Chess

This blog is in response to my wife's entry Show and Tell. I already left this very long comment, which I figure is probably long enough to be a blog post on its own.

It was Ian’s idea that I teach him chess.

Linda started playing checkers with him a few months ago. Then I joined in. Linda and I had a few fun checkers games too. Some how the subject of chess came up and that it was a harder version of checkers. Ian was very interested and insisted that he wanted to learn chess and not play checkers. "Daaaddeee! NoOOO! I don't want to play checkers... I want to learn CHESS!" Linda bought us a chess set and I taught him the moves of each piece. He really enjoys it.

Usually we play without the kings and just see who can take the most pieces. He really likes that. Getting the king in checkmate is a little past him right now. He gets fixated on one piece at a time. The funniest thing is that he adds crashing sounds whenever he takes a piece. “SSSHHHHH CRASH!” Oh and he doesn’t just take the pieces… he knocks them over!I guide him through moves and always give a chance to think about what my next move will be. Often I just ask “What will happen to your guy if you move him there?” or “Are you SURE you want to move there?” He can often see what will happen to his piece. It is fascinating to watch his mind work. Sometimes he moves to a bad spot anyway, but that is how everyone learns. All that matters is that he is having fun.

I trade off guiding him to a win and winning myself every once in a while. It is important to have a balance between the two. Nobody wins all the time. Enough wins to keep him enthusiastic and a few losses to keep him humble. After each match we say “good game”. After we started playing, I tried to play online against the computer a few times to brush up. I got creamed every time. It was very humbling. I told Ian this and he responded “Daddy, you need to learn some COOL MOVES!”

Every so often he surprises me and takes a piece with a move I didn't see coming. The day he beats fair and square will probably be sooner than I think. Then he can teach me some cool moves.