Knight Award

As noted in “Pawn Award”, I created my awards based youth chess curriculum twenty years ago. It provides structure to lessons in after school clubs and with individual students. It assures that those who stick with the program acquire certain skills that provide a foundation for lifelong chess improvement.

Many students skip the Pawn Award because they have been playing and even competing before I start working with them. For some of them, the Knight Award is earned in the first or second session. For others, some work is necessary.

1. Previously earned Pawn, or achieve a NWSRS rating over 500.

In Washington state, unlike many parts of the United States, casual players are not required to join the US Chess Federation* in order to compete in tournaments. More than likely, this difference partly accounts for the level of youth chess activity activity in our state—our annual state elementary is among the largest chess events in the US and certainly represents the highest per capita activity level in the 50 states.

Our rating system is the Northwest Scholastic Rating System. It employs the same formula as the US Chess Federation, but is free to organizers and participants. A student who has a NWSRS rating above 500 has scored enough tournament wins that familiarity with basic rules can be assumed. Even so, some of these students may yet have some confusion with rules for castling and en passant.

2. Demonstrate understanding of checkmate of lone king with heavy pieces:

* queen and rook,
* queen and king, and
* rook and king (each from two random positions selected by the coach).

Checkmate ends a game of chess. Everyone knows this and yet not every chess player begins by learning basic checkmate skills thoroughly.

When testing understanding of checkmate with queen and rook, I generally look for understanding of the first two endings in Bruce Pandolfini, Pandolfini’s Endgame Course (1988). Most students have learned the “rolling barrier” by the time I test them. This elementary checkmate is also called the ladder mate. It was the first checkmate that I learned nearly sixty years ago.

However, Pandolfini’s first mate, the “queen and rook roll”, is not one beginners have generally mastered in my experience, although it should be learned first. Learning it assures the student can coordinate two heavy pieces well both to control the opponent’s king and to assure that both are safe from capture.

Pandolfini presents this position with White to move.

Black is threatening to capture White’s rook. Students who need work on this elementary mate will often withdraw the rook to a safer square. Others will lose the rook, which still allows them to complete a different checkmate test (see below).

The correct move, however, is to bring the queen up where it checks the king and protects the rook from capture. Doing so leaves Black’s king with a single legal move. A post in 2011 explains the technique with some useful diagrams (see “Lesson of the Week: Elementary Checkmates”).

Checkmate with queen and rook should be understood so well that exhaustion and time pressure will not interfere with success. When Ryan Ackerman** was Mead High School’s top player, he and I practiced performing this at the Spokane Chess Club one Thursday with only ten seconds on the clock. We consistently played ten perfect moves in six seconds. Our starting position was a version of the “hardest position” (the longest distance to mate with such material).

White to move

Performing this checkmate in the optimal ten moves requires understanding of how to coordinate both pieces well and requires some calculation. If a student can do it in fifteen moves, they pass the test. If they move the queen systematically until the defending king is cornered with only two squares, and then bring up the king, it will require more than fifteen moves, but I still award a pass.

I encourage all students to learn optimal technique. Here’s my play against Stockfish this morning These moves and some variations can be viewed at my Lichess study, "Simply Perfect". Note that Black’s king was never put in check until checkmate. Control by restriction is a vital skill, and one that young chess players do not easily learn.

My post, “Teaching Elementary Checkmates” has some instructive positions for learning this technique. Some of these positions are from a book published in 1822 that I find more useful than more recent books: William Lewis, Elements of the Game of Chess. The author was England’s strongest player for a few years at the time and is most remembered as one of those who hid inside the famous chess playing “machine” sometimes called “the Turk”.

Checkmate with a rook and king against a lone king takes sixteen moves with perfect play from the hardest position. If the student demonstrates technique sufficient to accomplish the task in 25-30 moves, I consider it a passing performance. The second game in "Simply Perfect" on Lichess shows one example of perfect play.

