By National Master Evan Rabin We currently serve 80+ schools and no two contracts look alike. We customize programs based on on schools’ current chess cultures, interests, goals, budgets, etc. Last week I spoke to several hundred educators from all around the world at our The Montessori Event exhibit. These are three common misonceptions about …
By Jonathan Platt, Operations Intern Although I am by no means a chess grandmaster, I do enjoy the strategic and calculated nature of the game. In daily life, decision making and time management are crucial. Chess forces one to make calculated decisions, often looking multiple moves ahead, in the face of a ticking clock. Evidently, …
By Bronx/Westchester Instructor Jose Leon How can students know the difference between check, checkmate and stalemate? Check- is when a players king is threatened directly by another players piece or the king is being attacked and in danger. Checkmate- is when the king is in check (danger) and has no legal moves to escape. In …
By Peter Panopoulos We live in such a busy world, silence can sometimes be mistaken for a lack of attention, especially when it comes to our kids. I find this quite interesting, and have realized just how important pauses can be during a lesson, even if they go on for longer than one might be …
By Derrick McCullough Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard. The game is played by millions of people worldwide. Each player begins the game with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. The goal of the game is to checkmate …
By CEO National Master Evan Rabin Capture, attack and pressure are words that beginners often use interchangably but mean different things. Each words relates to creating complications for one’s opponent but they are not synonymous. Let’s discuss the nuances: Capture means the act of taking one’s opponent’s piece, which is symbolized by an “x”. For …
By CEO National Master Evan Rabin Occasionally I will see a beginner count the number of pieces of the board and say “the position equal. white and black have the same number of pieces.” Of course every piece is not equal as the pieces have values: Pawn 1 Knight 1 Bishop 1 Rook 1 Queen …
By National Master Evan Rabin The last few days I played lots of crazyhouse on www.lichess.org. Since I was seven-years old, I have enjoyed playing bughouse, where two players team up and every time one teammate captures a piece, he gets to give it to his partner, who can place it anywhere on the board, …
By National Master Evan Rabin Happy Halloween, everyone! Did you know that the holiday has a chess gambit named after it? Unlike the Queen’s Gambit, popularized by the world famous Netflix series, which isn’t truly a gambit (white can win back the pawn by force if he chooses to) , in the Halloween gambit, you …
By National Master Evan Rabin A few hours after writing “Don’t Push the Cart Before the Horse” post, I was shocked as Wesley So lost a game after trying to castle illegally at the World Fischer Random Championship. Wesley So thought he could castle as it would only require moving his rook from h8 to …
