Why chess
What chess actually contains, and what it does not promise
There is a version of this page that tells you chess makes children better at maths. This is not that page. What follows is a description of what is genuinely inside the game, which turns out to be a stronger argument than the one people usually make.
Chess and maths
The board is a coordinate grid with an army on it
Chess does not need to improve maths scores to be full of maths. It already is. Here is where the two genuinely touch, with the strand of the primary curriculum each one belongs to.
A queen on d5 with every square she attacks marked. Squares of interest: d1, d2, d3, d4, d6, d7, d8, a5, b5, c5, e5, f5, g5, h5, a2, b3, c4, e6, f7, g8, a8, b7, c6, e4, f3, g2, h1.
A queen on d5 reaches 27 squares. On a1 she reaches 21. Children find that out by counting, not by being told.
- Shape and space, location
The board is a coordinate grid
Files are letters, ranks are numbers, and every square has its own letter-and-number address. Chess notation works like a simple coordinate system.
- Number, comparing quantities
Counting before committing
Three of my pieces attack that square, two of theirs defend it. A child works that out before they take, and finds out immediately whether they got it right.
- Number and units
Worth, not only how many
A rook is worth more than a bishop, which is worth about three pawns. Children spend the game comparing quantities and judging whether an exchange is worth making.
- Reasoning and problem solving
If this, then that
If I go here, they go there, and then this square is free. That is a conditional statement being tested out loud, over and over, for forty minutes.
- Patterns and sequences
Pattern and sequence
Tactics are patterns with names. A fork looks like a fork whatever the pieces are, which is how a child learns to recognise any structure.
- 2D shape and space
Direction, symmetry and lines
Diagonals, ranks, files, and a board that mirrors itself. Bishops that start on light squares stay on light squares, and children work that out for themselves rather than being told.
Said plainly. None of the above is a claim that a term of chess raises maths results. The largest school trial ever run looked for exactly that and found nothing. That study is set out in full here, including the parts that do us no favours.
The rest of it
Five things that happen every week and have nothing to do with the curriculum
- 01
You cannot take it back
Let go of the piece and it is done. There is no undo button in a real game, and a seven year old feels that in a way no worksheet can produce.
- 02
Waiting is built into the rules
You physically cannot act until it is your turn. The pause is not a classroom rule imposed from outside, it is the game.
- 03
Losing happens to everybody, every week
Every child in the room loses games. Sessions are built so that happens early and often, with an adult in the room while it does.
- 04
Nobody can hide behind reading
There is no text and no writing. A child who struggles with reading is on level ground here, which is not true of most classroom activities.
- 05
You have to say why
Being asked to explain a move is part of the routine. Pupils are regularly asked to say why they chose one move over another, out loud, to somebody who asks.
The strongest piece on the board
Chess is one of the few games where the most powerful piece is a queen
That is not a slogan invented for a website. It is a rule change that happened around 1475 and it is the reason the game is played the way it is. What follows are five documented moments, told to girls in sessions from 2nd Class up.
Around 1475
The game rebuilt itself around a woman
For most of its history the piece beside the king was an advisor who shuffled one square at a time. Around 1475 that piece became the queen we know, the strongest piece on the board, and the whole game reorganised around her. Historians have long noted that this happened in the Europe of powerful reigning queens, Isabella I of Castile among them, and the earliest known description of the new rules is a Valencian poem. Whether that connection is cause or coincidence is still argued about. What is not argued about is the result: the most powerful piece in the world's most famous strategy game is a woman.
1927
Vera Menchik and the club nobody wanted to join
Menchik won the first Women's World Championship in 1927 and held the title until her death, defending it six times without losing a match. She also played in open tournaments against the leading men of her day and beat them, including a future world champion, Max Euwe. Some of them joked about a Vera Menchik Club for men she had defeated. The joke was on them: the membership kept growing.
1978
Nona Gaprindashvili breaks the title barrier
Women's world champion from 1962 to 1978, Gaprindashvili became the first woman awarded the full International Grandmaster title, the same title as the men, in 1978.
1990s and 2000s
Judit Polgár refused the women's section
Polgár is the only woman to have passed 2700 rating points. She reached number eight in the world in 2004, against everybody, not against other women. She declined to play in women's-only events for most of her career, and beat a long list of world champions along the way.
2020
A girl at the centre of the biggest chess story in decades
The Queen's Gambit was watched by 62 million households in its first 28 days, a Netflix record for a limited series at the time. In the months that followed, chess set sales in the United States rose 87% and chess book sales rose 603%. The most successful piece of chess storytelling ever made has a girl as its main character.
Why this matters in a school hall. After-school chess clubs skew heavily towards boys almost everywhere, and once that has happened for a term it is very hard to undo. Groups here start at Junior Infants, before any of that has set, and every group hears these five stories rather than only the ones about men.
Chess on screen
What to watch, and which ones are actually for children
Parents ask this a lot, usually after a child has come home talking about chess. Here is an honest answer, including the ones to skip.
- Series, 2020
The Queen's Gambit
An orphan in 1950s Kentucky becomes a world contender. Adapted from Walter Tevis's 1983 novel, which returned to the bestseller lists 37 years after it was published.
Rated for older viewers. Worth knowing before a parent puts it on for a nine year old.
- Film, 2016
Queen of Katwe
The true story of Phiona Mutesi, a girl from a Kampala slum who became a national chess champion. Made by Disney, and the one on this list most suited to a primary age audience.
The best starting point for children.
- Film, 1993
Searching for Bobby Fischer
A seven year old turns out to be brilliant at chess and the adults around him have to decide what to do about it. It is really a film about how to teach a child, which is why chess teachers keep recommending it.
Parents tend to get more out of this one than children.
- Film and book, 1997 and 2001
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
The giant chess set. For a large number of children this is the first time they ever see a chessboard and think it looks exciting.
Useful in a first session. Children already know it.
- Documentary, 2012
Brooklyn Castle
A New York junior high school whose chess team wins national titles, and what it takes to keep the programme running when the school's budget is cut. The children are older than primary, but it is the only one on this list that is about a school chess club rather than about a prodigy.
The one to watch if you are deciding whether chess belongs in a school.
- Film, 1957
The Seventh Seal
A knight plays chess against Death on a beach. Probably the single most copied image in cinema, and the reason chess reads as serious to people who have never played it.
Not for children. Included because the image is everywhere.
Competitive chess
Does your school want a team, or a club?
Some schools want a club that plays for fun and never enters anything. Some want a team ready for inter-school chess. Both are fine, and it is a question worth answering before the first session rather than in week nine.
No competition at all
Everything internal. Ladder games and challenges within the group, and children never have to represent anything or anyone. This is the default for Infants and 1st and 2nd Class.
Internal competition only
An end of block tournament inside the school, with everybody playing and everybody finishing. No travel, no weekends, no parents driving anywhere.
Getting a team ready
For 3rd to 6th Class, sessions can build towards inter-school events, with the last part of each session spent on the things that actually decide those games. Taking part stays a choice for each child.
Group programmes, not private coaching
Little Chess Explorers is deliberately focused on group programmes delivered through schools rather than private one-to-one coaching. Group teaching in a school room, inside school structures and with a school contact, is a clearer arrangement for everyone.
If a family wants one to one coaching, we will say so plainly and point them elsewhere rather than take the booking.