What an opportunity it’s to join the lecture by a world elite chess player who is, at the same time, highly successful academically in a LOCAL chess club! I might not understand her games in the Women’s World Championship, as a chess parent, however, I was eager to know her growth and advices on parenting chess kids.

Last Saturday, Abe and I went to the lecture. As it turned out, part of her lecture on the games in the championship was very enjoyable, even to me. I felt all the audience, both kids and adults, were engaged and amazed by her lecture. On advices giving to parents, she said, based on her own experience, parents might want to study together with kids at beginning. Later on, parents should put a faith that the kids can be on themselves and  let kids have more freedom. Lufei said, even now days, she still got many advices from his dad, she usually disagree on many of them, but some are useful. She said, her dad might be equivalent to a Class B player. I thought: ” His dad is much better than me, I probably is a class H player at my peak. Abe might disagree more than many of what I’d say later.”

A lecture by Lufei Ruan

On the way home I listed to Abe somethings I learned from the lecture such as “do not play passively” “Always try to win” and “endgame is important”; I asked Abe what I missed. “Do not create (too many) weaknesses.” he added.

When you do it yourself, some assistance, mostly computer software, is needed to point out what is wrong in your game. I have some chess computer software, but Abe does not bother to play with it. So often it is I doing the game analysis, and then Abe is asked to have a look at the results – which I do not think it is productive. Moreover, I was told not to put too much faith in the computer analysis, since it is mainly good at tactics, bad at positional chess.

I always want Abe to analyze his game with a strong opponent or a master on site at tournaments. But most of the time Abe would not do that, he would rather to play with some other little kids on bughouse, video games or others. It made me angry sometimes, but I could not find a better way other than let it be after several failed attempts to ask him to do others.

Game analyses, I think, still was very important to the past several better performances Abe had in chess. The teacher of the scholastic chess club Abe often went took the extra steps analyzing several his games, either to the whole class or to him semi-individually. Not only it increased Abe’s knowledge in chess, but also it boosted his confidence – very important in chess; Abe also fortunately have one hour’s private lesson with a GM this February because of Abe’s good luck in a raffle last year at the National Youth Action. The grandmaster told him to start to learn some endgames and play more often with strong opponents, those advices had been my guidance for selecting Abe’s chess books and chess tournaments.

Being weaker than Abe in chess from the very beginning, I can only offer my advice to him to slow down (or take his time) in every tournament so far. It is my hope that a private coach could help him analyze his game and pointing out his weakness, not in a too general term like my “to slow down”. Two days ago, he had his first lesson with the coach, and he felt very good about it. So did I.

On the morning of the game
Prepare breakfast for kids. Maybe you do not need to prepare a special one, but do not let kids skip the breakfast. It is a long day, kids need enough energy supply.

Do you need to bring you kids’ games with you, such as DS?
I think it depends. Between the rounds, kids need to kill time, and they also need to take a rest and keep fresh for the next round. If they have nothing to do, they will feel bored. On the other hand, if they kept the energy and concentration on games all the time during the break, they may not have enough gas left in the tank for the next round.
Therefore, my suggestion is:
1) If you know beforehand that several friends of the kids will go to the same tournament. Running around the corridors, lobby or skittles rooms with friends should be a nice activity for them, you do not need to bring game machines with you (remind your kids to be quiet).
2) Otherwise, you may bring the kids’ favorite games with him. But make sure, a) the kids should not play games all the time between the rounds, take some rest by walking around, going to bathrooms or taking some deep breaths, b) the chess tournament should be a good opportunity for your kids to make some new friends to play around.

PREPARATIONS OF KIDS
Not much, it will be a long day, have a good sleep the night before. The purpose is having fun not winning all the games. You will become stronger and better by losing games. But be patient.

Good luck to all of you.

This writing is based on the experience of a parent of a scholastic chess player and is not an expert’s extensive list. When my son just start playing in rated scholastic tournament last year, we got many help tips from the chess parents and organizers. I appreciate all the helps we received and want to make some contribution toward the chess community. I wrote this post to help readers, especially the future chess parents, to jump onto this exciting train, chess for kids to reach excellence in future. Please leave your comments if you think I missed anything or made any mistakes.

The biggest hurdle for parents is to think your kids are not good enough to attend the tournaments. In fact, quite the opposite, if you hope you kids becoming better in chess, attend the tournaments. No matter what are the levels of you kids, there is a good possibility that there are kids of both higher and lower levels. Attending the tournament is just the start of the long chess journey. Don’t wait but enjoy it.

But what is a rated tournament? Rating is a measure of how strong the player is at the tournament. This rating, done by USCF (United State Chess Federation) for each USCF member is considered an official measurement in the US, it is updated by USCF after each rated tournament, if you just start playing tournaments, you will get a provisional rating for the first 20 games. So playing in rated tournaments will give you such ratings, it is believed that such ratings, over the long run, are pretty accurate to measure the player’s strength.

PROCEDURE

1) Join the USCF (United State Chess Federation) at here, pay for your kids, get the member ID. At the time of this writing (11/09), the Premium Scholastic Membership costs $23 a year. If you want to register for multiple kids and/or adults in one family, you may want to consider the family membership.

2) Check local tournaments at here, or a better method is to check your state chess association’s website for more updated lists. For example, in Illinois, you may check here.

Get all details of the tournament your kids would attend. Some important information includes date, location, rounds time, sections, time control, payment method (online or at the door, of course, at the door usually costs more) and the contact information of the organizer (just in case you have questions to ask).

Some tournaments or sections of the tournaments are not rated, playing those tournaments will not get a rating from USCF, select a different one if you want to get an official rating after the tournament (within several days after the tournament, you would normally be able to know this new rating by checking here).

3) Register the tournament. For online registering, select the right rated section and input the USCF member, if you have questions e.g. which section is right, write an email to the organizer. If you want to register at the door (may or may not be allowed for the tournament of your choice), normally you need to email the organizer the name, USCF member ID of the player and your phone number to pre-register the event.

You and your kids are now ready to go to the tournaments, tell your kids “try your best and good luck”.