My college chess club

Hey so at my college me and my professor made a chess group, we started designing the sign up sheets and our first session is 26/01/2022 does anyone have any suggestions of how we can teach people, make the sessions a bit more interesting and any activities we could do to make people more interested or lure people to join? Ill be more then happy to all of the suggestions, the more the better.

How we can teach people about chess:

1 . Teach them about how pieces move and value, castling, en passant, pawn promotion

2. Teach them tactics about stalemate, checkmate, Fool's mate, Scholar's mate, and win material using opponent's blunder.

3. Teach them about sacrifice to checkmate or win material, you can show them Master's match

you can teach by showing some chess videos playing with them by telling something funny

@Brandon-ReeceElliott

I think it would be good to state on your signup sheet what you are offering and who you are targeting for your chess club. Any and all chess players including beginners? Lessons, Tournaments? Themes? E.g. opening studies or thematic opening tournaments? If either of you are titled or have coaching experience you might mention that. Its hard to commit to anything without knowing what its about. Another point is many live online these days so consider an online presence or signup mechanism, even if your events will be OTB. Possibly a hybrid format should be considered so you are adaptable to the changing circumstances for public events.

And finally, bon chance! I think its great you are doing this. I wish you success and fun.

@EmaciatedSpaniard my proffessor has coaching experience and obviously is a teacher, I'm higher rated then him but he has the experience in teaching and being able to talk to students and explain, we plan on doing OTB tournaments, lessons and mostly just having fun and playing, we will also have online tournaments on weekends and we might even do lessons aswell on weekends. Also we're considering doing a chess960 tournament as it relys on tactics and it is very very hard to have any opening prep from the starting position so they will have to rely on tactics instead of theory. Also thank you for your support it means alot

The Chess960 idea is interesting. Not everyone is familiar with it. How will you decide the opening positions for games? Will you show it on a screen and the students at each table set it up like that?

For beginners
1. the basics - how the pieces move, and the goal of chess
2. some basic checkmate patterns
3. some basic endgames - major pieces

For intermediate
1. some easy openings and the ideas behind: the opening principles
2. some more checkmate patterns
3. some more advanced endgames like pawns endgames. Some general endgame principles
4. some tactics- basics.

For intermediate-advanced
1. some more complex openings - like hype-modern. The ideas behind
2. some more advanced+ endgames
3. tactics intermediate
4. strategic play
5. positional basics

For advanced
1. advanced++ endgames
2. advanced tactics
3. strategic play +
4. positional - how to use the weaknesses
5. how to convert a won position

Somehow something like this

@Brandon-ReeceElliott said in #1:
> does anyone have any suggestions of how we can teach people,

Collect a small membership fee and use the money to purchase a few chess books, which members can check out between meetings.

> make the sessions a bit more interesting

Play a ladder tournament, so you can avoid serious mismatches while providing challenging games.

> any activities we could do to make people more interested or lure people to join?

Hold some meetings in a place people have access to, like the student union, or the tables at a campus plaza.

Tactics on kahoot, a quiz type with scores and leaderboards
Arena tourneys with small prizes/goodies(initially funded by you, later memberships/small donations)
Competitions with other college clubs online

@magicsacrifblunder said in #7:
> For beginners
> 1. the basics - how the pieces move, and the goal of chess
> 2. some basic checkmate patterns
> 3. some basic endgames - major pieces
>
> For intermediate
> 1. some easy openings and the ideas behind: the opening principles
> 2. some more checkmate patterns
> 3. some more advanced endgames like pawns endgames. Some general endgame principles
> 4. some tactics- basics.
>
> For intermediate-advanced
> 1. some more complex openings - like hype-modern. The ideas behind
> 2. some more advanced+ endgames
> 3. tactics intermediate
> 4. strategic play
> 5. positional basics
>
> For advanced
> 1. advanced++ endgames
> 2. advanced tactics
> 3. strategic play +
> 4. positional - how to use the weaknesses
> 5. how to convert a won position
>
> Somehow something like this

I love this idea, most of the players are not even ECF rated and are about 1000-1500 lichess, obviously im only 1800 so only slightly better and my teacher is 1700 but we can all use this as experience and ways so that we can improve on. So thank you for suggesting this!!