Renaissancemen.org

By

Nathan A Fisher (PA) – USCF 1650 (and falling lol)

When I played in the World Open in Philadelphia at age 15, I had walked into a Grand Ballroom where hundreds of players were set up. It was a thrilling experience I will never forget for the rest of my life. Having gone 5-2-1 in my section, I nearly won $1000 and I shocked my parents with my performance. I went 4-0 the first night, with my mother exclaiming to my father, “Harry – he is REALLY good!”. It was a moment I will never forget, and having lost my mother nearly 4 years ago now, I have always felt she was proud of me. In a game I lost the final day after a bout of food poisoning or nerves early in the morning, I was up by a queen and touched my king accidentally first, eventually costing me the game by then being forced to move my king with the “touch move rule”. That lone event put a deep anger in me for some time. Self-hatred at a stupid mistake? Something I have never been able to get over. As an adult, I perhaps seek vengeance for my loss. Or, perhaps redemption? How the trajectory of my life changed in that instant, I will never know. But psychologically, it was incredible to help me gain confidence on the world stage with such a strategic game, and also humbled me. I want to be able to provide my children the same kind of world-level experience, but also be there to help them deal with setbacks and how to re-load and recover from these setbacks. Shortly after this event, my parents divorced and I had to work weekends, getting away from the sport – and hanging on to the glory days – even today.

I’m writing this series for a broad audience that may be picked up by some chess outlets, with permission by me to post. Many of us in our 40s or older played a lot in our teens and got away from it. My story is probably no different than yours, with flavors of variations. I played a good amount growing up, had some success in tournaments, but then eventually had to work weekends, go to college, and the game got away from us. Years of college, graduate school, families – it took away an ability to really dive in and do the game we love.

But The Queen’s Gambit came out a few years ago, and fired me back up – like many of you. The early tournaments described, brought back a lot of nostalgia. Now, having children of my own, I like the idea of getting them involved with this as well! But how? What about some of you who saw the movie and have no idea how to get into these events? No, your kid doesn’t have to be a super genius to get involved – they only need to be interested! For every “gifted” person I have met in this sport, there were 20-30 others who just put in the work to learn and get better. These tournaments are filled with people of all ages. Do NOT be fooled by the 8 year old across from you, as he knows tricks and traps to rip your face off in 8 moves.

Whether you are a novice player or someone who crushed opponents as a kid with no idea of how to get into tournaments, the idea for participation is to have fun playing the game, period. It had been many years since I had received a Chess Life magazine to look at the ratings list and tournaments – how am I supposed to get back to it? How can I get my sons involved? How can you get your children involved? While I know these answers, many might not – and those who never competed in rated tournaments may REALLY not know. So let’s dig in.

USCF

The United Stated Chess Federation is the US governing body of chess. They are also the body that keeps track of all ratings, tournaments, and has postings about where to get involved with your local chess groups. One of my problems where I live, for years, was there was nothing super conveniently close for me. In the last 30 years, I had played at one small tournament on a Friday evening nearly an hour and a half away run by a high school chess teammate. After years of not really seeing anything I could sink my teeth into, I just sort of stopped looking. Why was I going to pay USCF dues to get a magazine that didn’t have anything near me with activity? That was a mistake – as things changed the last 5-10 years here and I had no idea.

The USCF has a presence at uschess.com and I knew that – I just didn’t really dig into the site much, and that was my ultimate mistake. I had recently spent a lot of time there trying to get some info to get my 14 year old involved, and stumbled across a large club and website in my county. Wow!!! This led to me frantically emailing these guys to ensure they are still around and I didn’t see a website that was 10 years old with no one at the helm. They probably thought I was crazy, but I had been alone on this island in central Pennsylvania for 20 years with no one to reach out to! I was…enthusiastic to get involved.

When going to the site, I looked up upcoming tournaments and put in my state.

I then found a local “quad” tournament 15 minutes from my house, clicked on it – which then in the description had a link to my local county chess organization!!! This was the holy grail, I can tell you that. About 15-20 years ago, I was only aware of a club at the local JCC (Jewish Community Center) on like Thursday nights. My brain doesn’t work to well in the evening, and I wake up early for work, so I kept saying I’d eventually get there. Eventually when I could, the club no longer played there.

