Game of Life Series: Ep: 3 Alas the Journey Continues

This is the 3rd installment of our Game of Life Series where we share LaPharaoh’s journey into the game of Chess. On the previous blog found here we documented LaPharaoh’s 1st Chess Tournament experience as well as our  search to find the right Chess Club for him to participate in. Since our last post we’ve been making some moves; we visited a local chess club, received some fantastic tips from Chess professionals and registered for an upcoming tournament.

The journey continues…

We found a Chess Club about 7 minutes away from our home so we decided, “hey, why not give it a shot”! The Saratoga Staunton Chess Club is held every Sunday evening at 7:00 pm Est at the Saratoga Springs United Methodist Church @ 175 Fifth Avenue. We attended the Chess Club 3 times (as of the writing of this blog) and have picked up some great tips, tools, and techniques to help LaPharaoh’s game continue to progress. LaPharaoh is  6 and generally they don’t have players that young attend so the club’s organizer (Alan LeCours) wanted to put his skills to the test in a little sparring match.  I could tell LaPharaoh was a little nervous, and ultimately did lose but he held his own, for 6 ;). What really peaked my interest was the fact that Alan took notations for the game. Notations are a documentation of each and every move made by each player. The notations were kept on a sheet which displays other useful information about the game like the name of the players, which pieces they’ve selected, number of moves etc.

As a former standout athlete and a true student of the game, I have always enjoyed breaking down games and studying the film of my opponents. After LaPharaoh’s match with Alan, the notations he took allowed them to go back and reconfigure the pieces to specific junctures in the game where the tide changed. At that point they were able to reevaluate those moves for possible better alternatives, I thought that was amazing!

With notation in the fold, now we possessed the ability to analyze the moves that were made in hindsight and explore the mindset and the intent that inspired each move. This opens a channel for dialogue and provides an opportunity to gain valuable insight into the logic, reasoning, and problem solving skills being implemented by LaPharaoh. Having this information allows us to see how an entire course of events (the chess match) can be altered with the slightest change in action or approach (move A -vs- move B).

At the conclusion of Chess Club we were given a handful of notation templates and 4 classic chess books to study (The Logical Approach to Chess, Lasker’s Manual of Chess, Chess for fun & chess for blood, and Chess the Easy Way).

Also since our last blog we’ve been working on our “Opening Moves Training”. After our 1st Chess Tournament (Schenectady’s Chess in the City Blitz Tourny) we received a tip on how we could fine tune LaPharaoh’s game. One of the elder, more experienced gentlemen helping run the event suggested we start familiarizing ourselves with the 3 stages of the game… opening moves, middle game, and end game.  We could begin by choosing an opening move and using that same move every time we play for an entire month.

We are currently in our 2nd round of moves (2 months in) and honestly I can’t wait until Oct 23 07:22 am when the Solar month changes to Scorpio so i can switch my opening move. I have been getting completely DESTROYED by LaPharaoh as of late. My opening move is the Queen side Knight, while LaPharaoh’s is the Queen Pawn and I have not been able to find much success against him at all. Seriously, I maaaaaaaaybe win at a rate of 1 out of  every 10 games we play and being the competitive person I am the 23rd can’t come soon enough.

Well that’s all for this installment of The Game of Life Series…be on the look our for new content in the coming weeks from LaPharaoh’s upcoming all day Chess Tournament in Albany, New York.

Thanks for stopping by…we’ll check ya later mate!

Peeeeeeeeace

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