When to start teaching chess to a child?

Originally posted by atticus2
You can start kids off quite early, provided you limit the exercise to setting up the board, messing with the different pieces. Maybe by age 5 or so, play a game of Q v. pawns.

The point is this. Children simply [b]cannot learn faster than their brain develops. That involves conceptual development. So for example, you can train a child to say ever saw a chess set until then, but took to the game thereafter, they'd be just fine.[/b]

I know what you're getting at. but isn't being exposed to those challenging ideas the very thing that eventually forces them to develop the related concepts? would it happen in isolation at all? I kinda doubt it.

I'm also not at all convinced that the most important aspects of chess ability require any conceptual understanding at all, meaning especially the board vision. - sure the kid won't be able to grasp concepts like capture, piece value, mate, stalemate, or rules in general at first, or temporal depth. but he will be able to see the board, just see, the 8x8 grid, square colors, diagonals, the shape of pieces, and familiarize himself with that visual scenery. develop the 'hardware', so to speak, when their very basic sensory abilities are still developing.

I don't know how well you still remember what it was like to look at a position in the beginning, but for me it's still so close (6 years) I remember it well. it was a total black & white swirling chaos of squares and pieces, the brain just couldn't make any sense of it. even after learning the rules, the board was a total mess which simply would not stick in the mind at all. it was not a problem of understanding concepts, it was a problem of seeing the position. you saw maybe a 3x3 part of it at any single time, and the second you moved your eye, the part you left behind was all a scramble. you couldn't even follow the diagonals across the board because the eye 'skipped' to the next diagonal and you suddenly had two bishops of the same colour, stuff like that.

sure we're primates, and hence born with a basic set of visual functionality. but if newborn kittens can develop the specific functionality of seeing vertical and horizontal lines, I'm sure a primate can do the same (as far as board vision is concerned) no matter how young he is.

assuming that, it must be an order of magnitude easier for the child to internalize the conceptual aspects of chess AFTER developing at least some board vision, than before his brain is even remotely capable of processing the 8x8 grid as anything else than a swirling chaos.

'Visualising' a chessboard' is an utterly trivial experience at any age. Children visualise hugely more complex things every time they open their eyes. But I didn't use the term visualise; I used, or inferred, the term conceptualise. That's rather different.

Originally posted by atticus2
'Visualising' a chessboard' is an utterly trivial experience at any age. Children visualise hugely more complex things every time they open their eyes. But I didn't use the term visualise; I used, or inferred, the term conceptualise. That's rather different.

I'll take that as "no, I do not remember what it was like". which is perfectly understandable for a seasoned veteran.

a lot (maybe even most) of my chess problems are still related to visualisation after 6 years. the simple kind, seeing what's where, is it on the same rank/file/diagonal as something else. zero ply deep. it's anything but trivial.

the problem with the things primates can visually process after opening their eyes the first time, is that none of it works for an 8x8 square grid. that type of thing never existed in the nature, there was no way for evolution to include it. the plasticity of brain allows for the development of such processing, but it always requires training/learning.

I also separated between conceptual and visualisation, did you just skip it all? (I know, I know, TLDR...).

Sure, there was an element of TLDR. But now that I have, let me clarify/amplify the point I'm getting at.

Take a very simple position - K+P v K - in which the purpose is to promote the pawn or achieve stalemate. Now assume the child with the K+P knows both the (relevant) rules of chess, including how pieces move; and the object of the exercise. I've done this exercise with young children dozens of time. The result is almost always the same. Until a certain age - from memory, 6+ and usually 7+ - the kids do not win this ending against normal play. Long before they can visualise (ie anticipate in advance) the set-up that forces promotion, they first must conceptualise the relationship between the three pieces & the timing (tempo) required to bring home the win. Moreover, they need to distinguish between arrangements that do win from those that do not - effectively classifying positions as 'positive' or 'negative' for the win. Until they make that conceptual breakthrough, the kids just shove the K to protect the pawn, randomly hitting the right solution from time to time. Indeed one sees weak adult players doing much the same. So conceptualisation precedes visualisation in early development - and even for some adults.

At risk of TLDR-ing myself, I don't recognise the 'swirling' you refer to from my earliest experiences. But I do remember my first big conceptual breakthrough, learned from painful experience in losing to my kid brother. I learned, aged 9+, that the f2/f7 square was a vulnerability, not because of Fool's Mate, but from (low quality) regular play. Long before I learned how to win K+P v K, I'd learned to protect my K. But by 9+, a kid has already got good resources with which to grasp conceptual stuff. At 7+, it starts to kick in.

Wasn't Judit Polgar winning tournaments when she was 6 or 7? Of course she's exceptional, but still..

With little kids, play pawn wars, where only the pawns are on the board and the objective is to be the first player to get a pawn to the other end of the board. When they get tired of that, throw another piece or two in the mix. Basically, be creative, and build up to a full game of chess if they're interested in it.

I think it's always a mistake to bring exceptions like the Polgars
or any gifted children into these discussions.

They are exceptions, the thread is about 'normal' children.

