Learning to play chess is one of the most rewarding things a child can discover.

Chess is fun and exciting, offering wonderful opportunities to grow a child's self respect and build valuable social skills. Encouraging kids to study the game of chess is a great move you can make as a parent. Kids that are mentally gifted as well as children with lesser abilities and those that struggle in school will all benefit from the challenging game.

Chess levels the playing field and allows every child an opportunity to succeed. With encouragement from parents and coaches, children will catch the spirit and eagerly embrace this game, desiring to excel and looking forward to chess competitions.

Chess will not only help a child in school, it will help them in life! As a child learns and studies chess, he or she will be exercising and creating disciplines of the mind while expanding mathematical and calculative abilities. The child will also be learning patience, planning, consequences, balance of time, resources and other essential life skills.

Chess is Fun!

Let's not forget though, chess is fun!! Kids have a blast playing their friends, siblings, and schoolmates. Experience your first chess tournament and you will see that chess teaches a lot, and is a great opportunity for children to socialize, compete, and challenge themselves.

How to Learn Chess

Some children love to read and are very easy to teach. You just hand them a book, and let them absorb it. In most cases however, kids are visual, have a short attention span, and need to be encouraged. It's best to select materials that are not overwhelming, that will be visually appealing, and at a suitable level - especially if you will be letting your child learn on their own.

If you have a quality teacher or chess coach in your area, you may want to take advantage of this, but there's every reason to learn at home, with the great tools available.

Get a basic, but good quality regulation plastic chess set. This will be useful whether you only play at home, or if you are part of a class or club.

Next, choose a combination of DVD instruction, books, and software as you see fit for your child's needs and learning style.

The Chess4life learning tools by Elliott Neff set up children for success at learning the game while sharpening life skills. Avoiding bad habits and often overlooked strategies is a key factor in improving rapidly.

For all ages and ideal for 6-14 years, kids learn in bite size visual segments in Elliott's clear, fun presentation. It's easy to follow from the most basic concepts onward ensuring that all key strategies are covered. Elliott's experience combined with an easy pace in friendly, clear English makes this series the best learning experience at home. Kids often watch them over and over.

Several workbooks available, help reinforce and enable further practice of the strategies. With a club style home chess set to practice, moving the pieces on the board while watching the DVDs multiplies the learning effect.

This tool has been developed, refined, and taught by National Master Elliott Neff over a period of 17+ years, producing multiple state and national individual and team chess champions.