Teaching the Game

"OK. So, here we go."

She's sitting there on the carpet, her eyes fixed on the black pieces in front of her. She's got a patented "smiling because I'm with dad" smile on, which I know will get me in serious trouble when she's 15.

I move my pawn to E4.

She sits, carefully considering her many options. Five seconds pass. Ten. She moved her A pawn to 6.

I have no idea what to say. It's not a move that would ever even occur to me. It's way out on the edge of the board. It's blocking her light-bishop. It was at that moment I realized I have no idea how to teach someone a game.

---

The dilemma of finding the perfect opponent is nearly intractable. The ideal opponent, after all, is just ourselves with a side of surprise. Someone at just about our skill level. Someone we can beat on a good day, but not every day. Someone who loves our game with the same passion, the same level of detail (whether that's casual or intense). The more disconnected we are from our opponent, the less satisfying it is. Hence the conflict between the beer-and-pretzels guy vs. the rules lawyer. The noob and the pubtard.

In the land of consoles and PCs, there is at least implied consent. If someone purchases a copy of Bill and Ted's Heinous Hoedown, they can be expected to have played the game and have a passing interest in its mechanics before they hop into their first multi-player skeet surfing competition. But even here, differences in skill set and temperament have forced the people who make our games into dozens of largely failed attempts at putting us all into the right anonymous buckets. Xbox LIVE has it's entirely meaningless self-selected "Pro," "Underground," "Recreation" and "Family" buckets. Face it, if you were a douchebag, you'd pick "Family," just to make Aunt Jolene blush while she plays Uno.

More inventively, there's TrueSkill, the mysterious matchmaking math that attempts to connect me up with gamers of a similar skill level, ensuring that I live exclusively in a land of 70 year old women named "Ida" who appreciate a good frag, or those 12-year-olds who haven't yet graduated to full on mindless-twitch-bot status. If you're serious about actually competing, of course, there are ladders and leagues, or in the case of heavily competitive and regulated games, like Chess, Scrabble or Magic: The Gathering, hard and fast ratings systems. In all of these setups, you're generally assured of finding an appropriate opponent, at the cost of bookkeeping.

But ultimately, it's still not your job to teach the other person how to play. This is not the case face-to-face.

It's a Tuesday night. Chris and Mary have come over to "play games." This is a mixed crowd. Following horrific gender stereotypes, Chris and I are hardcore grognards who would be happy to stay up until 4AM playing some endless chit-based wargame while we learn the rules governing elephant movement over the Alps during rainstorms. Jessica and Mary are variables - their repertoire is much more limited - a few games of Settlers or Bohnanza here and there, and a long list of fairly casual games like Cash 'n' Guns or RoboRally. And thus the tail-sniffing begins - a complex dance of deciding who has played what, and who has the mental acuity, sobriety and stamina to learn something new. And if it is indeed something new, is it new to everyone or just one person? And how much of a "crap I lose" guarantee is never having played?

For most of my gaming career, I've gotten a free pass on teaching. Nearly everyone I play games with plays more and more often than I do. All of them are better at absorbing new rules and teaching them. My friend Rob is such an acknowledged rules savant that if we crack the plastic on a new game, we immediately hand him the rule book and make another round of Manhattans, knowing with absolute certainty that 20 minutes later he will have distilled the 40 page, 12-by-12 inch rule book down into its atomic particles, and be able to dole them back out at precisely the right speed so that we never, ever say "well crap if I'd known THAT ..."

To make matters worse, I really like complex games. The more complex a game is, the harder it is to learn on your own, and simultaneously, the harder it is to teach. I can count on two hands the number of games of Advanced Squad Leader I have played from start to finish where I was neither the student nor the teacher. Long, richly crafted pen and paper games like Twilight Struggle require tremendous patience to teach, and the new player is nearly guaranteed to lose. Videogame equivalents (like Sins of a Solar Empire) at least have options: tutorials (not so hot in the case of Sins) or better yet Cooperative play, where the teacher can at least be playing the game, all the more challenging for the failings of the student (brilliant, in the case of Sins).

When my daughter first came home, excited to learn more about chess (it was a rainy-day recess activity at her school), I was ecstatic. After that first game, where she made an inexplicable opening move, I resolved to go back to my wall of game-books and pull out some of my early introductory chess manuals. It took me a surprisingly long time to realize how little I know about chess - or rather, how little I know about how to explain it. I am by no means a good chess player, certainly not in traditional terms. But I did waste a substantial amount of time and money playing speed chess in Washington Square in New York. I was schooled one crumpled up dollar at a time by 75 year old toothless immigrants who could clearly out-think me blindfolded, drunk and playing 5 games at once. (I did, in fact, lose $10 one afternoon to a homeless gentleman who challenged any 5 bystanders to a 10 minute game. He got ten minutes to play all 5 games. We, collectively, got 50 minutes for our 5. He made $50.) My point is simply that while I am a crappy chess player, I tend to know why.

