First chess club for juniors

[Christopher Kreuzer]

In that other thread that got locked, the following was said:

Chess clubs should be prepared to welcome teenagers who appear at their clubs, knowing that a teenager who enjoys the club might well bring along his/her friends, leading to benefits for the club. My experience was exactly that when a group of us from what was then Maidenhead Grammar School became members of Maidenhead chess club many years ago.

This got me thinking about my route into chess which was:

(i) Taught moves at home
(ii) Parent found local junior chess club
(iii) Got more involved in school chess club
(iv) Started playing in junior chess tournaments
(v) Started playing in adult chess tournaments
(vi) Joined university chess club
(vii) Started playing county chess through university
(viii) Started playing for adult chess club(s)

And it progressed from there, really (though chess magazines and books played an important role as well, as did making friends through chess, of course!). All over an approximate timescale of 7-8 years from age 13 to about age 22. The actual chess club involved at the start of it all was Richmond Junior Chess Club, which was quite lucky, I think in retrospect. Certainly if there had been no junior chess clubs near where I lived, I'm not sure what would have happened!

Does anyone else have the same story as Neill, joining an adult chess club as a group from the same school in their teenage years? Or are other entry points to chess in those years more common?

[Sean Hewitt]

For me

Friend taught me the moves (aged 10)
Joined school chess club (aged 11)
3 of us from the school joined the local adult club (aged 13)

So similar to Neill I guess.

[Richard James]

Hi Chris

Junior Clubs such as RJCC started in the mid 70s. We weren't the first: Bill Phillips started Pinner shortly before Mike Fox and I started Richmond in Autumn 1975 and there might have been one or two others elsewhere (Trafford Junior Knights would have started about then, and I see that 3Cs started in 1978.

Chris - joining RJCC at age 13 was unusual - if you'd joined at 7 or 8 do you think you'd still be playing now? My experience of RJCC was that, by and large, the later children started playing competitive chess the more likely they were to continue playing as adults. Those who started young really needed a lot of parental help and support. I am aware that your grandfather was a member of R&TCC, but more a social player than a match player.

As this month marks the 50th anniversary of my learning chess here's my story. Others of my age would have very similar stories.

In 1960, at the age of 10, I found a plastic pocket chess set on the Christmas tree. My parents obviously thought, (they didn't remember why) that chess might be something that would interest me. My father, who knew the moves but nothing else, showed me how the pieces moved, but once I could beat him he wouldn't play me again. There was no one else in the family with any interest in or knowledge of chess. When I started at Latymer in September 1961 I took my chess set with me on the first day, and remember losing a game against a boy who took all my pieces and mated me with two rooks. But I persevered and would play chess every day on the train to and from school. (This was a common sight in those days - when did you last see anyone playing chess on the District Line?) Towards the end of my first year I won a game on the train against a boy from the year above me.

Within a few years I could beat everyone in my form at school (I was lucky that Andrew Law, an exact contemporary, was not in my form) and my parents decided to look for other opportunities for me. I played in the U16 Reserve section of the London Junior Championships in December 65/January 66 (no idea how they found out about this). My mother then enquired in the local library about chess clubs, and so, at about this time, I joined Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club. I'm still there now. Even though there were some strong players there (Michael Stean was a couple of years below me) there was no serious chess club all the time I was at Latymer. Instead, I played bridge for the school and chess for Richmond.

When I got involved in running primary school chess clubs it soon became clear to me that, if I had gone to one of the school chess clubs I was running there was no way I would have played chess as an adult. As my parents would not have been able to help me I would not have been able to make the progress I made later when I was old enough to teach myself.

[Alan Walton]

The majority of the adult players at 3Cs have been with the club since the ages of 11 and below, but I have noticed in recent years that the number of players continuing to adult levels has dwindled compared with players like myself would grew up in the late 80s and early/mid 90s (25-35 year olds), at present I know alot of players in my age bracket who still play the game

I think for any junior chess club if you have 2 or 3 continuing in adult chess after leaving university is a respectable number for the continuing improvement of said club

I think one of the main problems today is the attitude around studying for school exams, where currently there is a high pressure to gain the require result, many players taking a step back in the late teens, and then not having the desire in their early 20s

BTW, Trafford Junior Knights was set up in the early 90s to accomodate the influx of players like Richard Gaughan, Ruth Sheldon and others, but once these players left for university the club quickly folded due to lack of players and parental help, this is a problem that 3Cs haven't experienced due to the good participation of parents within the club and the strong links with primary schools within the Oldham area

[Neill Cooper]

Does anyone else have the same story as Neill, joining an adult chess club as a group from the same school in their teenage years? Or are other entry points to chess in those years more common?

