Group chess lessons and school clubs are sometimes seen as secondary to private lessons. Private lessons must be better, because the chess coach can give the student their undivided attention, right? Well not exactly. Private lessons are great, but group chess lessons provide a completely different set of tools especially useful to beginners. Let’s talk about why group lessons might be the better choice for your child.
Group Chess Lessons & The Social Itch
Even children that love chess can have a hard time keeping attentive to a lesson. That’s because school aged children are social creatures. With the right coach leading the group, we can take advantage of this fact to make chess even more interesting and interactive for our students. During our group lessons and extracurricular clubs, we like to lean into the social aspect of chess. We encourage collaborative learning because it’s just more fun for young children. Skill development is important, but fostering a love for chess and chess lessons is also a key building block to a lifelong chess passion. Group chess lessons are our best tool to ensure chess is a fun experience for your child.
Analyzing Games In A Club
A fundamental aspect of growing as a player is analysis of your games. Analysis can be intimidating at first, but it’s an important habit to learn. Through the use of group chess lessons, we give our younger students many different people to play with, and by extension, many different people to analyze games with. Sitting across from different players and talking about mistakes and game-changing moves is not only exciting, but it opens children up to having this conversation with others in the future. Playing against different play styles will allow them to analyze in different ways, pay attention to different things, and identify consistent mistakes they make across the board.
Group Chess Lessons & Tournament Settings
Even if you’re not aiming for your child to be the next Magnus Carlsen, tournament play is still a great aspiration to have. Joining tournaments is great for connecting your child to like minded individuals, and keeping the competitive drive alive and thriving.
We’ve seen how tournament play can be a bit intimidating for people who are new to it. This can sometimes lead to great players avoiding them altogether. School chess clubs are an excellent way to introduce your child to the tournament setting. Meeting new people, following etiquette, rotating opponents; these are all basic tournament concepts that your child will be very familiar with if they are used to group chess lessons. Tournament play will be unintimidating and confidence will be through the roof.
If you’re looking for a good place to start with group chess lessons, send us an inquiry here. We have excellent group lessons, both online and in person. We also led some of London’s best school chess clubs!