So the USCF has these rated events all over the place, which at the very least can get you in touch with local tournament directors who can point you towards clubs and local tournaments. Most of these don’t cost a lot of money and are pretty fun to do. I just played yesterday, so I want to also write about it while it was fresh in my mind.

The kids

As a parent, many of you are also potentially wondering – “how can I afford $50,000 for my child’s college coming up?” They aren’t 6’5″ 220 and can hit a ball a mile, so they probably aren’t getting a D1 college athletic scholarship. My college entrance essays – as well as the site this is being written on – talks about me having a lot of diverse interests as a modern-day Renaissance man. I think colleges like someone who can hit a ball a mile, but they also want students like this that can add to a rich experience at the school and perhaps even start up a college chess club. While you may not get a full ride to a D1 school for chess – I believe this skill will help you get noticed, and perhaps even get you grants and differentiate your child from others out there. Your child placing top 20 in a state championship could be a difference maker in admissions! In my personal experience, I went to a D3 school and got tons of grants/scholarships related to all of my activities. I graduated a 4 year ranked private school $14,000 in debt with a computer degree. While getting into big and expensive universities weren’t terribly an issue for me due to my grades and activities, my parents had recently divorced and I had to find the best bang for the buck if I wanted to afford college. Hence – my diverse background lit up the board with different grants the school could provide.

Chess needs some basic instruction, but usually if you just have kids play with each other a lot with the basics, they will start to find patterns and improve naturally. As a child, my dad taught me extremely young – which led to me playing him for perhaps hours a day for years on end. This led to me playing adults at my local community center, and being able to beat anyone my age I knew, by a lot. This then led to community center youth championships from grades 3-6, then finding a place on the high school chess team as a 7th grader – rising up to second board at times (second best on the team that eventually got 3rd in states a year later). Through this, my dad’s instruction had limits, and I started devouring chess books and learning principals. Eventually, this led to some really good large tournament success – and then eventually a “chess camp” at Bentley College in Massachusetts. Today – there are a LOT more resources that kids have access to that I did not.

I bring up a lot of this because if you have a child who shows some promise and interest young, when I was a child there were very limited resources for them. Get some books, play some tournaments, and maybe have your parents extend their credit card to get you a premier lesson for a week. Today, you can find TONS of videos on YouTube – and I only stumbled into these a few months ago. Meaning, I believe today your child can get a LOT of great information online, for FREE. While SOME one-on-one instruction can help them improve rapidly, the advanced tools are all out there for even the poorest in the world to access.

Thousands in travel baseball or $75 for chess equipment that can get him scholarships/grants?

The road to getting going

This path essentially starts at the USCF website (uschess.org) for many who already understand how to play the basics. I’d then advise looking for youth clubs in the area which may be found by reaching out to some of the tournament directors listed in the events. I took my 14 year old to one a few weeks back (that I found via the county site via USCF) and he did very well. But it was the first time he was playing stronger competition in person. He ended up going 5-1 and coming out of it much more confident than when he went in there. But during this event – the organizer was also in the back teaching basics and puzzles to some of the more beginner players, which brings up item number two.

Chess.com is from what I can tell the premier site today where a lot of people go. I don’t really enjoy playing games on a digital board – I don’t know what it is, I just feel I don’t see things as well as in person. I guess my brain from 3-4 was hard wired to see the physical board. But those younger ones today may have seen the digital board before they ever saw a real one. At this site, you can sign up and play for free, to an extent. But the thing I pointed my 14 year old to was the puzzles. You could solve some puzzles for free every day. This helps challenge them, and the puzzles increase in difficulty as your “puzzle rating” gets higher. Meaning, it is more like adaptive learning. This builds the muscles in the mind, and helps teach them some basics of winning games and positions.

In my profession – there is a lot of project management, architecture, engineering, etc. While most see “horsies and castles”, it is a game that develops means of longer term thinking, preparation, memorization, evaluation, risk management, and ultimately decision making. While you can get lost in the nuance of openings, the bigger picture here is the ability to calculate 3-4 moves in advance, and how that skill can be related to perhaps building a house with project management.