So I went back to the drawing board. In this case, that drawing board has been Chessmaster 11, which I am walking through from square one - or rather, square e4.

Tonight, when I sat down to play chess with my daughter, it wasn't me speaking to her with the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon. It was Josh Waitzkin, Chess Dude Extraordinaire. My hope is that like everything else about being a parent, I only need to be one day ahead of her, and it will all work out.

Comments

I went through the same crisis. I tried to teach my sister how to play chess. Then I realized I don't actually know how to play chess either. Oh sure, I showed her how each piece may move but that's not the same thing. Knowing what to move and when to move that's what I couldn't teach (and still can't).

I'm the equivalent of Rob in this story. When friends get together with a new game, they setup the board while I read the rulebook they don't have the patience for. Then I have to give them the summary of it and be referee, judge, and jury during the game. Not always fun that way but it works best with the usual group.

Strategy has to be experienced rather than "taught". Depends on the person, I guess.

With most games I can usually figure out the strategy for the game. It might not always be the best and won't always win, but I can usually at least get a good understanding of what should or shouldn't work. Chess however is a completely different story. Maybe I've just never really played it enough to be able to get to that point, but something about it just eludes my understanding.

This is a good site which really helped me understand chess a bit better, or at least to graduate from "beginner" or 2-ply points counting level, anyway.

I've had to teach a few of the Euro-style board games to people, and I've found that each one requires a different approach. For example, for Puerto Rico, I always explain the "get money in the early game, and victory points in the end game" strategy since it speeds things up. With Perudo/Liar's Dice I just play a few rounds with them, without playing the ace rule. This gets them used to bidding. Then I introduce the ace rule, and the game becomes fantastic, and my obsessive keeping track of the expected quantity of each number is laughed at by the dice. Ticket to Ride, Carcasonne and Settlers are very easy to teach because they gameplay is so simple. Lost Cities is another one where a few practice games is all someone ever needs to learn the game. Power Grid and Goa I've had more trouble with since the bidding gameplay is quite intricate. With Lord of the Rings we just tell the newbie what to do because it's so complicated. Alas, I've not found a group to play War On Terror with yet.

I've yet to teach chess though. (Though I remember my Dad teaching me when I was a nipper, and I'm looking forward to the time when my children are old enough to learn to play them). It's really a game which has no substitute for merely playing a lot of games of chess. I guess I'd have to explain the rules and do a few commentated games to the subject, and then give them a few pawns to even things up.

The way to teach your daughter chess is to allow her to make any legal move she wants while you kick her ass repeatedly by following standard book openings. Laugh loudly when you win. Do not ever explain why you are doing what you're doing and, most importantly, no givebacks. The experience of thinking through what works and what doesn't will make her a creative, intuitive, chess player. The experience of losing all the time will make her want to win. This is how you capitalize on all the good parenting you've done thus far that makes her want to spend time with you.\

Oh yes, on the day that she finally beats you, erupt into rage and do not congratulate her. Your anger will demonstrate that you didn't throw the game just so she could win. She'll feel like she truly earned the victory.

Alien13z wrote:

The way to teach your daughter chess is to allow her to make any legal move she wants while you kick her ass repeatedly by following standard book openings. Laugh loudly when you win. Do not ever explain why you are doing what you're doing and, most importantly, no givebacks. The experience of thinking through what works and what doesn't will make her a creative, intuitive, chess player. The experience of losing all the time will make her want to win. This is how you capitalize on all the good parenting you've done thus far that makes her want to spend time with you.

Ummm... You had an uh,... "intersting"... childhood didn't you?

Silly rabbit, skeet surfing was in the Top Secret movie tie-in, not Bill and Ted's.

I agree with Doctor Alien13z, that advice is pure gold.

Alien13z wrote:

The way to teach your daughter chess is to allow her to make any legal move she wants while you kick her ass repeatedly by following standard book openings.

Sounds roughly like how my dad taught me, although you're missing the constant complaints about how I'm too impatient (I was 10).

It's interesting - single player games are designed to guide the player through, give them a sense of achievement and to look harder than they are (look hard, play easy). Playing multiplayer generally completely shatters that illusion.

Both races are the same, only 6 different kinds of units and 1 low-res map? BAh. Newb game. I'm waiting for the blood patch and a price drop before I even think about buying.

booty wrote:

Silly rabbit, skeet surfing was in the Top Secret movie tie-in, not Bill and Ted's.

I was mixing up two ridiculous movies at once - there's no movie called "Heinous Hoedown" - It was supposed to be knee-slapping hilarious, see? Now that I explained it you're rolling on the floor aren't you. Nothing like how funny a joke is once someone's explained it ...

rabbit wrote:
booty wrote:

Silly rabbit, skeet surfing was in the Top Secret movie tie-in, not Bill and Ted's.

