Does anyone know anything about chess clubs?

[Mannymoomin]

Hoping some of you may be able to help,
DS is about to turn 12 and wants nothing for his birthday, apart from to play chess and compete in chess tournaments.

I am completely out of my depth here, know nothing of chess other than that DS has a very good rating on chess.com and loves the game.

I’m in Lincolnshire and locally I haven’t been able to find any clubs for juniors, I really don’t know where to start, can I enter him into tournaments if he isn’t part of a chess club?

someone help

I have no idea whether this is useful but might be worth some further investigation?

mannchess.org.uk/doncong.htm

It looks as if it attracts players from across Yorks/Lincs. There are also lists of entrants and their clubs as well as contact details for the officers who I am sure could offer advice.

Good luck to your DS, chess is a great game.

@ChicoryDip that is very helpful as a starting point, thank you so much!

Is he about to move to high school? Or already attending one?
Have you asked if there is a school chess club?
That's how I got used to the rigmarole of playing in a competitive context.

@SuperLoudPoppingAction he’s year 7 at secondary, sadly no chess clubs there, but it has been suggested to the school that they start one.

I don't know about junior clubs/tournaments local to you, but you could ask the English Chess Federation (ECF), who can help.

In-person chess tournaments involve a lot of waiting, for the parent, but apart from that it becomes a nice community. You'll start to see the same people around a lot.

If you Google A Parents Guide to Chess, and/or A Parents Guide to Chess Tournaments you will find more info.

And finally -- if you are looking for a (free) birthday present you can get you son a membership of the ECF, first year free. They organise a lot of things including online.

Plus he gets a bit more serious and you want to be fancy, you can also get him for a "FIDE ID", basically the register of serious chess players (also free), via the ECF. The register is public and it doesn't really 'do' anything unless he is playing in serious tournaments, but he might find it fun to be on the same list as Magnus Carlson (world champion), etc.

Have fun!

(Source: having lots of fun getting into chess via my son, who is much stronger than me).

Thank you, this is super helpful, off the back of this he’s now got a membership at ECF, where I’ve also managed to find details of a local chess club, so he’ll be attending that next week.
Along with a local-ish chess tournament which I’ve also registered him to play in next weekend.

He’s very excited, thank you very much!

I used to end up playing in the local "megafinal" when I was at school and looking at it I think it still exists:

www.delanceyukschoolschesschallenge.com/enter-the-challenge/

Does he have any chess books etc? Obviously I imagine all the information he could need is online now, but there are some books that teach openings etc logically that he might like?

@Augend23 thank you, I’ll have at that.

He actually asked for chess books for Christmas, which he got plenty of, all rather complicated looking for me but he certainly enjoys reading them.

He’s already taught me all about chess openings - I naively thought you just played!

These are the secret 'feel good' threads on Mumsnet. All the best to your DS @Mannymoomin I hope he enjoys his new club and first competition.

The Delaney megafinals are great! DS and I had a lot of fun at those. Even went through to the Gigafinal one year.

OP, if you're ever tempted to buy him more chess books, Jeff Coakley's are really good (though expensive).

@Mannymoomin That's great! Sorry for all my typos. If he is going to his first tournament then I'll PM you something later today.

Glad you've found a club.

He can absolutely enter tournaments himself though. If you look at the ECF calendar, you'll see that a lot of junior tournaments are for young children but he can play mixed age/adult tournaments which are grouped by rating.

He needs to look for beginners/ungraded at first, and start with rapid play. He'll get 5 or 6 games over a day.

I've been away from the chess world since covid, but we spent many weekends at tournaments.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for all the helpful advice.

I’ll have a look at the Jeff Coakley books, ds is dyslexic so it’s massive anyway that he actually enjoys his chess books.

We’ve just come back from chess, I have to say it was massively boring, for me 😂 ds thoroughly enjoyed himself, he won 3 rounds out of 5, but forfeited his 3rd place medal to allow another child to win as ds felt bad for him that he hadn’t won any, so all round a good day had!

thanks again everyone.

Sounds like you need some discreet Bluetooth headphones and a good audiobook or similar OP! I can imagine they are very long and pretty dull if you aren't directly involved.

I'm glad he had a good day :)