This interview series is all about who makes up the club (instead of just what the club is about) and briefly shines the spotlight on some of the people who you’ll have a chance to meet and play.

I personally don’t enjoy self-promotion and want my work to speak for itself, but in this case I was glad to share more about myself in case prospective members, attendees, and their families want to know more about me and the club.

• Chess.com Game Review
• Lichess Analysis Board
• Self-analysis
• Work with a chess coach
• Bring your games to chess club

Game reviews improve your chess

Improving at chess involves much more than just playing more games. Improvement comes from learning from the games you’ve already played, including the games that you’ve lost.

“You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win.”

— José Raúl Capablanca

There are a number of ways I recommend for reviewing your games that lead to quick growth and improvement in your chess games, and there’s a popular one that I don’t recommend and think can hurt your game.

Chess.com Game Review

Let’s start with the way that I don’t recommend: Chess.com’s popular Game Review tool.

Although Chess.com quickly shows some fun stats, highlights good moves, and has a friendly “chess coach” bot that explains things, the simplified bot occasionally offers misleading suggestions and tries to provide insights that are just plain wrong. There are a few issues: the bot uses oversimplified language, and it doesn’t always recognize tactics such as a winning sacrifice as a good move.

I hope that Chess.com updates Game Review in the future and makes it more helpful, but right now I can’t recommend it — I believe it gives bad advice and can even make your chess worse. Grandmaster Noël Studer gives a few examples of this, and as a bonus GM Studer also describes what he calls his “3×3 method” of studying games, which is similar to the one I give below.

If you’re still set on using Chess.com Game Review, however, you can try adjusting your settings to make it a little more effective. Under the main Settings, go to Analysis and increase the Engine Max Time (iOS-only for now) and turn on the arrows to better visualize threats and opportunities.

Chess.com engine settings

Just be ready to pay to play: Chess.com gives just one Game Review per day on the free tier and even on the paid Gold tier.

Lichess Analysis Board

The online tool that I recommend most is the Lichess Analysis Board. I use Lichess for coaching my students online, and I highly recommend it for both casual and serious play. Lichess is free and offers unlimited analysis with its excellent analysis board. Here’s how to use it.

If you have an account:

• Go to your profile and select “Games” to open a past game.
• Select “Analysis” or the microscope icon. Analysis begins, and you can see inaccuracies, mistakes, and blunders.
• You can also add notes directly on the board to better track your progress.

If you don’t have an account:

• Go to the Analysis Board in any web browser.
• Paste in the PGN text of a game.
• There is no step 3!

To get the PGN text of your game from Chess.com, open the game, select the microscope icon, then hit share, and copy.

Did I mention Lichess is free? It also has no ads or trackers. Lichess is a nonprofit charity whose dual mission is to help people play and enjoy chess and respect the privacy and digital rights of its users.

Lichess Apple Shortcut

For iPhone and iPad users, fellow chess nerd “Permanent_Solution” has shared an Apple Shortcut on Reddit that makes importing games into Lichess easier, and you can download it to make getting games into Lichess a lot faster.

Self-analysis

Analyzing games on your own is helpful, but it can take time — so it’s important to pick the most important moments in your games to review.

Focus on positions where you felt uncertain or where you made a mistake. Zero in on the critical turning points, and you can find insights without wasting time or getting overwhelmed by reviewing every single move.

At those key moments in the game, you can ask yourself:

1. Why did I make that move? There might be a good idea here, but what was it?
2. What could I have done instead?
3. What is my opponent trying to do? What ideas are they thinking of?

The key word here is ideas. When considering your moves, come up with ideas based on where your pieces are, where you want them to be, and how to get them there. This process is called inverted thinking: once you’ve figured out an idea and a goal, mentally work backwards from the goal, and then steadily move your pieces to get there.

It might be that you entered a rapid sequence of captures that seemed right at first but were just in the wrong order. Maybe there was a missed opportunity in the sequence to add a pin or attack on one of your opponents pieces. There’s even a word for this type of intermediate move: intermezzo (or zwischenzug in German).

Work with a chess coach

A good chess coach can help spot patterns you might miss, explain positional ideas, and give advice customized to your playstyle. This human approach is more personal and can accelerate your growth and improvement far more than the online tools I’ve mentioned.

One of the techniques I use with my students is asking, “If you could magically move one of your pieces to anywhere on the board, where would it go?” This can be done in the middle of the game or later during game review, and it helps jumpstart inverted thinking by visualizing where pieces can be most effective and logically figuring out the right sequence of moves to get them there.