I was mixing up two ridiculous movies at once - there's no movie called "Heinous Hoedown" - It was supposed to be knee-slapping hilarious, see? Now that I explained it you're rolling on the floor aren't you. Nothing like how funny a joke is once someone's explained it ...

Stop typing and get busy with your daughter's training. How old is she? It doesn't matter. She's already behind schedule.

I love your articles Rabbit...

Once upon a time i had limitless patience to explain the rules of things. Lately, not so much. I haven't pinned down the reason yet and perhaps it's just the evolution of my character. The problem i think is that if you aren't a good teacher, you can all too quickly turn that initial interest of the other party into boredom and disinterest. I hate that.

I am pretty good at understanding the rules of games and getting a handle on the basic strategies pretty quickly. Which means when I play a new game with friends I more often than not win the first time around.

Unfortunately after that first game everyone else usually picks up on how to play the game and quickly move from basic strategies to the more intricate ones leaving me behind pretty quickly. After that it's an uphill battle trying to figure out how to improve my game enough to start winning again.

I would say I'm an OK teacher when it comes to games. Unfortunately I have a tendency to forget rules every now and than which often leads to "Oh crap I forgot to mention" moments in a game.

rabbit wrote:

It's a Tuesday night. Chris and Mary have come over to "play games." ... Jessica and Mary are variables ...

Wait. So, through process of elimination and taking a guess, is Jessica your wife? Are you telling me that you're married to Jessica Rabbit? You've got to be f*cking kidding me.

On topic, I'm a terrible teacher. Period. But I think I've gotten better when it comes to games. Rule dumps at the beginning don't seem to work very well. Even something simple like Cash n' Guns can make people's eyes roll back. Narrating the first round seems to be the best way while explaining possible deviations from normality with each step. Once you get people to recognize where the start and end point is for their turn and that they'll be repeating that over and over, you're pretty much done teaching and only have to remind. Also, while difficult for a rules nazi like myself, it pays to be lenient in that first game.

You'll know you're on the right track when she rolls her eyes and says, "Nice opening, Waitzkin. Haven't seen that one before. Give me that book, you're embarrassing yourself."

Alien13z wrote:

The way to teach your daughter chess is to allow her to make any legal move she wants while you kick her ass repeatedly by following standard book openings. Laugh loudly when you win. Do not ever explain why you are doing what you're doing and, most importantly, no givebacks. The experience of thinking through what works and what doesn't will make her a creative, intuitive, chess player. The experience of losing all the time will make her want to win. This is how you capitalize on all the good parenting you've done thus far that makes her want to spend time with you.\r

Oh yes, on the day that she finally beats you, erupt into rage and do not congratulate her. Your anger will demonstrate that you didn't throw the game just so she could win. She'll feel like she truly earned the victory.

:grin:

I don't know... This advice sounds like a recipe for driving her away from the game, unless she's truly, passionately interested in learning it and becoming good.

Alien13z wrote:

The way to teach your daughter chess is to allow her to make any legal move she wants while you kick her ass repeatedly by following standard book openings. Laugh loudly when you win. Do not ever explain why you are doing what you're doing and, most importantly, no givebacks. The experience of thinking through what works and what doesn't will make her a creative, intuitive, chess player. The experience of losing all the time will make her want to win. This is how you capitalize on all the good parenting you've done thus far that makes her want to spend time with you.\r

Oh yes, on the day that she finally beats you, erupt into rage and do not congratulate her. Your anger will demonstrate that you didn't throw the game just so she could win. She'll feel like she truly earned the victory.

:grin:

a) You've been watching way too much Hikaru No Go, haven't you?
b) It's not as awful a bit of advice as you think.

Not the laughing bit, the general strategy. I didn't use it for chess (because I suck at chess and it's the designated game-they-can-kick-my-arse at my house). But it worked amazingly well for Go, Pinochle, and Axis and Allies.

Just give her a book and when you play together, you play the game by the book. That will help her start making the connection between what they say to do on the page and what happens on the board. It has the happy side effect of helping you brush up on the basics and start improving your lazy game because if she's serious she's going to invest a whole lot more time in it than you have and she's going to be coming up behind you fast.

With the heavy board games, it's the same general principle but the resources aren't as fine-tuned. In the case of Axis and Allies, make sure you have some decent historical accounts of the war available. Then when they get stuck as Russia it will help them figure out WHY they can't just dance across the Baltic and scam those seemingly free resource points without basically dropping their drawers for the German player.

Whatever you do, don't cheapen the stakes and just let them win. You can say "we're just playing to learn here" or "let's try this gambit" and go easy on them there. But if you guys agree it's for all the marbles then it has to really be for all the marbles.

And be prepared to demonstrate what being a gracious looser looks like when the time comes.

