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Playing Chess Takes More than Just Moving the Pieces

Chess is a fun game that has many benefits in everyday life, because it teaches you how to concentrate, plan, focus and think ahead. And the fact that it gives you the opportunity for some friendly competition in a venue where the only thing that gets bruised is your ego isn’t bad either. That’s probably why you see so many books with chess lessons in stores and online. People have known the game’s benefits for literally centuries.

Many people don’t realize, though, that it takes more than just studying chess strategies to play chess effectively. Many new chess players are surprised to discover that when they go to a chess club or tournament. One of the more important of these aspects is definite etiquette that should be adhered to so your fellow players will respect you. It’s amazing how many chess players who should know better don’t honor these basic etiquette rules. Information about these rules should have been relayed to them by the people who helped them learn to play chess, but that’s often not the case.

Here are some of the more important chess etiquette rules:

* Cell phones and beepers
Cell phones and beepers aren’t allowed when playing in a tournament, even if they’re set to only vibrate. It’s also considered good manners to turn them off when playing at a chess club, whether or not you’re playing in a tournament.

* Talking
When it comes to talking while playing chess, think of the Golden Rule: Do onto others as you would like them to do onto you. If it bothers you to have people talking while you play, then don’t talk while they play.

* Moving chess pieces
If you touch a chess piece, you have to move it. If you move a piece to a new square and keep your fingers on it, however, you can return it to its original square. You still have to move it, but you can choose another square. Once you take your hand off it, however, it’s considered a move.

* Draws
The appropriate method for offering a draw is to make your move and offer the draw before you press your clock. Once you have offered the draw, then you can press your clock. Do not extend an offer of a draw while time is running on your opponent’s clock.

* The chess clock
You must use the same hand to activate the clock that you use to move the pieces. Also, once you press the clock, you must move your hand away. When playing a tournament, you should stop the clock if you need to converse with the tournament director about any aspect of the game.

These are just a sampling of the rules that should be honored when you play chess. If you play, it’s important that you learn all of them.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at 1:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.