocked out. I had played three rounds , won two and lost the third 5 pieces up, as my opponent with just a lone rook mated me on the back-rank. The board next to me had the top seeds, who were only on move 4 of round 1. Hardly anybody else had finished round 1.
Naturally, I was very upset, but I decided I would distinctly do better in this Bradford u15 competition. I did not pack it in. But I was nearly 14 and fairly new. (Looking back, I would have like to have played primary aged school chess, which was completely non-existent in those days, except in Wakefield, within the West Riding).

So, next year I went back and won the u15s, then the year after taking the u18s title-- I was far from the favourite as the competition had so many good players. But I really wanted to improve and do better. I often improved circa 28 BCF points a year -- rgds (FM) Gary Kenworthy