Does Chess make your child smarter?

Mission:

To make chess as popular in Western Australia as it is in other parts of the world.

Q&A

How did you discover Chess?

At school where they had a chess club running during lunch times.

What makes you so passionate about Chess?

I just love the challenge that you get from playing chess.

There is always room for improvement and the process of improving and learning a skill is very rewarding.

Why should a child learn Chess?

I believe there are many reasons a child should learn and play chess but one of the most important is how to cope with setbacks. How do you cope after losing a game and how do you learn from that experience to improve your chess.

How is Chess perceived these days compared to when you first started Total Chess?

Over the past few years, I feel chess is getting a lot more popular and many more parents are wanting their children to learn chess. Once the child gets the opportunity to learn and play chess, it’s very rare that the child doesn’t enjoy it.

How do you get good at Chess?

Practice, practice and practice more. The more you play chess the better you’ll get just like any other skill/activity. It’s also very important to learn from your mistakes, so analysing your games to pinpoint your mistakes and work out what you could of done is very important.

What valuable life lessons have Chess taught you?

The most important life lesson I’ve learnt from chess is that if you never give up you can never fail.

When things haven’t gone to plan, I just stuck with the idea and worked out what’s going wrong, change the plan if necessary and with the extra time, success has followed.

Also, success doesn’t have to always come from winning.

I believe improving on a skill is more important than the instant result and chess helps you with understanding this process much better.