With apologies to Capablanca, I stress that reviewing games you’ve won can indeed be helpful and reveal lazy moves. A lazy move can be a “reflex” move or automatic move made out of habit that misses an opportunity or a hanging piece. Chess engines are good at pointing out missed opportunities, but a chess coach can help you train to avoid making lazy moves in the first place.

Honorable mention: Bring your games to your local chess club

If you have a chess club near you, consider attending and sharing your games with fellow club members. At the McMinnville Chess Club, our regulars thoroughly enjoy reviewing games together, and — here’s where a human approach is better than online tools and chess engines — you can hear different viewpoints, build camaraderie, and make new friends.

If you’d like to schedule a free 20-minute introductory lesson and go over a game or two, you can always find me at the McMinnville Chess Club. This dedicated one-on-one time will help us get to know each other, play some chess, and be able to hit the ground running if you’d like to schedule a single lesson or get a punch pass.

I created and have used this new Bingo format with my chess students as a fun teaching tool, and I’ve tested these scorecards with help from the McMinnville Chess Club with great success.

These scorecards are free for personal and chess club use, and I’m excited to share them with everyone in the club and beyond. High quality PDFs are available upon request.

Since making these scorecards available, they’ve been downloaded by players and clubs all over the world, and by download counts Chess Bingō seems to have quite a following in Finland (hei, hyvät suomalaiset!), France, Latvia, and Hong Kong.

Downloads

• English: chesszendo-chess-bingo-scorecards-v3.zip
• Spanish: chesszendo-tarjetas-de-ajadrez-bingo-v3.zip

How to play

There are a few different ways to play. You can play Bingo and just try to cross off the squares (so the first to get Bingo wins), which teaches the positions and tactics but encourages making questionable moves just to get Bingo. This can be its own kind of fun, but if you wish you can play both Bingo and good chess and declare a winner if someone both gets Bingo and wins or draws the game.

I designed these scorecards so that it’s theoretically possible to get 4 squares in a row in a single game of chess. With each scoreboard there are 10 different ways to get Bingo in a single chess game, which is called a round. The theory behind this is fairly complex, but the idea is that it’s simply more fun to get Bingo in a single round.

Depending on a number of factors, such as your opponent figuring out which squares you’re trying to get, it might not always be possible to get 4 in a row in a round. If the chess game ends and no one got 4 in a row, just keep your Chess Bingō scorecard, reset the chess board, and start another round until someone gets 4 in a row.

Playing with teams

Chess Bingō can be played between just 2 people, which I do in some of my lessons with my students. It can also be played with teams (I recommend no more than 4 members per team).

Divide your group into two or more teams. For example, with 4 players and 2 chess boards, one team of 2 players sits on one side of the table playing another team of 2 sitting on the other side. Everyone on the same team gets a copy of the same scorecard.

There are 3 different Chess Bingō scorecards to choose from. Just be sure everyone on the same team gets the same one. Teams of 2 players can share the same physical scorecard.

It helps if you have a good mix of beginner and experienced players on each team so that the experienced players can give guidance and answer questions like, “Is this a knight outpost?” and “Is this a skewer or a pin?” With teams of 3 players, seat the most experienced player in the middle.

When one member of a team crosses off a square, all members of that team can cross off the same square. This encourages teamwork and uses verbalization and auditory learning to help accelerate learning the names of positions and tactics.

It can also get pretty exciting. I’ve heard “I need a pin!” and “I need a stonewall!” and seen teammates helping one another achieve a pin or stonewall in their game in order for the team to win. Through teamwork and communication, everyone on the same team can work together and cross off yet another square to get 4 in a row.

Notes

• Forks must attack pieces of same or greater value. For example, forking 2 pawns with a bishop or a knight doesn’t count. Forking 2 pawns with a pawn does.
• Stonewalls must be in the center of the board. In other words, the connecting pawn in a stonewall must be on the d-file or e-file. This teaches that stonewalls are a system and not merely a simple pawn formation.
• Some players have discovered that they can’t get any more squares and will abruptly resign just to start a new round. The “opponent resigns” square was added to help deter this. (thanks, Max!).
• Bingo scoreboards are usually 5×5, and Chess Bingō uses 4×4 scorecards so that rounds go more quickly. This approach uses spaced repetition and reinforcement loops to help make learning positions and tactics more fun and effective.
• Translations welcome! Contact me if you’d like to translate Chess Bingō into other languages.
  • Spanish language translation courtesy of Ken Samuel Kyllingmark.

Chess Bingō is a work in progress. Contact me with your feedback and suggestions!

I believe in the values of learning, playing, and improving in chess — and in the power that chess has to develop the skills for a successful life.

Having been both a teacher and a life-long chess player, I was delighted to realize later in my life how many life skills chess has taught me, and these are the skills I teach my students.

