THE AUSTRALIAN 24/11/07: Schools make the move to chess. By Justine Ferrari

NO longer the secret, dusty passion of nerdy types that live in the school library, chess is now the fastest growing sport in the nation's schools.

Even members of the footy team play chess these days.

The national school chess competition has grown exponentially over the past five years, by 40 to 50 per cent every year, with some competitors as young as five.

Other schools are taking chess out of the lunch hour and integrating it into their maths classes for the strategic thinking and problem-solving skills the game fosters.

Brighton Grammar School in Melbourne prides itself on being a chess school, and is currently leading the national competition with players like nine-year-old Isaac Ng.

Chess has been part of the school for about 15 years and sets are provided to encourage the students to play it at lunchtime or after school, including an outdoor set with large pieces.

Director of community education John Phillips said chess had shed its nerdy image at the school, with boys of all interests playing it, including the sporting types.

"Partly that's due to the success the school has had in chess competitions in the past few years," Mr Phillips said.

In the Castlemaine area in central Victoria, a program integrating chess into maths lessons for Year 6 students has been running for the past two years and is taught in about 12 local primary schools and Castlemaine Secondary College. Co-creator Steve Carroll said it was teaching students a way of thinking mathematically and confidence to approach tricky problems rather than actual mathematical knowledge.

"Many of the teachers have been surprised because they assumed the kids who were smart would be good at chess but the kids excelling in chess are different to the ones excelling in maths.

"It's creating success for low-achieving kids and having a profound effect on their attitudes to school and maths," Mr Carroll said.

The National Interschool Chess Championships, to be held next month, are organised by Chess Kids, a company that markets recreational and educational chess programs to school.

It was started about 10 years ago by chess enthusiast David Cordover, who said school chess had exploded in the past four or five years, which he attributed to the greater value placed on intelligence in the community.

"People see all these internet billionaires and think being a computer geek isn't so bad after all," he said.

"People know that we're in a knowledge economy and kids have to do well at school."

My Brilliant Brain- National Geographic Documentary

My Brilliant Brain is a 3-part series examining the concept of genius- and putting forward the notion that genius is created through perserverence and hard work.

The first episode, screened in Australia last Friday on Pay TV, traced the story of Grandmaster Susan Polgar, who was bought up by her psychologist father as an experiment to prove that, if trained properly, a female can be as competitve on the chess board as any male. In the 1970's this was radical thinking as no female could get close to the top 600 male players in the world.

Some of Susans better party tricks include playing an opponent over the phone- and beating them- without being able to see a chess board. Or, sitting outside a cafe, truck drives past in peak hour traffic with a chess board painted on the side. She gets a three second glance, then places 32 pieces in exactly the same configuration on a chess board in front of her!

Computer animation explains how Polgars brain is different from mine or Sam Grumonts, by using the face recognition part to identify millions of chess combinations.

If you want to watch the 46 minute doco on-line, click here.

'A time to reflect.' by Leanne Preece

“Mrs Preece, ya wanna vs me?” challenged Conor, a delightful year seven student, while I observed a game of chess one lunchtime.

“If you can teach me how to play first”, I replied. Conor shrugged her shoulders and walked off to find a more challenging opponent.

And so it came to be that, once again, I found myself reflecting upon why I have never really wanted to learn to play chess before it became so popular at the Junior Campus of Castlemaine Secondary College.

It comes down to three things:
1. I once bought myself a terrific book on how to play the game of chess. I read the introduction,
“Chess is a game of war. You control one army, and your opponent, the enemy, controls the other, the fate of your army depends entirely on your own skill. Most other games rely on chance – a move may be determined by the role of a die, or the turn of a card. But in chess there is no such thing as luck” …………and got no further. I have always enjoyed playing other games; my opponents often accuse me of being lucky.

2. Before you make a move on a chess board you need to try and predict how your opponent will respond. In deciding what to play, you need to apply REASON, MEMORY, and LOGIC. Why would I want to use up my precious leisure time doing this, it sounds like hard work?

3. I get my energy from other people (yes call me an extrovert). The though of having to sit quietly, for what seems like an age is not really my style. I prefer to work in collaboration with others, hear their ideas and have mine discussed. Everyone is so quiet when they are concentrating on their game.

And so you see, Conor chose wisely when she sought another opponent. Is there anyone out there who would be patient enough to teach me how to play and play to WIN?

Leanne Preece
Junior Campus Principal - Castlemaine Secondary College

The GENDER Puzzle.

Chess and gender always gets a heated response.
For those who don’t know chess has, historically, been dominated by males. And the obvious question is WHY?
A GOOGLE Search on the topic will return 2,600,000 responses- some which I’ve included below.
Without getting embroiled in gender warfare, I’ve noticed some interesting observations- completely untested- in my own classes.
Last year, I had a predominately male yr9 maths methods class (16males, 4 females) where the boys would BEG to have chess games/tournaments during class time. They would salivate and engage in battlemode of the highest order.
Of the 4 girls, one was a good player, one had never played, and two were indifferent. When they played together (chose not to play with the boys!) they had a co-operative approach, naturally sharing strategies and working much less competitively.
One girl wasn’t the slightest bit interested in playing and continued with maths ‘from the book’. I asked her why girls seemed less interested in playing chess.
And, her response was a classic!
She shrugged her shoulders: “Girls have got better things to do with their time.”
Touche!
This is interesting when we compare attitudes with my yr7 class: boys and girls seem equally keen to play chess. There doesn’t seem any obvious gender difference and these are the comments we are hearing from primary school sessions.
The implications, and questions from this are interesting.-
1) what happens, hormonally with the onset of puberty, that effects interest in chess, and perhaps other areas of maths development?
2) if chess has the benefits we think, it must be important to introduce it as early as possible.
3) are girls being disadvantaged if they haven’t been introduced to chess pre-pubescant?
4) is there any correlation between girls who complete VCE Maths, and those who have been exposed to chess.
There are many aspects to this fascinating topic. If you have any anecdotes, theories, or ideas, please let us know about them in our comments section.
Before you find the right answers, you need to ask the right questions.