Additionally on the site, there were lessons there about tactics, end games, etc. I had never really had any chess tutoring or any kind of official education. My STRENGTH as a younger one was knowing perhaps 10-15 openings, knowing perhaps 2-5 variations of each – perhaps 7 moves into them – out preparing my opponents for the opening. The idea was to get to the strongest position I could going into the middle game, in which I felt my ability to calculate in depth was far superior to my peers. Then, my middle game was usually really good – but the end game was terrible. Interestingly enough – my lessons on chess.com with the end game had me win one of my 3 games yesterday due to something I had no idea about. My two losses were due to my cobwebs with the openings – where my opponents had much better openings, but I had recovered the best I could to salvage the middle games. My point is that even as a relatively strong class C player from my teens, even I was learning things at this age that I directly applied to my win yesterday. So I would also highly encourage the $18 a month or so on chess.com to have unlimited puzzles, tons of training, and all of the games you can fathom – once you feel the site is of interest and you want to go down the rabbit holes. I believe this site and the offers there can really propel your abilities much higher, and very quickly.

I had started to teach my oldest (13 at the time) around December 2022, and apparently friends of his were playing at school. I had tried teaching him when younger, but no real interest until his friends at school started playing. About 6 months in, with him doing puzzles, getting some instruction by me, and playing a LOT of games against his friends – he drew me in a game recently. My jaw dropped. Meaning, this method had demonstrable results in a very short time.

From here, it was about seeking out people “over the board” for him to play. The problem I run into with chess online is I just feel half the times I’m playing against a teenager who is cheating and with this, they are trying to boost their rating to impress their friends. I have received several alerts from chess.com about this as I guess they have a method of detecting it – so the platform isn’t perfect, but is fun to play. So, I don’t think anyone should put a lot of stock in the online ratings. So if your kid is getting involved with this and comparing them to their friends, this method is severely flawed. However, if you just want to play for the sake of playing, and enjoy a challenge, have at it. This then had me wanting to seek out clubs to play in real life. I would urge many of you to do this.

Now, there are several types of players out there. Many kids today (and even adults) like “blitz” and “bullet”. This might be good for beginners as it allows them to play a lot of games quickly and develop pattern recognition. However, there are guys like me out there who prefer the 2-4 hour games and like to completely be lost in the calculations for hours on end. It makes sense for kids to have a mix of games with no clock where people are thinking through moves, but ALSO to play fast to develop speed. Many of the tournaments out there are geared towards a faster movement. For me, faster means “game in 60” or less. To the noob – this means all of YOUR moves need to be made in 60 minutes or less, or combined a game will last 2 hours or less. The best results I ever had were in tournaments where it was like this – 40 moves in 90 minutes, 20 moves in 60, game in 30 – or something like that. I believe my longest game was somewhere in the 6 hour range. Each player has to find what they find most interest in.

But now we must peel back one layer quickly. “Rated” versus “unrated”. Club play is “unrated” where you can go to these local places and just have fun and no one tracks moves or keeps score. When I do these events, it’s about playing things I have never played before and I do not care at all about win/loss, but exploring a new trail. I want to also find people to play and have fun. “Rated” play is within tournaments and go on your “record” – and are treated more seriously. My one recent mistake was telling a club player my thinking 10 days ago, and then luck had it so he happened to be my first opponent yesterday. He knew exactly what my first move was going to be, and what I was looking to do with that first move – and he played a defense “Scandinavian” I had never seen before in play to throw me a curve ball. So when you play club players, also expect someday to face them in local tournaments!!

What then happens after a loss like that is analysis. You record the games in a notepad and play back later. You look up the Scandinavian, how to play against it, and then develop strategies to take it apart. That’s what I used to do in my teens with HOURS of study. As an adult with a career and kids, you have to trim back the cycles to study – but the same method is there. Usually, playing hundreds or thousands of games allows you to see all kinds of things and get muscle memory. But, tournament chess is a lot about asymmetry. At my level, I’m more apt to get killed by gimmicks, tricks, and traps – as this is the way most kids can progress to a C class player in a short time. I never really spent a lot of time on these, but the game has evolved today so all of these kids are seeing these traps on YouTube and can crush people with them. However, there’s a limit with this I will discuss in future installments, and how more advanced players prepare and play.

