Encouraging others to learn chess?

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ricorat

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone has any advice on how to encourage others to learn chess? I don't have many friends who play irl, and would ofc like to teach them how to play so I have more people to play with (as I'm sure with most chess players). I also understand that some people just don't want to learn and you can never force them to. I'm just looking for ways to maybe encourage people who might be on the fence, interested in learning. Thanks in advance for any advice happy.png

Chessking4640

me

eric0022
ricorat wrote:

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone has any advice on how to encourage others to learn chess? I don't have many friends who play irl, and would ofc like to teach them how to play so I have more people to play with (as I'm sure with most chess players). I also understand that some people just don't want to learn and you can never force them to. I'm just looking for ways to maybe encourage people who might be on the fence, interested in learning. Thanks in advance for any advice

 

You could try to relate it to real-life scenarios as an introduction perhaps. Then, perhaps simply teach them the most basic rules of chess and let the newbies move around the pieces randomly, be it legal or not.

 

Normally, when one or two players (say, students in a classrooom) start to get interested, the remaining people will start to follow suit one by one.

C0RVIAN

Maybe make a club (irl I mean)

eric0022

At this point, do not teach them special moves yet.

 

Let them ask "what happens when a pawn reaches the other end, does it just get stuck there" or "why does a pawn capture diagonally but move forward".

llama51

First I'd ask adults in your area for ideas. Ideally you can interest a teacher to start a chess club at your school. If you can't, then try other community places like a local library or church.

If that doesn't work out, you can do things like set up a board at the same time in the same place. It can be every day or once a week. It can be after school, or somewhere else. The point is to keep a schedule so people who are interested know how to find you. If you literally have zero people to play with, then bring something else to do like homework. Have a sign that welcomes people to play a game. You'll eventually get some random person to play. Most wont be regulars, but over time you'll eventually meet a few who show up more than once.

Most will be extremely bad players, but you'll meet a few chess enthusiasts, and who knows, over time some may choose to try to get good enough to beat you tongue.png

KevinOSh

Find a local chess club. There will be players there who are already pretty good and pretty passionate about chess.

llama51

But yeah... don't expect to find people who want you to teach them, or who can give you a good game. If you want people like that then you'll have to go to local tournaments.

eric0022
Roadchessmaster12345 wrote:

I told a few of my friends about chess, they told me they would love to be better at chess, but when I told them they had to put at least 5 hours into at least like past beginner level, they were like "Nah I don't want to learn chess anymore".

The only way to teach someone chess is if they are patient and put in the time to learn it, which is time-consuming.

 

This might actually not be a good idea, because the thought of putting in hard work puts them in fear - a significant amount of time is invested.

 

What I let newbies do normally is just to let them play around - get their interest simply by making correct moves with individual pieces first - before putting them into an actual chess position. And even then, I would let them move the pieces freely as well. It's unlikely that the newbies would go after the kings initially - in fact, I'm certain it would be a battle of "who would capture an opponent's queen first".

 

Once sufficient time has passed (like a few days or a week), then I would start to explain to them the objective of the game.

 

The target audience here is quite wide actually - young kids, working adults, the elderly and so on. With different possible paces of learning, the advice by stronger players here "play longer controls etc" might not be taken up by many players.

 

Only after some time, if the person has developed a liking and an appreciable interest to chess, I would start to explain the game in greater detail.

ricorat

To all who suggested I either join or start a local club, that is a very good idea, however in my original post I should have stated hat my family travels a lot and we’re never in the same place so unfortunately joining or starting a local club isn’t something I can do sad.png

@eric0022 I like the idea of relating it to real life and just teaching the basic rules at the beginning. That way it keeps things simple and if they show more interest I can go into more detail about castleing, enpassant, promotion, etc.

@roadchessmaster12345 while that is true that you have to put some time into chess before you get past beginner, I’m not trying to turn any of my friends into master, I’m just looking for some people who’ll enjoy the game happy.png (however if they do want to get better I’m up for some friendly competition wink.png)

@Llama51 as I mentioned above starting a club wouldn’t really work for me, however I really like the idea of going out and setting up a board (a lot of campgrounds we go to have clubhouses and they’re usually somewhat busy) and waiting for someone to come and ask for a game happy.png (it also gives me an excuse to get put of my somewhat noisy household xD)

Gump_forest

i made alot of friends play chess but all of them r below 1000...and many have stopped playing

 

danboy67

tech dem da basics frst

eathealthyfoods

Share videos of gotham chess shorts that shows them amazing checkmates. Most of them must include rook sacrifice because Levy is famous for his saying " then he sacrifice the rOOOOuuuuuuuK!"