Chess training camp concludes at Chess Gurukul

A four day camp for the students of Chess Gurukul concluded successfully at Chennai on 15th April, 2010. The trainer was Grandmaster R.B. Ramesh (its me!). There were 15 participants in the rating range of 1550 upto 1975 aged between 9 -14 years. The students were given training in Calculation of variations for the full four days and the result was truly beyond my expectation. Initially the children struggled a lot to solve even the simple of positions but once they understood that with patience and perseverance the art of calculation could be learnt and improved upon quickly as in any other part of Chess.

When I told the children we will be working on just Calculation for the whole period of the camp the children groaned (as expected!) and complained they will be bored in just 1 day. I was pleasantly surprised when the same kids wanted to do more of Calculation on the second and every subsequent day. They started to throughly enjoy to experience  first hand how their small but powerful brains could handle so much work and produce quality output when properly focused. Many of them solved positions were they had to visualise 13 moves ahead from the initial complicated position!.  Can I ask for more?

I believe the kids enjoyed as much as I did the last 4 days of hard work. It is always nice to see young children pushing their limits to the maximum, over coming the in built doubts and fears and insecurities and realising the fruits of sustained, focussed work. They suddenly realised that they could calculate much much better than they thought was possible. Which was exactly what I wanted them to learn from the short camp.

We are planning to have a week long camp on Calculation when the kids return from various tournaments. Am looking forward to it!

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