• Teaches players etiquette and how to win and lose
• Can help develop focus
• An educational tool
• Helps players realize the consequences of their actions
• Develops creativity and creative thinking
• Builds confidence
• Develops problem-solving skills
• Helps players remain calm under pressure
• Exercises the brain and benefits the body
• Brings people together

Chess teaches players etiquette and how to win and lose

Chess teaches good sportsmanship and the virtues of both winning and losing, from shaking hands at the start of a game to gracefully accepting the outcome.

The sense of excitement and achievement from winning makes learning fun, while losing can provide valuable lessons in the importance of learning from mistakes, humility, and resilience (my favorite).

Chess can help develop focus

Chess is a game that requires intense focus and concentration. Players need to analyze the board, make a plan, anticipate their opponent’s moves, and adapt accordingly in order to come up with a winning strategy.

Maintaining this kind of focus for extended periods of time translates to the ability to concentrate both over-the-board and in everyday life.

Chess is an educational tool

Chess can be a valuable addition to any curriculum, and scholastic chess (chess programs for school-aged children) give students fun and challenging opportunities to become better learners and problem-solvers.

There’s an enormous wealth of books, magazines, and videos on chess, and there’s always the chance to learn something new. With the right guidance and resources, players can enjoy and learn immensely and not even realize that they are learning and improving.

Chess helps players realize the consequences of their actions

Chess requires players to think several moves ahead and consider how each decision impacts the overall game. Each and every move can lead to a cascade of outcomes, teaching players the importance of foresight and strategic planning. This awareness not only informs their gameplay but also translates into real life situations where it’s important to make decisions carefully.

Chess develops creativity and creative thinking

Chess encourages players to think about their thinking, which helps develop an awareness and regulation of one’s cognitive processes. This process, or metacognition, has untold benefits not only in chess but also in creative thinking in the real world away from the board.

Successful chess players practice reflective thinking and can assess their own thought processes, and this helps creativity and brilliance emerge. An example of this “thinking about thinking” that can lead to insights and innovation is when a player “sees the board,” identifies patterns, and draws connections between them.

Chess builds confidence

As players improve their skills and experience more victories and camaraderie, they gain a sense of accomplishment and self-identity that reinforces their confidence and self-esteem. Facing challenging situations head on and overcoming setbacks promotes resilience (my favorite), and this boosts confidence even further — both in chess and in everyday life.

Over the years, I’ve seen countless players become more confident and comfortable in themselves as they’ve developed not just their skills and familiarity with the game, but also a healthy sense of self-identity. The mental switch from thinking, “I can play chess” to “I am a chess player” is a powerful one, and it’s a joy for me to see every time.

Develops problem-solving skills

Chess teaches many mental models and problem-solving skills, including critical thinking, strategic planning, pattern recognition, adaptability, decision-making, creativity and ingenuity, and (my favorite) resilience and emotional regulation.

An important life skill learned through chess that’s especially helpful is inverted thinking. Instead of asking, “Why can’t I get what I want?” in a game, we can ask “What’s stopping me from getting what I want?” and thinking backwards from the desired solution and finding the right sequence of moves.

Chess helps players remain calm under pressure

Chess creates a high-stakes environment where critical decisions must be made during every game, and often under time constraints.

Players practice managing their emotions and maintaining their focus, and each and each and every game is an opportunity for both deep concentration and clear thought, even when situations become tense. Over time, this type of repeatable experience translates into real life scenarios, enabling players to handle stress and pressure with greater confidence and composure.

Chess exercises the brain and benefits the body

Positive mental stress (eustress) can contribute to a motivation to improve, such as climbing the chess ladder with a nationally-recognized rating or beating a beloved family member.

It’s not just the brain, however, Chess can also be a good way to burn calories through the positive physical stress of the game. It’s been reported in several studies that playing chess can burn the same amount of calories as other sports such as tennis and running.

NPR reported in 2019 that due to accelerated heart rates that over the course of a 10-day tournament, high level players lose 10-12 pounds on average. Chess is a sport, and chess players need to treat it like one in order to excel and advance in competitions. Mental preparedness is important, and nutrition, rest, and recovery are all important, as well.

Chess brings people together

Chess is a platform for friendly competition, social interaction, and collaboration, and it encourage bonding, sharing experiences, and celebrating each other’s successes regardless of differences in age, sex, and even culture and language.

This social aspect helps players cultivate an identity as part of a community and a sense of belonging, and many players join clubs, participate in tournaments, and find other ways to connect with others who share their passion.

Before starting Chess Zendō, I founded the McMinnville Chess Club in 2023, and our local chess club has continually created opportunities for players to meet, make new friends, and learn from one another. If you’re in the Portland and McMinnville area, I invite you to come visit us!