Starting on Friday, March 2nd and ending on April 6th, Hart House Chess Club  ran a series of workshops for first-time chess players, introducing them to the movements of the pieces and the rules of the game. These lessons were taught by Varsity chess player, Panayoti Tsialas, and they were addressed addressed to students who wanted to learn how to play the royal game!

The first workshops covered the basic rules of the game and the later ones discussed the rudiments of the strategy & tactics of chess. The course took place at the Hart House Reading Room, 5-6 pm and it was completed in 6 weeks.

The topics covered included: The Pieces and their Movements/ En passant, Pawn Promotion, Castling / Check, Checkmate, Stalemate / Basic Pawn-less Endgames / The Names of the Squares /Short and Long Algebraic Notation

Teaching material and ideas were taken from Learning Chess (Step 1), by Rob Brunia and For van Wijgerden, and Chess Camp (Volumes 1-4), by Igor Sukhin, copies of which could be found in the Chess Club Library.

Panayoti would like to thank each and every one of his students for their very active participation, which made this workshop a success: Rena, Zara, Giwa, Zinnia, Constantine and Yasser!

We hope to see you again next year in our more advanced workshops!