Pre-tournament communication and practice
The first engagement for the event starts in the classroom. Let the children know there is an exciting school team event coming up. Give them the details and explain how you will select the team. This may take a few weeks while you are working out how many school teams you can enter into the event. The team normally consists of between 4 and 6 players, depending on the event.
Once you have selected your team, it is time to make contact with the parents. This should take place at least three weeks before the event, providing all relevant details and giving time for the parents to confirm their child is taking part; also giving you time to find replacement if a child is not available.
Three days before the event, you resend the email again, asking for confirmation from the parents that they have received and understood the instructions. Parents are very busy: if you do not remind them you will find that little Jonny may not turn up on the day because it has slipped the minds of the parents, thus affecting your entire team.
What should a player and parents bring with them?
The parents will spend the entire day in the team room and will not see their children play chess. The “professional” tournament parents will bring computers and books so they can work during the day. They will also check out the surrounding area of the venue beforehand to see if there are any food outlets and coffee shops and, if not , will bring substantial food and drinks for the day.
The children should ideally have the following:
- Adequate food and especially water for the day. This is more relevant in hot weather
- Scoresheets / scorebook. If you are writing your moves down, then this is vital. Some organisers – but not all – provide free scoresheets. You cannot rely on this to be the case.
- A pencil to write down your moves.
The role of the parents
The parents will spend most of the time in the team room. It will be their responsibility to look after their children, ensuring they are fed and watered. The parents should be made aware that they are responsible for their children outside of the tournament hall.
There will be an opportunity for a couple of parents to be team managers if you run a large school with multiple teams. This means they will be fairly close to their own children in the playing hall. When you allocate a parent to watch over a team, make sure their child is not in that team.
The parents can also help you with admin tasks at the beginning of the event. I ask for volunteers, asking for help with things such as filling in names on certificates or filling in the board order sheet, or finding out the date of births for all children for the organiser’s records.
Arrival at the event
As a coach, you should arrive at the event at least an hour before the start. Your first job is to find the team room and set up. My recommendation is to have few sets scattered around the room as well as some simple tactics worksheets. Place your demo board in a position with the most space, as this will also be where you start your first team talk.
Ensure you have read and understood all the rules, especially those around illegal moves, the role of the team manager and how the team scores points in the event.
Once parents and children start to arrive, welcome the parents and ask the children to set up the sets and play.
The first team talk
This is very important. The children should be gathered in a small group in front of you. The team talk should ideally start 30 minutes before the first round, as there will be a lot to go through.
Your team talk can consist of the following:
- Details of the board order, so that each child knows what team and what board he is playing on.
- Explain the touch move and touch take rule.
- Explain how the team scores points in the event. Team events are generally decided by match points or team points.
- Explain the time control, and also how to use the clocks if some players have never used a clock before the event.
- Explain the illegal move rule.
- It is of vital importance that you tell the children the importance of moving slowly. You will have to repeat this every single round, as young children tend to move very quickly. This needs constant reminders.
- It is very important to be positive. It is very important that the children have a good time. I tend to say the following, “All I ask of you is that you do your best and try your hardest. This is all your parents or I would expect from you.” Never put pressure on a child. The event is about the children having fun and doing the best they can. It is not about the coach scoring points by beating another coach’s team.
Recording games
It is good practice for the children to write down the moves of their games as soon as they are able to. The reasons for this are as follows:
- To slow the children down.
- To provide a game record in case there are any disputes in the game.
- To allow the chess coach to analyse the game.
There is a fine balance between being able to write the moves down and the entire process being a bit too confusing for children. I would not advise starting this process in their first school tournament. It is better for them to have practised this beforehand. As they start to write the moves down for the first time, you will see them clearly getting used to the coordinates. Such things as using the pen and counting across a, b, c, d, then up 1, 2, 3, etc. This often happens despite the numbers and letters being at the side of the board. As they become more experienced, they should be able to write down the moves automatically without letters and numbers being on the board, and be able to identify the coordinate for a square instantly. ChessKid has a module called ‘vision’ which will help in this process.
