of ten t h e r e a r e n ’ t e v e n kings in these dia- g r a m s , such that in order to win you simply have to elimi- nate or immo- bilize all your o p p o n e n t ’ s pawns or pieces (as in checkers— play for a wipeout). The point of these exercises isn’t


only to deliver mate, but to acquire various chess skills in order to master the simplest methods of at- tacking and defending. The pur- pose is to teach the student to see the chess board, to find hidden threats and connections between different pieces, and to understand how to coordinate the pieces to achieve a particular goal. By using Chess Camp, in the


course of initial study the begin- ning chess player can: 1) gain familiarity with the possi-


bilities and comparative strengths of each piece; 2) learn to attack one piece with another piece; 3) learn to restrict the mobility of their opponents’ pieces; 4) learn to see guarded and un- guarded pieces on the board; 5) learn to deliver double attacks; 6) learn to find defensive moves; 7) learn to use pins for attack and defense; 8) learn to choose the best cap- ture from several possibilities; 9) master the typical methods of


fighting with the various pieces against pawns; 10) learn to see opportunities to


announce check in any position; and


t h e f o u n - d a t i o n of the art of chess, however, in the mass of chess lit- erature little attention is usually paid to


11) completely master the rules of the game.


In general, in order to achieve


success in chess, three stages of instruction need to be covered thor- oughly: 1) the “pre-checkmate” stage—


here, students should develop a feel for the “pre-checkmate” har- mony of the pieces in both attack and defense, 2) the “mate-in-one” stage—here


students should get a feel for the harmony of the pieces when check- mating, 3) the “checkmate” stage—here,


students should get a feel for the harmony of the pieces when using a mate threat. Having said that, the less experienced the student, the longer the first two stages should last.


The first Chess Camp book allows players to work through the first (“pre-checkmate”) stage, while the second and third books focus on working through the second stage (“mate-in-one”). Subsequent collec- tions will help players work through the third (“checkmate”) stage.


And in summation … The ability to deliver checkmate is


this extremely important stage of learning—es- pecially problems where you deliver checkmate in just


one move. Books that do include ex- ercises on this theme have three faults: 1) the positions aren’t catego- rized; 2) the descriptions tell you what piece will deliver mate, which doesn’t coincide with the reality of a real chess game; and 3) there are less than 300 problems, which isn’t enough to acquire the skill of check- mating. Chess Camp Volume 2 doesn’t


have those deficiencies. It contains 540 precisely structured three, four, and five piece positions that cover the typical mating setups for that par- ticular number of pieces. There is also a practice section in the book (54 five-piece positions) and a sec- tion of entertaining puzzles (24 posi- tions). After solving all 618 problems the chess player will master the typ- ical mating patterns and gain a solid basis for further improvement.


Maybe for my birthday … Maybe, if I’m a good father, my


son will buy me a cell phone for my birthday. Of course, he’ll have to find the time to teach me how to use it. After he teaches me how to program the VCR. Unless, of course, they already have an app for that.


October 2011 Chess Life for Kids! 9


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