It’s always exciting, isn’t it? You buy a new game, eagerly open the box and have a quick look at the rules before starting to play a complete game. You can’t wait to dive in and really don’t want to waste a moment.

It’s probably how most children learn chess, and it’s also very much how I used to teach beginners as well. But it’s not how chess works, and not the right way to teach beginners.

Almost 20 years ago I discovered the Steps system, which has been used extensively to teach chess in the Netherlands and other West European countries for many years. It appears to have been based on the old Soviet methods: I’ve also come across courses written by former Soviet players taking a very similar approach.

The idea is that, in the first year of the course, the children don’t play complete games of chess at all. Instead they’re introduced to the pieces one at a time, to the rules one at a time, to the thinking skills one at a time, ensuring everything is fully understood before moving on. Once they’ve been through this process they’ll have the tools in place to play a reasonably proficient game straight away. They’ll learn a lot more about chess by NOT playing chess, but by progressing through a series of puzzles, games and activities based on subsets of chess, than they would from playing random low-level games.

Thinking about this, and about how you’d introduce children to other skills, this made perfect sense. You learn the piano by starting to play simple tunes. You start learning maths by understanding simple arithmetic. You start swimming in the shallow end. You start golf on the putting green.

The Steps people are insistent that the best teachers for young beginners aren’t strong chess players but classroom teachers with an interest in chess. Again, this is understandable. If you want someone to teach a class of five-year-olds that 2+2=4, you’ll probably look for someone with a degree in child development, not someone with a degree in maths.

To teach chess you need three things: a basic understanding and love of chess, a knowledge of what is currently considered best practice in teaching young beginners, and (for teachers) an understanding of children or (for parents) an understanding of your own child. Teaching any skill to beginners requires repetition, reinforcement and feedback, which is why, if children are too young to teach themselves, proactive parental involvement is vital.

If you’d like your children to learn chess using these methods, come and join us at Twickenham Library. If you get it right, you’ll give them a lifetime of pleasure.