The other reason for my statement was looking at the affiliation of some of the leading chess schools in the country, on the ECF Grading list, for instance:
Nottingham High School, Norwich School, Torquay Grammar School, Manchester Grammar School, Haberdashers Askes Sch Herts, show that there are links between the school teams and one or more local chess clubs.

[Alan Walton]

Neill,

All the 3Cs players at Manchester Grammar school attended the club before they were at the school, the majority of 3Cs players are picked up through the clubs close links with Primary schools in the Oldham area, historically we have had little association with Secondary schools

Also another good thing about our club is that alot of the club players (even them at my age of 35) are close friends, and normally socialise outside of chess as well

[Richard James]

Neill

It's always been true of schools such as Hampton that their top players were all strong primary school players who came through mostly Richmond and sometimes Wey Valley.

You posted elsewhere about the number of juniors playing league chess in East Surrey.

Here in West Surrey/Middlesex we haven't been able to get juniors to play league chess for years because of the pressure of school work. We used to have a couple of mainly junior teams playing home matches on Fridays and away matches, as far as possible, during the holidays, but even that proved impossible in the end, partly due to clashes with Surrey Schools League matches.

It occurs to me that 20-30 years ago Richmond was the ideal place to run a junior chess club because of the number of aspirational parents around. But now the opposite is true: the very same aspirational parents want their children to learn chess in their primary or prep school 'to develop their thinking skills' but see spending time on chess at secondary school age as detrimental to their success in public examinations.

The other thing that's happened here in Richmond in recent years is that most of the competitive boys who enjoy playing primary schools chess go to football clubs on Saturdays and rugby clubs on Sundays. They are told that if they miss even one week of training because of a chess tournament they won't be picked for the teams in future.

[Neill Cooper]

It is good to see secondary school players going to clubs involved in adult/league chess, whether school or club came first. In my personal case the order was school then club. But for others it is (junior) club first. At Castles JCC we have both. If only there were more junior clubs in the country to feed players into schools! I am also pleased, though, to find new players at school who did not play at primary school (or in other cases take up chess again after a few years break).

Unlike Richard James I find less time conflict for players, perhaps because I teach at a state rather than an independent school. So very few players have stopped playing chess at Wilson's, and we have also gained quite a few who have taken it up. So our UKCC entry (returning to an earlier theme) is substantial.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Chris - joining RJCC at age 13 was unusual - if you'd joined at 7 or 8 do you think you'd still be playing now? My experience of RJCC was that, by and large, the later children started playing competitive chess the more likely they were to continue playing as adults. Those who started young really needed a lot of parental help and support. I am aware that your grandfather was a member of R&TCC, but more a social player than a match player.

No idea what would have happened if I had joined RJCC earlier, though I have heard from some kind people that if I'd started playing earlier, I could have ended up a stronger player - not sure if that is wishful thinking or not!

One thing I do remember is that playing in the Thames Valley League for RJCC teams (especially away matches) was easier for me, as I was older and more able to just turn up. I also don't recall any pressures in terms of schoolwork, though I'm sure there were times when it was difficult to fit chess in around the after-school timetable. It probably did help that I was more academic than sporty, and wasn't a member of any sports teams that I can remember (though I do have hilarious memories of playing as a substitute in an away basketball match and realising as everyone started running around the court and shouting at each other that I didn't really know what I was meant to be doing... Tennis was more my sport, but there were limited opportunities there).

What I think really hooked me into chess was a combination of the chess tournaments in North London in the early 1990s (winning one of the minor sections helped as well), being part of an active chess club at university, and really enjoying other areas of chess, such as books and problems and studies and chess history (as I discovered those). Looking at the Xmas Quiz reruns in this year's Xmas issue of CHESS really brought back some memories! I remember spending days trying to solve all the chess problems in some of those quizzes!