Mark Indermaur Chess clubs, Programs

Continuing to Serve At-Risk Youth with US Chess

We absolutely agree with US Chess that “chess is transformative for children by improving their focus, aiding in decision making, and teaching that choices have consequences — lifelong skills that can be immediately applied in the classroom,” so we are excited that they are continuing their Outreach Program for At-Risk Youth.

At the Indermaur Chess Foundation, we partner with NC schools to offer these and other benefits of chess to all students, especially those at risk, through our Game Changer Program. We provide each school accepted into our program with 5 chess sets, Chess Step instructional materials, ChessKid.com subscriptions, and online support.

When US Chess announced their outreach program in 2021, we applied on behalf of Wiley Magnet Elementary School and helped them start their chess club. Now in their second year, Wiley’s club used the free memberships provided by US Chess to enter a team in their first US Chess-rated tournament. You can tell from the photos they shared in their PTA newsletter that they had fun and gained good experience!

US Chess recently opened their 2022-2023 Outreach Program for At-Risk Youth supporting affiliates who offer chess at Title I schools, providing each school with 16 free youth memberships and 8 additional chess sets.  We’re excited to announce that we applied and were accepted into the new program on behalf of Vance County Middle School and Graham High School!

“We are so appreciative of all you have done, and we look forward to working with the Indermaur Chess Foundation to expose our students to this awesome game/experience. Our chess club will meet three days a week after school, and we plan to incorporate it into our AVID college readiness program,” explained Dwaynna Ramsay-Morgan, Vance County Middle School teacher and chess club leader.

“You’ll be happy to know that student interest is high, and the club is very lively. I’ve been reading the book that you sent with the sets to become a better trainer myself. I very much look forward to the opportunity to send students to tournaments,” said Nikola Filajdic, Graham High School teacher and chess club leader.

If you’re interested in starting a chess club at your NC school, consider applying to our Game Changer Program! Let us know if you’re a Title I school so we can also apply for the US Chess program on your behalf.

Mark Indermaur Chess clubs, Tournaments

Benefits of Playing in a Team Tournament

Please encourage your school chess program to enter a team tournament!

Team events like these in North Carolina are excellent first tournaments for several reasons:

First and foremost, students play with their friends, which is really fun!

Competing as a group relieves pressure that some students may feel, because if they lose some – or even all – of their games, they can still encourage their teammates and contribute to their team’s success.

They can wear school t-shirts, sit together, and enjoy snacks as a group between rounds to help build school spirit!

Team events are usually generous with team trophies, so schools have a good chance of winning something, especially if they have multiple teams. 

Team events are a great way for coaches and organizers to promote their chess club! They can announce the team’s success at school and in the PTA newsletter, display their team trophies at school, and submit photos of the event to the yearbook.

Parents and teachers can also network with their peers from other schools and get ideas for improving their programs.

Now that I have convinced you to enter your club in a team event, here are some great ChessKid articles to help you prepare your students and their parents:

Have fun!

Mark Indermaur Chess clubs, Programs

61 Chess Clubs across 32 NC Counties

Happy National Chess Day!

As a chess nonprofit, National Chess Day seems like a good time to reflect on our plans and progress. When we launched in the summer of 2019, we set a goal of helping NC schools and community organizations start 100 chess clubs and, so far, through our Game Changer Program, we have helped them establish 61 chess clubs across 32 NC counties. Thank you for your support and for telling interested schools and libraries about us!

During the pandemic, we helped several of these clubs continue to meet online. In our most recent year, 317 students completed 2,109 lessons, played 21,965 games, and attempted 41,698 puzzles through the ChessKid accounts we provided. We also organized 49 ChessKid and 24 US Chess-rated tournaments for these clubs. We applied and were accepted for a US Chess Federation program for Title I schools to provide additional resources to help a Wake county school start a chess program.

If you would like to start a chess club at your NC school, library, or community organization, please apply for one of our grants. This year we will continue to provide chess sets, instructor guides and workbooks, and ChessKid accounts to help organizations establish chess clubs in NC.

We will organize weekly ChessKid tournaments and other events to enable students from these clubs to play each other.

Someone recently donated a 25-inch giant chess set which we plan to use at events with our clubs.

We have also received donations of gently used chess books which we will provide to NC libraries with chess clubs.

Thank you, again, for your support!