3. Demonstrate understanding of “fox in the chicken coop” pawn promotion technique.

The tactical advantages of an outside passed pawn in the endgame is one of the aspects of fundamental endgame knowledge upon which it is possible to build advanced skills. Jeremy Silman calls a winning technique with such material the “fox in the chicken coop” in Silman’s Complete Endgame Course (2007). One of the early posts a few months after I started Chess Skills (this blog) in 2007 shows a position from which I played a somewhat forcing ten move sequence to reach such a pawn ending in a tournament game. Calculating that deeply occurs rarely (see "Kings and Pawns"). Moves 31-34, I exchanges two rooks and a knight for two rooks and a pawn. Moves 35-39, both kings raced to capture the opponent's weakest pawn. At that point, I had the move in this position.

White to move

40.b3 struck me as the simplest way to assure that my queenside pawn majority would assure the creation of a passed pawn.

A few moves later, we reached another critical position that was easy to play because of understanding the core idea of how to use an outside passed pawn.

White to move

The only winning move is 47.c5, leading to exchanging two queenside pawns for Black's remaining pawn on that side of the board. The point (as I understood at move 31) was to lure Black's king far from the action on the kingside, where my king mowed down Black's last two pawns. My opponent resigned one move before checkmate on move 65.

In testing this skill, the student will be presented with a made-up position or perhaps one from a game that requires demonstration of understanding how a pawn majority on one wing of the board leads to certain victory with a dominating king on the other wing. For instance, this position, which arose while playing the position from my game against the computer instead of my human opponent.

White to move

4. Complete “Knight Award: checkmates and tactics” worksheet.

The Checkmates and Tactics worksheets consist of a series of exercises of increasing difficulty: Pawn Award, 6 mates in one; Knight Award, 8 checkmate puzzles with mate in 2-5 moves, and 4 exercises where material gain is forced; Bishop Award, 24 exercises, half leading to checkmate; Rook Award, 48 exercises, less than half lead to checkmate; and Queen Award, 60 exercises. These have been published with solutions as Checkmates and Tactics (2019). The book version also has a useful glossary of tactics. Naturally, I prefer that students working the awards do not look at the answers in the book while completing the worksheets.

5. Demonstrates ability to read chess notation.

Chess notation is the language of chess. Today, the system known as algebraic has become standard all over the world. When I was young, the US, England, and other English speaking countries used English descriptive. For the Knight Award, I present the student with a game score and have them show me the game.

Here is an example:

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bc4 Nxe4 5. Nxe4 d5 6. Bxd5 Qxd5 7. d3 Bg4 8. O-O Nd4 9. Be3 Nxf3+ 10. gxf3 Bh3 11. Re1 Be7 12. f4 O-O-O 13. Qf3 Be6 14. f5 Bd7 15. c4 Qxd3 16. b3 Bc6 17. Red1 Qxe4 18. Rxd8+ Rxd8 19. Qxe4 Bxe4 20. Rc1 Bxf5 21. Kg2 f6 22. f4 exf4 23. Bxf4 Bd6 24. Be3 Be4+ 25. Kf1 Bxh2 26. Bc5 f5 27. Be7 Rd2 28. a4 f4 29. Bg5 f3 30. Bxd2 Bg3 31. Be3 h5 32. Rd1 h4 33. Rd4 Bf5 34. Bg5 Bh3+ 35. Kg1 f2+ 36. Kh1 f1=R# {Eric Rosen won by checkmate} 0-1

The game comes from IM Eric Rosen's speedrun.

My YouTube video, Reading Chess Notation, explains what students need to learn (and also features a game that will help with the mate in five in the Checkmates and Tactics exercises).



*Nonetheless, we are pushing strong players to join the USCF so that Washington state will be well-represented when the USCF Grade Level Nationals come to Spokane in December 2025.
**Ryan is now a professional chess coach. He won the Spokane City Championship in 2022 and again in 2023.

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.