What would you think if you’d paid $10, $20, or even $30. per hour for chess coaching or a camp and when you decide to sit in to watch you see inexperienced players playing each other with no clocks, no score sheets, and with no intentions of  reviewing the games?  What if you discovered that the attending coach/coaches learned how to move the pieces just a few weeks or months ago, That they’ve never been to a tournament let alone played in one, and the 1st time they ever saw a copy of the official rules of chess was when it was shown to the camp participants?!

Chess coaching and camps are designed to improve the quality of a participants preparation and then their performance!  It won’t happen in the same day, it won’t happen in the same week, and sometimes will takes weeks or months to grow in to a consistency!  As a matter of fact, most of the permanent improvements take place after the participant has prepared for, played in, and analyzed their games after a tournament!!  (See, “Being a Chess Parent”)  That’s because if the new material is really of any value, it should be virtually impossible to master the material after just 1 exposure!!  After being coached, or going to a camp, if you don’t have to review anything, you weren’t taught, you’ve just had a real expensive refresher course!

I’ve interviewed players during post mortems at tournaments for 6 yrs.  I can’t tell you the number of players that have coaches and/or have attended multiple camps that can’t remember how to record a game, that can’t see 2.5 moves ahead, that don’t know the rules of castling, that don’t know, ” Capturing En Passant”, that don’t know draw rules, that have never had chess homework, and that have never communicated with their camp instructor again, has been truly shocking!  After spending all that money, half of the games I look at resemble the kind of game you’d expect  at a school, a club, a park, a family gathering, or a daycare, not a post coach, or a post camp tournament performance!

RCI is doing full private and public camps this year!  We’re going to have a good time, but it’s going to be while we’re learning how to win, not how to play!  Contact Mike at 804-426-6058 for details and pricing!