Mark Indermaur Chess clubs

Manage your ChessKid Group in a New School Year

We provide each school in our Game Changer Program with their own Group in ChessKid. (If your club is not part of our program and you do not have your own Enterprise account, you can still organize your students in ChessKid using the Club feature as this article explains.)

Each school year, you will want to add new students to your group and decide how to handle students from last year’s club who are no longer at your school. Here are several options:

1) Keep them in your group: This would be a good option for students who have graduated to middle school or high school and now would like to volunteer with your club.

2) Remove them from your group: Their ChessKid account would remain active as a personal account outside of your group. Their parents would still be able to manage the account if you included their email address on the account. With this option, these students would no longer be able to play in the online tournaments that your club or our nonprofit runs. To remove an individual student, click on their menu icon and select “Remove”.

3) Move them to our “Misc Kids” group or to an “Alumni” group for your school: Their account would remain active and parents could still manage the accounts. With this option, the students would not be in your current club but could continue to play in our online tournaments. Please let us know if you need help creating an “Alumni” subgroup or if you would like to move kids to our “Misc Kids” group. To move kids between groups, click on “Groups” and the “More Tools” drop-down menu on the right. Then click on “Move Kids”, select the “From” and “To” groups and click the “Select which kids you want to move” box to move specific students.

You will also want to add new Teachers and Coaches to your group using “Invite Adult Team Members”.

Mark Indermaur Chess clubs

Starting a high school online chess club

Would you like to keep your high school chess club meeting online or start a new online club during the pandemic?

Your friends will really appreciate you running the club during this challenging time. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try different things to see what works best for your club. There are several free platforms that you can use to play like chess.com and lichess.org. These articles describe how to use their club/team features:

It is important to provide your club members a way to socialize when you meet otherwise they could just play online on their own.  You could use Google Meet or Zoom.

You could start your meeting with announcements, looking at your club leaderboard (https://support.chess.com/article/781-what-are-leaderboards), warm up with puzzle rush (https://www.chess.com/puzzles/rush) or by reviewing an interesting game from one of your members, and then play. During some meetings you could play blitz or bughouse (https://www.chess.com/bughouse).

Since other high school clubs are also meeting online, you could arrange some friendly online matches with other NC schools. Your school’s foreign language teachers may have relationships with high schools in other countries, so they may be able to help you arrange a match with one of those schools. 

Please add comments to let us know what works (and what didn’t work) for your club.

Thank you!

Mark Indermaur Chess clubs, Programs

Starting a high school chess club

Would you like to start a chess club at your high school?

Several NC high schools have started chess clubs through our Game Changer Program. The teachers sponsoring these clubs and the students leading them provided these suggestions based on their experience:

1) Find a sponsor and a meeting location. Ask a teacher to sponsor your chess club, let you meet in their classroom, and let you store chess sets and clocks there. If you are not sure which teacher to ask, try contacting STEM teachers first.

2) Contact the PTA to officially register your club. Find out if there used to be a chess club. If so, ask who might know where their chess sets are. Ask if there is a small amount of funding left in this year’s PTA budget to buy a few more chess sets. Also ask for an amount to be allocated in next year’s budget.

3) Pick a meeting day and time with your sponsoring teacher. If your school has a common lunch period, meeting during lunch would allow more students to participate. If not, then pick a day when the club could meet after school that would not compete with activities that chess club members might also want to do.

4) Publicize your club. Find out how to publish information about the club on the school website and in the PTA newsletter. Find out when the Open House for the next school year will be and ask if the chess club can have a table there. Set up a chess set there and answer questions.

5) Try to find any chess sets from previous chess clubs. If you need more, buy a few chess sets online.

6) Start playing chess! Some of your stronger players could also teach some lessons.

Once the club is underway, club members could set goals like these:

  • Take a club photo for the yearbook. This will help publicize your club.
  • If at least four students are interested, play as a team in a local team tournament or in the next NC K-12 Championship. If you do well, submit your results to be included in the school announcements and PTA newsletter and display your trophy at school. This will also help publicize your club.
  • Arrange a friendly match with another high school. This website lists the NC high schools that have at least 4 students with US Chess ratings, so some of them might be interested in match. http://chessstream.com/TopNCSchoolsInChessByGroup.aspx
  • In the spring time, arrange a friendly match with the middle schools that feed your school. This would be fun and would help recruit players for the following year.
  • Design a club t-shirt
  • If a club member has contacts with a school in another country through their family or through the foreign language department, arrange a friendly online match using a combination of chess.com and Zoom or similar tools.
  • If any of the chess club members need community service hours, they could volunteer with the chess clubs at the middle schools or elementary schools that feed your school. They could also hold a tournament or simultaneous exhibition to raise money for a charity.

