Checkmates- Instituting New Challenges

In Checkmates recently we have begun introducing a range of new challenges to challenge our more experienced students, while speeding the progress of our less experienced students.

With regards to our new students we have begun increasing the usage of short two move mating puzzles, the main goal of this is to get them into the mindset of looking for and creating checkmates. When just playing regular games they often do not get end game experience until the end of the game, and so this allows for a more focused setting for it. Besides this we have begun instructing them to attempt a range of different starting strategies to develop their understanding of how large an impact they have on the game. For our more experienced students we have slowly begun increasing the usage of chess clocks (with phone apps), to increase the challenge of the games. Besides this we also use more difficult mating puzzles.

On the more internal side the service team is really progressing, it has become structurally more efficient in way we have properly triaged the different student groups in the service. We have members who focus on the more advanced students, members who focus on the m

ore intermediate students and me and one other who generally focus on the newer students.