The local quad

A good small tournament to start in for you or your child is called a “quad”. This is a grouping of 4 – and you play against each other. Meaning, if there were 40 players, there would be 10 quads. This would have the top 4 strongest players facing each other (and the weakest playing each other, etc), so this prevents the top players from playing the novices in the lowest quad. In the one I played yesterday, it was $30 to enter, then the winner of the quad gets $100. I had won some quads before as a teenager, so I was familiar with the setup. So you could have a brand new player play against 200-300 rated kids and win $100 and build his or her confidence.

In THIS setup, it was “game in 40, with 5 second delay”. This is still short for me, but doable. In my first match, I set the clock wrong and no 5 second delays were happening, which essentially was a determining factor in me losing. I didn’t have a great position out of the opening with the Scandinavian, but the delay of 5 seconds to me would help me later. The problem is, with about maybe 4-5 minutes left on my clock, I had realized the delay was not working and needed that extra time to calculate exchanges to an end game. When I gave up, I had 20 seconds left and no hope of victory. This is why I’m playing quads now, to ensure I get these things correct for bigger stuff down the road.

And with these quads, you will always find new players in them, some rated at 200-300. This means it is nice for an “unrated player” to join in at the lowest quad. If you have never played in a tournament before, THIS is where you want to go. I know of a person in my orbit that to the best of my knowledge never has played a rated tournament, and has taken games from me 20 years ago. Meaning, people like this, if they want to get involved in chess, can probably have really good success in quads to start off as unrated.

Once you get familiar with these, you can play bigger tournaments that may be a “swiss”. This is kinda sorta like a bracket for college basketball. To start, everyone has a pairing in the section. The winners will keep playing the winners, and losers play losers, etc. After 5-9 rounds or so, the one(s) with the most points win. The “World Open” every year is in Philadelphia. There are different sections of this. Remember in the “quads” where you top players would not play the weakest? It’s sort of like that there, where you may have 100-200+ players in each section. So you would have potentially 1000+ people at something like this, and EACH SECTION might have a $10,000 first place prize. When I was 15, in the story above, I played in the the UNDER 1600 section. Had I played in the OPEN section, I would have been crushed. But these cost like $250 to enter, then you have to worry about hotel rooms, food, etc. So it was very convenient for someone like me who lived an hour away to go to it. Now I’m 2 hours away, but you get the idea. You want to find events that give you a challenge, and get better against your current rated opponents to then organically move up.

For scholastic purposes, every year states would have high school championships. This can mean that my 14 year old going into 9th grade can play 25 minutes north of where I live. This would be a Swiss type, and I would love for him to get a lot of experience locally before doing this. Additionally, you have nationals 2 hours from me. The World Open, 2 hours from me. I would feel that doing things like this can help a child develop into a strong player, but throwing them in the deep end at 8 may lead to them losing and thus losing interest.

Conclusion and tease

In this piece, we discussed how someone can get involved and sign up to play. We also covered how a noob to the sport can play weaker competition to start out so they aren’t overwhelmed by super strong players. Finally – I discussed how school aged children might have access to state, national, and world level competition.

In upcoming pieces, I’d like to discuss methods to get you sitting across from someone in a tournament. What kind of gear we use, clocks, how to score, etc. The pressure. The ecstatic feeling with a win. There are chess tactics, strategies, and principles that can get super complicated, but I want to give you a quick lesson overview of what to do, and an idea of just a few openings that you can learn to play that can potentially cover 90% of the games you will see so you can focus narrowly, then expand naturally over time. This is a beginner system I’m creating which can get just about anyone involved in a short time. This can take a 700 player to a 1500 player in a few months. But the first question potentially is how to get a 200 to a 700.

Beyond that, many have heard about a title called a chess Grandmaster – but this is an FIDE term (international) and not a USCF term (United States). There are ways to get USCF “titles” that many have never heard of but nothing in the world compares to a chess Grandmaster. We can then try and understand how good some of them are, and also understand how good you are. Meaning – if you are reading this, you probably had played chess a good deal and with this, may be able to beat 19 out of 20 people on earth. We can look at ratings, how you get them, and how it may compare to others. Even someone who is a 700 might be better than 97% of people on earth, so I want to have parents and kids have some perspective. Losing isn’t the worst thing, it actually is a building block to help you get better. I want parents to have tools available to help their children when being disappointed with results to help them see the bigger picture.