Pawn Award

Twenty years ago, I created a series of scholastic chess awards for young chess players. The awards are named for the pieces in order of value: pawn, knight, bishop, rook, queen, and king. Each is progressively more difficult than the previous one. 

At the time, I had after school programs in a couple of schools and my first one-on-one student. The awards created some structure both for individual students and group lessons. A student who meets the criteria for an award receives an award certificate.

The Pawn Award concerns basic rules. Lichess, founded in 2010, offers interactive lessons on these rules and many other elementary skills.

I recommend that young players, as well as beginners of all ages, take advantage of these free and accessible lessons (the hyperlink takes you there). Of course, many hundreds of hours of my time has been invested teaching these skills to more than a thousand children.

There are better ways to teach basic chess skills than starting with the movement of all the pieces.  Alas, children are eager to play before mastering essential concepts, so the old and most common method of teaching still prevails. For some discussion of alternatives, see "Lesson One". In an ideal world, young players might know how to force checkmate with two rooks against a lone king before learning how the bishop moves. More often, they learn the movement of all the pieces, but spend a lot of extra time struggling the learn the purpose of the game and the critical relationships: "contacts" that lead to success.

In my awards curriculum, elementary checkmates with heavy pieces (rooks and the queen) are required for the Knight Award.

The Pawn Award criteria:

1) Sets up board (light on right) and pieces correctly. Light on right means that both players will have a white or light square on the right in the row of squares (rank) closest to them. On the board below, these squares are marked in orange.

Of course, it is possible to play a game of chess with the board oriented incorrectly. It happens often. But, when the board is wrong, often the king and queen start on the wrong squares as well. Such errors change the game slightly for the beginner and substantially for players with experience.

Sometimes students rely on the numbers on the side and letters along the bottom while orienting the board. but many chess boards do not have these printed. I have also seen manufactured boards that have the letters and numbers incorrectly placed.

The letters and numbers are for reading and writing chess notation, skills that are part of the next two awards.

When setting up the pieces, the students must learn to place the queens on their own color: the White queen starts on a light square and the Black queen starts on a dark. No matter what colors the chess pieces are, chess players refer to the lighter colored as White and the darker as Black.

2) Demonstrates basic movement of each piece. There are six different pieces. When testing student understanding of how each moves. I often place each one alone in the center of the board and ask the student to show where it can move. The screenshot below from Lichess.org shows a minigame that is used to teach beginners how the queen moves.

The queen moves along ranks, files, and diagonals always in a straight line with no limit on distance. The queen moves to capture the first star (green arrow) and then, on the next move, follows the second arrow to the second star.

3) Demonstrate and explain castling. Castling can be difficult for young students to learn. Normally in a chess game, one side moves a single piece, then the other side move one piece. With castling, and only castling, the king and one of the rooks both move.

Students must commit to memory and explain or show:
a) Both the king and the rook must be on their starting squares and have not moved.
b) No piece can stand between them.
c) The king cannot be in check, move into check, or move through check.
d) The king always moves two squares toward the rook, and then the rook moves to the square that the king moved over.

Check is the situation when a king in threatened with capture. Here, White's knight is able to move to the square occupied by Black's king. Hence, it must be Black turn and the king must get out of check either by moving the king or capturing the knight (imagine there are other pieces on the board, too).

In the next diagram, White may castle long (toward the queenside, i.e., the left). Castling short--to the right, or kingside) is not allowed because Black's bishop could move to the square that the king must cross (hence, "through check").

4) Demonstrate en passant. En passant (French for "in passing") is more difficult than castling and young students often learn it, forget it, and learn it anew. Again, the explanation and exercises at Lichess.org are useful.

This position arose in a game I played online in 2012 (the end of the game is depicted in this site's banner using a Mexican conquest themed chess set sold to tourists along the Central American coast).

Black has just played the f-pawn two squares forward, placing the White king in check (blue arrow). The only move that gets the king out of check is an en passant capture (orange arrow). White's pawn is able to capture the pawn that just moved on the square that Black's pawn moved over. White places the pawn on that square and removes the Black pawn from the board.

5) Demonstrate ability to recognize checkmate. Checkmate is the object of the game of chess. The game ends when one player's king is in check and has no escape. The most difficult aspect of checkmate for young players is learning to control empty squares. I usually test this skill with a worksheet that contains six positions. In each position, White can checkmate Black's king in one move. For one of these positions, there are several correct answers. These exercises ate the first six in my book, Checkmate and Tactics (2019).

Here is another illustration.

Each White piece controls one or more squares beside the Black king (indicated by green arrows). All of the pieces control other squares not indicate by these arrows. For the rook, two of these are next Black's king--one is also controlled by a knight and the other by a bishop. The knight next to White's king also checks the king. Black is in checkmate.

In the next position, White controls all of the squares next to the Black king. However, the square on which the king stands is not controlled. If it is Black's turn, the game ends in stalemate (Black has no legal moves and is not in check). Stalemate is a draw.

After successful completion of the Pawn Award, students move on the Knight Award.