The role of the team manager
The team manager could be a chess coach, or a parent helping out. The chess coach should do the team talk in between rounds. The first role of the team manager is to gather together the players in the team he is looking after and ensure they all know what board they are on. This should take place first thing in the team room.
The team manager will then take his team into the tournament hall, find the pairing board and locate the board his team will play on. My advice is to tell the children to wait in a place close to the pairing board so that you have sight of them, and then go to the pairing board yourself. Many other coaches allow the children to check themselves. This often results in lots of children crowding around a pairing board, resulting in overcrowding, which is potentially a hazard.
General format of the event
There are many different types of event. None are perfect. The three most popular are listed below. Most team events are generally 4-6 boards and last 5 or 6 rounds. The EPSCA final has 7 rounds
- A tournament decided by game points. This is the format used by EPSCA. It allows pretty much all schools a chance of doing quite well all the way until the end of the event. You could lose your first match 5-0 but still win the event by winning 5-0 in your remaining 4 matches, scoring a game point total of 20 points. It is not always the best team that wins or qualifies in these types of events. The teams are paired team v team and board 1 v board 1, board 2 v board 2, etc.
- A tournament decided on match points. This is quite simple. Your team scores generally 1 point for a match point win. For example you could win on boards 1 and 2 but lose on board 3, 4, & 5. This results in the loss of the match 2-3. The best team tends to win these events. Compared with the game point method above, the worst teams have little chance of progressing further. The teams are paired team v team and board 1 v board 1, board 2 v board 2, etc.
- A Jamboree tournament decided by game points. This is generally the format of county junior team events. A preset draw is provided. The team manager selects the position in the draw. Pairings are not team v team, but random matches based on a preset table. The game points are totalled up after each round. A board 1 could play a board 2 in this format.
What to do in between rounds
This is very important. There is a fine balance between chess and too much chess and football in the playground and too much football. Remember that a school team event tends to last the entire day from around 9am to 5pm. The parents will have to wake up their children early, so that they can get to the venue in good time. It is a long day for children. So if you spend your entire break doing chess puzzles and going over games, it is likely the children will tire and make more errors in the later rounds. On the other hand, if you send them out to play football in the playground in between rounds, especially in the heat, the effect will be the same.
I find best practice to be the following: if you really need to analyse everything in a game at a tournament, it is already too late; this should have been resolved pre-tournament. Having a quick look through a relevant tactic may be of use. Leaving chess sets around your parents’ room so that the kids can play is good practice, as is leaving puzzles around the room.
It is very important the children get a break away from chess. So a short football / running around break is good. There is a fine balance between enough and too much. Getting this wrong will affect the children in the later rounds. As a coach you have to be aware of every child’s capabilities. You should have a good idea whether a child has run around too much and, for instance, not drunk enough water.
Keeping score of your team and all of the team scores
In most team events, the pairings are done manually and the team scores – updated after each round – are normally placed on walls outside the playing hall. In the later rounds, it is advisable to have a score book and be aware of the positions of all teams, so that you know how many points you need to qualify for the next stage of the event. This is generally quite easy to do. Some coaches make the points scores known to the children in their team, and tell them the team needs X points to qualify. My personal view is that this may put too much pressure on a child and firstly can result in them not playing as well, but more importantly in not enjoying themselves as much as they should. A child’s enjoyment while trying their hardest is what you want to achieve. If your team happens to progress to the next round, then that is an added bonus. A fail in my mind is when a team progresses, but the children have been put under too much pressure and did not enjoy themselves. This is the manual on how to make children give up chess at some point in the future.
Tidying up your team room
You will find that the same schools often hold zonal events year after year. If you attend a local zonal and leave your team room in a mess, you will not be invited back the year after and may have to find another zonal much further from your location. Remember that most team rooms are classrooms that teachers use the day after. Teachers are very protective of their classroom environment. It is imperative that you leave the classroom exactly as you found it, out of respect and due to the point mentioned above. It is advisable to arrive first and take a picture of the classroom before anyone arrives, especially concerning the placing of the tables and chairs around the room.
