London Chess and Education Conference

London Chess Classic

Chess and Education Conference

7 and 8 December 2013

The 5th London Chess Classic will soon be in full swing, featuring two former World Chess Champions - Anand and Kramnik - plus a whole host of other strong Grandmasters.

The weekend before the Grandmasters arrived brought another new event - the 1st London Conference for Chess and Education.

It was a remarkable two days of lectures, presentations and workshops. We learnt all about chess schools from all around the world, including Armenia, Corsica, Denmark, Sweden and Israel.

There was a fine exchange of methods and ideas, with the focus very much on the academic side of chess rather than the competitive element.

We also learnt about lots of new ideas for mini-games an the importance of such things as role play in the teaching of chess.

No doubt a full report will appear on the official site and there should be an ongoing trade of ideas and initiatives in the future. Meanwhile, here are few photos from the very busy weekend.

CSC CEO Malcolm Pein at the start of the conference

Conference organiser and host, Stefan Loeffler

GM Smbat Lputian and Prof. Aram Hajian explain about chess schools in Armenia

Prof. Fernand Gobert

The Alterman School of Chess (Israel)

Dr. Michelle Ellefson

Roberto Trinchero and Giuliano d'Eredita from Italy

Ferenc von Maurer (Hungary)

Demonstrating the benefits of the Chess Palace Programme (Hungary)

Mads Jacobsen of 'Skoleskak' (Denmark)

Fun mini-games with Walter Raedler from Germany

Marisa van der Merwe demonstrating the art of role play

Leo Hofestad (Netherlands) and 'Raindrop Chess' - a useful variant

A variant game similar to Kriegspiel

Christopher Chabris

Leontxo Garcia

Further details regarding the conference can be found here and the main page for the London Classic is here.

Ray Morris-Hill's excellent photos of the conference are here and they include photos from the final panel, featuring Garry Kasparov (which I had to miss due to train times).