Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

[Garvin Nunes]

First of all, for those of you who haven't checked it out, make sure you look at the the new CFC Newsletter. Tony is doing a very good job imho.

In the latest edition, Bob Gillanders writes an article called, "Mississauga Junior Chess Club: A Success Story!". Bob's account of Roman Pelt's lecture on chess coaching in particular left an impression on me and I was wondering if Bob (or anyone else) could explain some of the "Common Errors" junior chess organizers make when they are first starting out.

Hamilton has also brought back its Junior Chess Club with pretty good success on Saturday mornings at the Downtown YMCA.

In our case we are doing a 15-20 minute lesson and then playing a 30 minute active each week. Since the kids all write down their moves and use a clock I don't think the transition to CFC or Chess N Math events would be that difficult for them.

There are some things the Mississauga Club does that I am thinking of modeling. For example, their junior club is on the same evening and in the same building as their "adult" club, so kids who later choose to play serious chess just have to stay when the junior session ends.

In fact, with even just a couple of volunteers I think any chess club in Canada could try this concept and probably have good success with it. Certainly, the most obvious place to grow the chess base is through our juniors.

Well, very interested in hearing what you guys think about Bob's article and junior chess in general.

[Garvin Nunes]

Re: Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

One additional issue I'd like to raise:

From my experience its tricky to cater to both casual and "serious" chess kids. The casual ones are there for fun (and possibly were dropped off because we are cheaper than a baby sitter) And the other ones are dead serious about tournaments, coaching and quite frankly, winning.

Id say the juniors are split evenly among the two groups. So I can't go with majority rules on this..

I have always tried to strike a balance between the serious and the fun but they do constantly come into conflict in ways a decision has to be made. My instinct has been to err on the side of the "serious" kids, but, I'd like to know what opinions others have on that.

There must be some out of the box solutions other junior club organizers have come up with when facing this problem..

[Bob Armstrong]

Re: Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

I think what Mississauga and Hamilton are doing is great. Junior chess club members develop into adult players, both casual and tournament. Both of these will be good for chess in the future. Junior Clubs also develop " open club " members.

Scarborough CC has only a limited time allotment once a week at our community centre. And so we have no time to develop a Junior Club before the Club CFC-rated tournament session. But nevertheless, we have been very successful at attracting and increasing our junior club member contingent. A few years ago 20% of our tournament players were juniors. In our current swiss, that number has now risen to 25% ! And numbers of them are good - a WIM, and a number of " A " class players.

It is great to see juniors out, both at Junior Clubs, and Open Clubs. They are definitely the tournament players of the future.

Bob

[John Brown]

Re: Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

Hi Garvin;

I think the most important thing for juniors is to make chess a fun event.
The serious kids will progress and go to the Adult events when they are ready.
The ones who just want the fun should be allowed to blossom with a short lesson.
But Volunteers are the big plus as long as you have good volunteers who want to see kids coming to the club no matter how they play you will grow into bigger and better clubs. Space is the primary flaw to all chess clubs because you sooner or later have to decide how to accommodate every one.

Mississauga starts Juniors early and they end before Adult events start. I joined Mississauga in early November. Great Club. Only wish I could get there sooner to help with the Junior program.

The Hamilton club idea of Saturday for Juniors also works well and we tried that at Weston Chess Club way back when. Keep Saturday a fun thing for the juniors.

What you could try is to have the serious Juniors who would like to join into the adult night to show up early and offer a 15 min lesson at a more advanced level and then let them play a small qualifying tournament with adult time controls and rules but have it over before 9:30 pm.say for 4 weeks. They will play against each other in the adult area and if they show that they like the adult environment then they can join up to play against the adults after 4 weeks. This way the juniors don't get too discouraged if they lose too many games at the start.
This way if they like tournament conditions they can join your adults later.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

One additional issue I'd like to raise:

From my experience its tricky to cater to both casual and "serious" chess kids. The casual ones are there for fun (and possibly were dropped off because we are cheaper than a baby sitter) And the other ones are dead serious about tournaments, coaching and quite frankly, winning.

Id say the juniors are split evenly among the two groups. So I can't go with majority rules on this..

I have always tried to strike a balance between the serious and the fun but they do constantly come into conflict in ways a decision has to be made. My instinct has been to err on the side of the "serious" kids, but, I'd like to know what opinions others have on that.

There must be some out of the box solutions other junior club organizers have come up with when facing this problem..

Garvin, I'm certainly not an organizer nor have any experience with what you and Bob are doing, but here's one out-of-the-box idea: if half of the kids are just there for fun, why limit them to playing regular chess? Why not get them into chess960 and other variants? These would appear to be the kids with a more imaginative side (as opposed to the serious kids who are more logical and goal-driven), so let their minds go wild. In fact, you could even have them invent some new variant and fine tune it by trial and error, until they actually have something that works.

I've been doing this myself and it's a lot more fun than playing regular chess!

[Garvin Nunes]

Re: Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

Garvin, I'm certainly not an organizer nor have any experience with what you and Bob are doing, but here's one out-of-the-box idea: if half of the kids are just there for fun, why limit them to playing regular chess? Why not get them into chess960 and other variants? These would appear to be the kids with a more imaginative side (as opposed to the serious kids who are more logical and goal-driven), so let their minds go wild. In fact, you could even have them invent some new variant and fine tune it by trial and error, until they actually have something that works.

I've been doing this myself and it's a lot more fun than playing regular chess!

Yes, this is a very good idea, and I have in fact shown them both team chess and a version of shuffle chess that is easier to play than Fischerrandom (Chess 960). I have also shown them a variant called upside down chess (where the board is set normally, but the pawns now move in the opposite direction..ie they are 2 squares from queening.)

I find they like team chess so much they sometimes want to play it instead of regular chess. Also, its the so called "serious" players that most want to play and dominate the team chess games.

[Bob Gillanders]

Re: Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

An update on Mississauga Junior club,

we hit a new high of 53 kids this week.:D

I wonder if the article in Canadian Chess News helped?;)

We are now requiring the top boards to record their games. It helps keep the noise level down and gets them ready for tournament play. Garvin has always required that with the Hamilton juniors, and his kids are proving him right. They keep kicking ass at the Hamilton club.

[Bob Gillanders]

Re: Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

An update on the Mississauga Junior Club:

We hit a new high of 62 kids last night!:)

The adult club had 25 players for round 2 of Viktar Chuprys Memorial, and that included 5 graduates from the junior club!:)

Thats a total of 87! I wonder if that makes Mississauga the largest weekly chess club in Canada?

Bob A.?;)

[Jean Hébert]

Re: Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

Since the kids all write down their moves and use a clock I don't think the transition to CFC or Chess N Math events would be that difficult for them.

The writing down their moves is VERY important. Keep going! I dont know how easy the transition to CMA will be however, because unless things have recently changed there, kids were not asked to write down their moves.

[Garvin Nunes]

Re: Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

The writing down their moves is VERY important. Keep going! I dont know how easy the transition to CMA will be however, because unless things have recently changed there, kids were not asked to write down their moves.

While I agree kids should play fun games without recorded moves, we always play an active game WITH recording moves first. After that I let them play all the blitz or chess variants they want.

Also, for homework they are supposed to play one recorded game per week. At any time I can spot check their notebook to see if the game was played.

Note: because I am at a downtown location near a mall and fitness center I find some parents would just drop their kids off for baby sitting if I didn't have some serious quality to the chess service we provide.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: Gillanders' Article On Mississauga Juniors

...kids should play fun games without recorded moves...

Ask them to sit on their hands. It will take additional second to make a move and might avoid blunders :)