Apps
They teach moves, not thinking. The child pushes pieces while the screen says well done. Turn the screen off and nothing is left.
A chess series for children aged 4 to 12
Most chess books teach the child.This one also teaches you.
Every topic carries a box written for the parent: what to say, what not to say, and how to end the session so the child asks again tomorrow. You do not need to know chess. You need fifteen minutes.
Why the board ends up in the cupboard
Three things that look like teaching and are not
Videos
Watching is not playing. Chess is learned with a hand on a piece and with a mistake that belongs to the child.
Strong players
A strong player is not automatically a good teacher of a six year old. Knowing the game and knowing how a small child learns it are two different crafts.
The method
Learning through chess
Three rules hold the whole series together.
1
One model position
Each rule is shown on a single arranged position, not on ten. A child remembers a picture far longer than a sentence.
2
Thirty seconds
Say it, show it, let the child try. The loop is short because a six year old's attention is short. We work with that instead of fighting it.
3
The five second rule
Ask the question, count silently to five, and only then answer. In those five seconds the child starts thinking alone. That is the entire point.
The series
The Great Game
Planned as 12 books that carry a child from the first square to a real game. They are written one at a time, in the order they are taught.
Book 1Coming soon
Let's Learn to Play Chess
For children aged four to eight, and their parents
Twenty five lessons that take a child from an empty board to a whole game played alone. Every topic carries a box written for the parent, so you can sit down and help without knowing how the pieces move.
- Ages
- 4 to 8
- Pages
- 112
The next book is added here the moment it exists. Nothing is listed before it is written.
Who wrote it
A working coach, not a celebrity name on a cover
Rumen Gradishki has taught chess in Bulgarian classrooms since 2007. About 140 children a year, every year, the same hands and the same board.
- FIDE Instructor, licence 327137068
- Chess coach, National Sports Academy Vasil Levski, state exams passed with the top mark
- Registered coach, Bulgarian Ministry of Youth and Sports
- Fifteen years a schoolteacher before that, with teaching-method qualifications from Moscow State University and the councils on economic education of the United Kingdom and the United States
What the children do
Results with names on them
No promise that your child will become a champion. This is simply what happens when a child follows the order and stays with it.
2024
Eva Kichukova
Three national titles in three weeks, girls under 8
The last one at classical time control, with eight wins from eight games.
2019
Aleksandar Tsolov
Plus 53 international rating points from one tournament
From 130th to 114th in Europe and from 253rd to 221st in the world, boys under 8.
2019
Children teach children
Two days of free public lessons in two Sofia shopping malls
His own students taught chess to visiting children. A child who can teach has understood.
Free, no sign up
Try the board before you buy anything
A real chess board in the browser, with every rule working: castling, en passant, promotion, check, mate and stalemate. Two players on one screen.