Please add comments with your suggestions for high school chess clubs! Thank you.

Mark Indermaur Tournaments

Reading a US Chess Rating Report

Congratulations for playing in a US Chess rated tournament or for encouraging your child to play in one!

If you asked to get notified when your rating is updated in your US Chess membership profile, then you will receive an email with a link to your tournament’s rating report.

If you played in one of our rated tournaments, then you can also access your event’s rating report from this list: http://www.uschess.org/msa/AffDtlTnmtHst.php?H6041494

I will use this example from the 2021 US Championship to explain how to read your rating report:

Before your name, you will see your pairing number for the event. In this example, Fabiano Caruana has pairing number 1, and Wesley So has pairing number 2.

Under your name you will find your US Chess member ID, the type of rating (R=regular, Q=quick, B=blitz, OR=online regular, OQ=online quick, OB=online blitz), and your rating before the event followed by your rating after the event. In our example, Caruana’s regular rating changed from 2871 to 2861.

The next column will show the total number of points that you earned in the event. You will get 1.0 point for a win, 0.5 points for a draw, and 0 points for a loss. In our example, Caruana, So, and Sevian tied for first with 6.5 points.

If you do well in a tournament, you may earn a norm. If you do, then the information below the “Total Pts” score shows the highest norm you earned in this event. For more information on norms, see The USCF Title System.

The columns after the “Total Pts” column will list your result for each round in the tournament (W=win, D=draw, L=loss, X=forfeit win, F=forfeit loss, U=unpaired), the pairing number of your opponent, and whether you played the W=white or B=black pieces. In our example, in round 4 Caruana got a draw with So while playing Black.

For more information about US Chess ratings and rating reports, please see:

Congratulations, again, on playing in a rated tournament!

Now that your child knows their new rating, please help them analyze their games using the ChessKid Analysis Board.

If you have any questions about reading your rating report, please ask by submitting a comment below.

Mark Indermaur Chess clubs, Tournaments

Motivating Students with National Events

Twenty-six NC players, including many students, competed in the 121st US Open during the summer of 2021 in Cherry Hill, NJ. Everyone in this event played in a single section, so they had a good chance of playing a FIDE Master, an International Master, or even a Grandmaster. If one of your students does get to play in an event like this, please ask their parents to take photos to share with your club.

Getting to play in an event like this or a national scholastic championship would clearly be an exciting experience for any student, but, even if they cannot attend one of these events in person, you can still use them to teach and motivate your students.

First, you can follow the events using articles on uschess.org or other chess websites. You can also find players for your students to follow and root for. For example, this page, www.uschess.org/tournaments/2021/usopen/?page=ADVANCE lists the players registered for the US Open by section and by state.

Then you can review games from the top players as part of your chess club lessons. You can leverage expert analysis to help you prepare for these lessons. For example, this US Chess article describes the US Open event and summarizes some of the top games: https://new.uschess.org/news/three-schedules-one-task You can also prepare by watching live streams or recorded video analysis of top games using sites like: https://www.twitch.tv/uschess

It will be exciting to see your students cheer for and learn from top players!

Mark Indermaur chess parents, Tournaments

Getting the most from your new US Chess account

Set up your US Chess account

Once you or your child have joined US Chess, you will want to set up your account to get the most out of your membership. Then you can get emailed as soon as your child’s rating is updated and score major “chess parent points” after every tournament!

Click on “Member Site Login” which is to the right of the big blue “DONATE” button at the top of the uschess.org home page.

Create your US Chess website login

On your first visit, you will need to set up a new login and password.

US Chess does not require you to have a unique email address on file to become a member and get an ID number, but to use their new membership system you will need to have a unique email address associated with your membership. 

Parents registering multiple children will need to use a unique email address for each child.

If you are certain your email address is attached to your ID number, click the “Reset Your Password” button, and enter the email address associated with your member record on the form that appears.  You will receive an automated email with a one-time link that will allow you to set up a new login and password.  Once your new login is confirmed, you may return to the above screen and log in.  

