How To Teach Your Four-year-old to Play Chess

1. Start with a basic, Staunton-pattern chess board and pieces. No North-vs-South, Romulan-vs-Klingon, or clear-vs-opaque crystal games. No travel size, either.


2. Put the pieces on the board one at a time and tell your child the name of the pieces. Use the proper name, but you should also tell him what it is, for example: "This is a rook. It is shaped like a castle."


3. Show him how each piece moves. Try to relate the movement to the name or the shape of the piece. Create a mnemonic device. Knights, Rooks, and Bishops are shaped like the way they move.


4. Remember that chess is warfare! Pawns' movement in particular need to be related to their function. Imagine a pawn as a footsoldier who moves forward one step at a time holding a big shield and a spear. He moves forward but can only attack on the diagonal because his shield is in the way of his spear.


5. Start playing a game. Don't worry much about your child having memorized everything yet. At each turn, tell him what his possible moves are, then let him decide which piece to move.


6. Don't try to teach any strategy right off the bat. That comes later, when he has a good grasp of the moves.


7. Be patient! Remember that a four-year-old's attention span is shorter than the amount of time it takes to play a normal chess game. It is fine to quit in the middle. Try to stick to the rules, but if occasionally the King sprouts wings and flies to the other side of the board to knock the other King over, that's fine. Game over! Time to watch Barney.


8. If your child likes to use the computer, download or purchase a chess game where he can play against the computer. Computer games have the added bonus of not allowing you to make an illegal move; thus helping teach the child the moves


9. It will be a long time before your child will be able to win, even if you are a beginner yourself. This can frustrate a child (to which anyone who has ever played Candy Land with a four-year-old can attest). Switch sides in the middle of the game. Let them win occasionally. Before you know it, you will have to work to beat them.


10. Keep it fun! Quit if he becomes bored, tired, or frustrated.


11. A great book is Chess for Kids by Michael Basman (Dorling Kindersly, 2001).

I was inspired to do the above after reading an interview of a judge in a law journal - I don't remember which journal, or which judge - who mentioned teaching his grandsons to play chess whey they turned four. If you read the article and have a link or a cite, kindly email me.