When my sons were little, I used to have morning “Dad’s summer school” lessons on just about anything during the long break. It meant they wouldn’t camp out in front of the TV set to start their day. As the end of the school year coming upon us, I’m going to start with some basic lessons for this week and then do one every Monday. If you have someone you’d like to teach chess to, these are ones I’ve used in my chess lessons. The first ones will be three elementary king and pawn endings, but all teach one valuable lesson and a new vocabulary word.

Solution:

99 out of 100 beginners take the pawn and ask questions later. This is when you demonstrate the value of gaining the opposition. If you take the pawn as White, you only draw. If you play 1.Kh6 you win. It takes them a moment. What’s the difference? By gaining the opposition with 1.Kh6, Black plays 1…Kg8, then 2.Kxg6 and the capture maintains the opposition after which there are two ways for Black to go: 2…Kh8 3.Kf7! (not 3.f7 stalemate) followed by Ke8, and pawn to f7, f8 for the queen. There’s also 2…Kf8, but after 3.f7 the pawn will queen. Make sure you point out to them that a good memory help is to make sure the pawn doesn’t go to the 7th rank with check. When they queen, then show them how to mate with king and queen vs. king with any placement on the board. The rule is to have the queen box in the king by making smaller squares for it to move in by staying a knight move away, waiting until the king has only two squares to shuffle between and THEN bring the king up. It’s useful to know for 5-minute chess, too!

Send questions and comments to PTamburro@aol.com.