Dear Prairie Chess Club Families,

Welcome to the Prairie Chess Club
We are off to an exciting start for our chess club.  Although we were missing several or students on our first day, it otherwise went very smoothly. If your child did miss Monday, do not worry, we still welcome them with open arms next week.  If you have changed your mind, however, please drop me a note.

Many of our students know how the pieces moved.  Those that needed review of the rules were given some additional attention.  But, overall, it was apparent that many of our students have come to Prairie Chess Club enthusiastic and having played the game before.  

This Week’s Lesson

For our lesson, we discussed checkmate patterns.  With our older group, we spent time on some chess puzzles where students and to calculate one, two, and sometimes three moves ahead to checkmate.  With our younger group, we discussed the difference between checkmate and stalemate.  As with the older students, we worked on some puzzles that asked if the position was checkmate, stalemate, or if there was a legal move for the king. If you would like to view these puzzles, please click here.

• Checkmate or Stalemate

• Mate in One

• Mate in Two

Club Snacks

We will be providing snacks each week at chess club.  With 70 students, this is not a simple task.  So, we are looking for voluntary donations.  Due to severe nut allergies of some of our students, we will not serve any snacks with nuts. You may bring individually packaged ready to eat foods or you may make a monetary donation where I will then use the funds to make bulk purchases at Sam’s Club.  We do have storage at the school.  So there is no need to sign up.  Just make your donation and I will maintain an adequate inventory of snacks throughout the year.  To make a monetary donation, you may visit our Prairie Chess Club page (www.chessiniowa.org/prairiechess) and make a donation through PayPal (credit card).  

Chess at the Cedar Rapids Library

Also, I would like to tell you about another opportunity to join other school age chess players in the Cedar Rapids area.  We meet at the Cedar Rapids Ladd Library on the 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month.  The Cedar Rapids Chess Club hosts this scholastic meeting on the  from 2:00 pm to 4:30 pm.  Our next meeting is this Sunday, October 18th. I lead this meeting with a lesson and then an extended period to play other kids from around the area.  This meeting is part of series of Sunday afternoon scholastic chess events that meet every week, rotating from Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Marion, and Coralville. Click here for more details.