Originally posted by atticus2
Sure, there was an element of TLDR. But now that I have, let me clarify/amplify the point I'm getting at.

Take a very simple position - K+P v K - in which the purpose is to promote the pawn or achieve stalemate. Now assume the child with the K+P knows both the (relevant) rules of chess, including how pieces move; and the object of the exercise. I've done ...[text shortened]... got good resources with which to grasp conceptual stuff. At 7+, it starts to kick in.

yeah, I agree. we're just talking about different things regarding visualisation. you mean calculation (in a broad sense), I mean the neurological process of forming of a picture onto the visual cortex.

I'm having a bit of trouble choosing the english terms, in a way that conveys what I mean instead of something slightly different. I do not mean the 'visualisation' normally used in 'chess visualisation exercises', but instead the mechanism which allows us to differentiate between looking at a person and looking at a hat. or more specifically, a subset of that mechanism.

analogous to exposing children to music at early age, it's not gonna teach them any kind of music theory, conceptualization, or even to differentiate between sounds on a recording. their brain simply lacks that kind of functionality at that time, which is what you were talking about. but it WILL develop vastly their ability to hear pitch and different components in any recording later in life.

well, none of this probably is very important in real life, nor practical. but I just wanted to bring in a slightly different way of looking at what early learning unavoidably deals with. just because the hardware isn't finished yet, doesn't mean its development can't be influenced.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
I think it's always a mistake to bring exceptions like the Polgars
or any gifted children into these discussions.

They are exceptions, the thread is about 'normal' children.

That's a good point greenpawn34, I'm by no means advocating that someone should start training their 3 year old to be a little Polgar sister. I was just suggesting that kids can formulate chess understanding at a very young age, Judit being the most extreme example of this.

Slightly off-topic here, but I also find it really funny watching kids play chess (slightly older..say around 8-12). Contrary to what people believe, kids do play with a plan in mind, it's just that their plan more often than not does not at all consider what their opponent is doing.

Originally posted by Wormwood

analogous to exposing children to music at early age, it's not gonna teach them any kind of music theory, conceptualization, or even to differentiate between sounds on a recording. their brain simply lacks that kind of functionality at that time, which is what you were talking about. but it WILL develop vastly their ability to hear pitch and different components in any recording later in life.

I think a great example of this is learning foreign languages. Adults learn languages much faster and more methodically than children do. However, there's a critical age of around 7 where if someone does not have a decent amount of exposure to a language by then, they'll rarely reach native speaker competence.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
I think it's always a mistake to bring exceptions like the Polgars
or any gifted children into these discussions.

They are exceptions, the thread is about 'normal' children.

ah, now that's where you're wrong gp. the polgar sisters were perfectly normal. and laszlo proved that prodigies are made, not born. 🙂

Originally posted by wormwood
ah, now that's where you're wrong gp. the polgar sisters were perfectly normal. and laszlo proved that prodigies are made, not born. 🙂

True .. but as far as my children are concerned, would I *want* them to be chess prodigies? I think I'd vote for 'normal' myself. I'm not sure. I'll think about it for a bit.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
I think it's always a mistake to bring exceptions like the Polgars
or any gifted children into these discussions.

They are exceptions, the thread is about 'normal' children.

I agree completely. The odds of a child who is just learning chess to become a grandmaster are greater than the same child picking up a baseball and eventually playing in the Major Leagues.
A child who learns to love the game of chess (like most here do),regardless of skill level, should be the goal in teaching chess to kids.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
I think it's always a mistake to bring exceptions like the Polgars
or any gifted children into these discussions.

They are exceptions, the thread is about 'normal' children.

Exceptions with an exceptional father, for better or worse (or both).

IYAM, for normal children, it doesn't make the slightest difference. A normal child is not going to be world champion or even grand master. If this child is going to end up a decent club player anyway, does it make the slightest bit of difference whether he started playing at five or at six? Unlikely. It probably doesn't even make a difference to how decent, let alone to whether he gets an IM or not.

Richard

Originally posted by caissad4
I agree completely. The odds of a child who is just learning chess to become a grandmaster are greater than the same child picking up a baseball and eventually playing in the Major Leagues.
A child who learns to love the game of chess (like most here do),regardless of skill level, should be the goal in teaching chess to kids.

Something like 150-200 children a year get a cup of coffee in the Majors, maybe 50-100 ever have a major league career of any note.

Meanwhile there has been an explosion in the number of GM's in the last twenty years.

I would guess if you threw in IM's that Chess might be a better bet than Major League Baseball...

unless you know how to teach a lefty how to throw a knuckler.

Originally posted by nimzo5
Something like 150-200 children a year get a cup of coffee in the Majors, maybe 50-100 ever have a major league career of any note.

Meanwhile there has been an explosion in the number of GM's in the last twenty years.

I would guess if you threw in IM's that Chess might be a better bet than Major League Baseball...

unless you know how to teach a lefty how to throw a knuckler.

ah Nimzo i see your rating has gone up 100 points since adopting the Colle, no need to thank us my friend, it was inevitable.

I have a couple Colle games in progress, probably draw all of them. haha.