If you know your email address is NOT attached to your ID number, or you are not sure whether it is, click the “create a new website login” link, and complete the form you see there.  The form will attach the email address you specify, and set up your new login.  You will receive an automated email with a one-time link for setting up a new password.  Please note, this form is intended for members who do not have an email address already associated with their ID number.  

US Chess strongly recommends choosing a login that is NOT your email address.  Users do not have the ability to change their logins, and if your email address changes, you will avoid confusion if you follow this recommendation.

When you successfully log in to the new system, you will see your user dashboard.

Update your US Chess profile

From your dashboard, click on “Manage My Profile” to add or update your address. At a minimum, enter your “State/Province,” as that will help Tournament Directors find your information (especially if you have a common name). It will also qualify you to play in special events like your state championship.

To get notified by email when your rating or your child’s rating is updated, select “Ratings” under “Communication Settings“. Then you will get an email (at the email address in your child’s profile) as soon as their tournament has been rated. The email will have their old and new ratings and a link to the tournament rating report. You will often receive this email several minutes before the new ratings are posted on the uschess.org website, so you could score extra “chess parent points”!

In the “Tournament Announcements (TLAs)” section, you can sign up to be notified of upcoming tournaments in your area.

If you would like to play online rated games on US Chess’ online partner sites like ChessKid.com, Chess.com, or lichess.org, then you can link your US Chess Member ID with your user account on those sites in the “Online Chess Partners” section.

Accessing US Chess publications

Once you have set up your child’s account, they can access Chess Life Kids magazine by logging in to uschess.org and going to: https://new.uschess.org/chess-life-kids-magazine-issues. This link is also on the bottom of the US Chess home page. Then they can read issues online in the digital viewer or download them as PDF files.

You can also access Chess Life magazine in the same way at https://new.uschess.org/chess-life-magazine-issues.

For more information about the new US Chess Information Technology (IT) systems, please refer to these US Chess blog posts:

Mark Indermaur Chess clubs

Online Activities for Your Chess Club

When NC schools switched to remote learning in March, many of the chess clubs we sponsor also switched to meet and play online. Thanks to tools like ChessKid.com and Zoom, they could continue to meet remotely. Many families appreciated staying connected with their school community through chess club while so many other school activities had to be cancelled.

We continued to support our clubs by scheduling weekday tournaments which are open to all of their students. Since schools closed in March, we have run over 230 of these free online tournaments, and we have also helped run several low-cost, online USCF-rated tournaments.

Through all of these online chess activities, we and our chess clubs have gained experience and would like to share how to make the most of this online environment.

Let’s start with which activities children and parents liked the most. At the end of 2019-2020 school year, one of our elementary school chess clubs surveyed their families about online chess club activities, and 33 familes representing 44 children responded. Here are the results of their survey.

During the summer, children wanted to keep playing chess online as a club and in rated tournaments but were less interested in lessons. Parents also said that their children wanted to continue the social and relationship-building aspects of chess club, so we provided instructions to “Help a child play chess online with a friend.“

Families preferred weekdays for summer chess activies.

The vast majority of students would join chess club again next year even if it were online. Some families explained that they had planned to do other activities next year, but since those could not be done online, they would rejoin chess club instead. The few who said that they would not join really preferred playing chess in person with their friends.

During the school year, children would like a broader range of chess club activities, and they are much more interested in having lessons. Our clubs can leverage “Using online resources to teach young children how to play chess” for these lessons. Parents commented that their children looked forward to the social and relationship-building aspects of chess club. Clubs can definitely leverage tools like Zoom or Google Meet to enable students to interact while they are playing online. Larger clubs can use these tools’ breakout room features to split into smaller groups for more interaction.

Children would also like to play with other NC schools and even with schools in other states or countries. This Raleigh News & Observer article, “Hunter Elementary students play chess with Nigerian school,” shows how schools can use ChessKid and tools like Skype or FaceTime to play with schools in other countries.

Familes preferred weekdays after school for school-year chess activities.

Most parents in this club were also interested in getting Chess-Step workbooks to supplement the online chess learning resources.

Please use these survey results to help plan your chess club’s online activities, and please share your club’s ideas and suggestions in the comments below.

If you would like to start an online club at your NC school or library, please apply for our online Game Changer Program.