Chess Club

Founded in 2011, the WPS Chess Club is a very active club affiliated to the P&C. We hold professional coaching sessions, with coaches provided by the Sydney Academy of Chess and participate in inter-school competition.

We are open to all WPS students no matter what their Chess playing level – our aim is to promote interest and learning in Chess and related skills such as sportsmanship, strategic decision making and focus.

We encourage everyone involved in Chess Club to adhere to our code of conduct. Parents are expected to help supervise (not teach!) the class at least once every 2 terms, using the instructions for supervising parents.  Please see our chess club booklet for more information.

For all enquiries, offers of help or for more information, please email us at chess@wpspandc.com.au

We also have a pigeon hole, c/o WPS school office.

CHESS REGISTRATIONS

Classes are held on a Tuesday (years K-3) & Thursdays (years 4-6) 7:45am to 8:45am.
Kindy starts in term 3.

Please go to the Sydney Academy of Chess website to register and enter one of the following codes:

Years K-3: Tuesdays enter this code: D8AJ65BFGI
Kindy starts in term 3.

Years 4-6: Thursdays enter this code: 96MFTNZFQU

Classes will run as follows in 2019:

Term 1: Feb 5th – Apr 11th
Term 2: Apr 30th  – Jul 4th
Term 3: Jul 23rd – Sep 26th
Term 4: Oct 15th – Dec 12th

All payments and rolls are now handled by the Sydney Academy of Chess.

More details on our registration page.

EVENTS, TOURNAMENTS & REPRESENTATIVE CHESS

The annual WPS Chess Championship is the culmination of the chess year.

Roll of Honour

2019 – Zac Isterling (Year 6)
2018 – Jayden Woo  (Year 3)
2017 – George Anderson (Year 2)
2016 – Daniel Newman (Year 6)
2015 – Daniel Newman (Year 5)
2014 – Daniel Newman (Year 4)
2013 – Jeremy Bacon (Year 5)
2012 – Daniel Newman (Year 2)
2011 – Aryan Bhatla (Year 5)

WPS also competes in the SAC school challenge and NSW JCL interschool competition.

CHESS CLASSES

Classes are run Tuesday (Years K-3) & Thursday (Years 4-6) mornings before school @ 7:45am. Chess Club is held at the series of demountable class rooms at the Post Office end of the school (western end). For all enquiries re attending Chess classes please email chess@wpspandc.com.au

Tuesday 3 classes
6S – Mrs Rist – Kindy/Novice
6/5L – Mrs Leslie – Junior (demountable near the library)

Thursday 2 classes
6RD – Mrs Dixon / Mrs Raynor – Advanced
6D​ – Ms Denton – Intermediate

HELP THE CHESS CLUB

We are still a young club and need help in many areas. If you can:

  • Join the Executive Committee
  • Help co-ordinate some friendly inter-school games and/or exhibition games on the giant chess board
  • Help with some of our documents & web-site content (no special web or graphic design skills needed); THEN…

please email the club NOW at chess@wpspandc.com.au

WEEKEND AND HOLIDAY FUN

We hope the Chess Club has motivated your child(ren) and you! to learn more about Chess. The following are some ideas on how to progress/support your child’s and your learning:

For those of you with workbooks, please try to go through them. The solutions are at the back, but try and make sure the answers are used for checking AFTER the best attempt has been made to answer the puzzles! There is a beginner and an intermediate workbook, so if your child has progressed through one, try the other.

For parents who want to catch up and if your child learns audio-visually, try this video series. The link takes you straight to part 3, parts 1 & 2 are about Chess philosophy & history, if you’re interested. Progress through parts 4, 5, etc. The quality is a bit ‘squelchy’, but the video provides texts of the lessons as well (to the right of the screen), for anyone with hearing difficulty.

If you don’t have a Workbook and you want to teach / guide kids to improve, there are websites with handouts / lesson guides. Some we’ve found:

http://www.rockfordchess.org/instruction/

http://www.chesskids.com/lessons04.shtml

… and a game to play through:

http://www.chessvariants.com/chess4kids.dir/game2/game2_0.html

They’re being borrowed almost continually, but try to get one of the Chess books that the WPS library does have. Feel free to donate more. Some titles (not many are in the WPS library …yet) that have been highlighted to us are:

  • 606 puzzles for chess nuts
  • Beginning Chess play
  • Cool Chess
  • Hot Chess
  • Kasparov Chess Challenge
  • The winning way
  • 101 puzzles for beginners
  • Tactical Chess Training
  • Winning Chess move by move

Also have a look at these chess book sites for more info:

Sydney Academy of Chess

Chess Australia

Chess Discount Sales

Keep watching the Sydney Academy’s site for info on the latest events or even to play live online at  http://www.sydneyacademyofchess.com.au/onlinereadme1.html

CONTACTING THE CHESS CLUB

If you’d like to know more about the Chess Club you can contact the committee on chess@wpspandc.com.au

Contact details for the Chess committee  are:

Position Holder Email Address
Convenor Paul Relf chess@wpspandc.com.au
Assistant-Convenor Nathan Isterling
Treasurer vacant
Competition
Coordinators		 Freida Chen
Lingna Ma