Course thoughts

Seminar comments & suggestions

Two of the questionnaires came back with comments and/or suggestions on them. Here they are, together with some further thoughts of mine. Anyone got comments on these, or new comments? [mine in square brackets]

1. I didn't get much that was new to me - Got off the point very quickly, so had to skip some material due to time constraint.

2. Possibilities for Improvement:

- start earlier Day 1 (earlier finish Day2)

- cover chess history etc. later in Day 1 [I assume this indicates a desire to have something "heavier" earlier in the day - I agree]

- more on club (adult-junior integration) [yes, one of the sub-sections I did not have time to include in the Manual]

- cover use of ratings - understand concept etc [ditto]

- cover passing of good junior to coaching / trainers / senior club [ok, but I think that really requires a national coaching structure to be in place, as is the case in most countries, with, at the very least, Regional and National Junior Squads and organizers to go with them]

- post names of participants on Day 1 (am) [absolutely - see below]

- consider breaking sessions on shared issues / resources

- Have more chess boards [not sure what this one means]

- share "fun" variants

- social element of the event could have been coordinated better. [yes, we had no planning for that; the assumption was that simple social interaction would see lots of ideas being swapped - as at FIDE-TRG seminars - and that did seem to happen rather well. However, I agree, some planning of the social side would be an improvement. Anyone got any good ideas for what/how, always bearing in mind the time constraints]

3. I made the following notes at the time:

Possibilities for Improvement:

- PHOTOS of participants

-- attached to IDs & posted up for all (part of list of attendees)

- proper 'conclusion' to the event

But the time constraints are extremely difficult:

- there is NO possibility, ever, of covering ALL the material; the idea is to dip in and out in the presentation, with (in principle) "everything" being in the Trainer Manual for subsequent perusal.

- start and finish times can't cater for everyone (some travelled considerable distances each day). See the actual questionnaire results for an overview of the difficulties here:

http://www.kochess.com/page8.php

Non-chess event :

This idea came from Corinthians Rugby club, they take all their teams to Killary adventure center every September and by all accounts this is the highlight of the Rugby year for these children.

They keep the same children year after year.

Christy O'Sullivan is a leader with said rugby club and with the Junior chess club .. so .. he organised the our end of season party .. the children played "laser quest" and "bouncy castle" and got t-shirts with "Galway chess club" logo on the front.

The following day we got texts from the absent parents so this has had the effect of building rapport and trust with our kids and their parents. Oh, and one mother made chocolate chess pieces for all.

This event is now a part of our annual calendar.

Results of Training Course

I thought one or two of you might be interested ...

Everyone passed, albeit a couple by the skin of their teeth. Incidentally, the way I had set up the marking system (ID-40%, Practical-30%, Written paper 30%), meant that I had no more than a very vague idea of what would happen to borderline cases until I came to add everything up, so it was pleasing to see everyone make it.

I was sorely tempted to deduct marks from those who got the cover page of the exam paper wrong (see below), but didn't bother in the end, since it was not affecting anything. I marked the papers first and later went back to enter the county/province info into the database. 10% of the attendees wrote that Dublin is to be found in the province of ... Ireland!

Once again, go easy on "errors" and "mistakes" made by the kids, because we all make them! That Dublin/Ireland mistake being a good example of a typical problem all players face at the chessboard - to see what is actually there in front of us, rather than what we "think" is there.

Pandolfini's Endgame Course

Hi All,

As Kevin recommended the above book, I did some research and found the following site which gives a list of all the errors and the corrections. Not that many actually!

http://glennwilson.com/chess/books/pec_errata.html#end222

Hope it is of use to you all!

Blanchardstown youth service

Hi there =)

During the next few weeks, six local primary schools will be attending the college that I attend, for robotics summer school, of which i will be team leader but more importantly I will have a chance to talk to some of the teachers about introducing chess into those schools and what there thoughts are about it. I also heard today that older kids from Blanchardstown Youth Service will be attending the college in the second week... I explained that I took part in a chess instructors course ran by the Irish chess union and FIDE over the weekend and suggested that I teach them chess for the week, it was thought to be a great idea... It's a start =) 

Chess 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games

Hello All,

Thanks to Rory for setting up this forum! I enjoyed the course - but the best part for me was listening to all the different stories from all the participants.

A number of people said they would like to have the above mentioned Polgar book in Chessbase format. I knew I had a copy somewhere - so eventually found it. There were some problems with it at first: but I think I got it sorted.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/960525/Polgar.zip

It may be handy as a training aid.