Worksheets

Much of my time preparing chess lessons for young students is invested in the creation of worksheets. These can be photocopied and distributed to groups of students at minimal cost. The young chess players can then work on their own or with others to find the correct answers. During a paper and pencil worksheet session, students bring partly or fully completed worksheets to me for correction. I can then tell them how many they have correct, which ones are wrong, or give other tips. My practice varies from day-to-day.

This week my beginning students completed the Beginning Tactics 1 worksheet. They had previously seen three of the problems from that worksheet two months ago (see "Patterns of Contacts"). Their memory of positions seen previously has not developed yet, so the positions seemed new. Even so, these problems are elementary and they needed only a little guidance.

My advanced students were presented with the worksheet I created for chess camp last week (see "Carlsen's Queen Sacrifice") and two additional problems on the demo board.

White to move

From Bogoljubow -- Mueller, Triberg 1934

The second position on the demo board was challenging and we did not complete our analysis. The first move, of course, is already known because all of the problems have the same first move.

White to move

From Keres -- Kurajica, Kapfenberg 1970

I made the point to the students that knowing the first move of a combination puts them in a position of struggling to calculate the entire sequence. In several positions, there is a simple checkmate in two if the defender accepts the sacrifice, but other moves are possible. The second move of the combination proved difficult in several cases.