I gotta say that the Josh Waitzkin academy on Chessmaster is great. I've become a MUCH better player as a result.

Alien13z wrote:

The way to teach your daughter chess is to allow her to make any legal move she wants while you kick her ass repeatedly by following standard book openings. Laugh loudly when you win. Do not ever explain why you are doing what you're doing and, most importantly, no givebacks. The experience of thinking through what works and what doesn't will make her a creative, intuitive, chess player. The experience of losing all the time will make her want to win. This is how you capitalize on all the good parenting you've done thus far that makes her want to spend time with you.\

Oh yes, on the day that she finally beats you, erupt into rage and do not congratulate her. Your anger will demonstrate that you didn't throw the game just so she could win. She'll feel like she truly earned the victory.

Wow your house must have been hardcore growing up. I know that my daughter who is an avid and even cut throat gamer at 8 would not survive that experience. Kicking her butt, not a problem laughing and rubbing it in definately not. You make a valid point in not explaining anything, but I think occasional thoughts are helpful in the learning and creative playing process.

I actually started playing chess with her when she was 4 or 5. We played a game called Tic Tac Check. Well reviewed etc... but it really went nowhere. I realized as Rabbit did that I am in no way fluent enough in the game to actually explain it to her. Now that she is older and her gaming has progressed I think I may attack it again. The other problem is while I am an ok chess player, I really do not enjoy it that much. But the strategic thinking that it engenders and expands is worth the effort to try and teach her to play again. Hopefully with greater success this time.

cmitts wrote:

Wow your house must have been hardcore growing up. I know that my daughter who is an avid and even cut throat gamer at 8 would not survive that experience. Kicking her butt, not a problem laughing and rubbing it in definately not.

I think he's kidding about that bit. On the other hand, he does have the scariest avatar on the board, so who knows?

I agree that you shouldn't rub it in when you win against a kid. For one thing, it's not that impressive. Also, from what I've heard, you're always teaching them more than you think. In this case, it teaches them to be sore winners, which is going to really come back and bite them later in life. Or should I say, later on Live?

teaching strategy to kids is useless...i remember trying to teach my little brother how to play Shining Force on genesis, and getting infuriated because he would move his archers to the front of the line.
"Keep your archers in the back! That's what theyre for!" I would scream...but it was no use...
eventually, though, they develop their own strategies, like performing and recovering onside kicks for every kickoff in Madden, so that i'm on defense for the entire game. Or spawn camping...

Don't forget to teach the human factor as well. Chess is as much about learning the play style of your opponent and using it to predict his or her movements as anything else. Are they aggressive, defensive, do they fluster easily, fall for traps etc.

Wow, I'm impressed at regular intervals at your articles, Rabbit! Nice to read, interesting ideas.

I grew up with a brother that was 11 months older than I was, loved games as much as I did, and who is a genius at math (no hyperbole, discovered new calculus formulas in high school, perfect scores on every standardized math test, etc.). I'd play every board game, card game, rpg, etc. with him that we could get our hands on, and for the most part we would be pretty evenly matched. But chess was a completely different story, he would beat me so badly that I could not have fun playing him - and I typically loved playing games for the sake of playing (even if it was just to see *how* other people played). We would talk about chess and he would try to be as helpful as he could, but when he tried to give me tips on strategy it seemed the most arcane discussions we could have. His advice was abstract bordering on the surreal to me. I couldn't get my head past a mental simulation of possible moves and responses and trying to imagine what would occur as many moves ahead as I possibly could. He would talk of pressure and defense and I could not see what he was talking about.

There's a huge difference between explicit learning (conscious knowledge, knowing the rules, like the rules of tennis) and implicit learning (automatic responses, intuition, snapping off a backhand without consciously thinking). When someone can translate implicit knowledge into a generalized rule, it's typically helpful as a heuristic or shortcut. Some games like chess combine controlled processing (breadth or depth first searches of potential moves and responses) with automatic processing (drawing on implicit knowledge from prior games to intuit which moves are preferred). In the case of speed chess, players are making quick decisions *largely* based on automatic processing since it usually requires less time to make decisions (though it may produce biases). From what I've seen, the speed of moves in speed chess normally changes over the course of a game, I would hypothesize being since there are a larger set of prior instances to draw on for opening play (and standardized openings as well).

But I think that it's sometimes very difficult to translate implicit knowledge into generalized rules. Sometimes it's relatively easy to impart explicit knowledge like the movement of the playing pieces in chess, but far harder to share intuitions about good play. There are cases when it's easier to categorize things based on implicit knowledge than to articulate the rules (is this a bird? can it fly? is an ostrich a bird?) but it doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to *articulate* the process. It seems far easier to explain a rule (explicit knowledge) than an exemplar based method of categorization (compare this instance of bird to my exemplar / prototype of "bird" - compare this instance of a chess game board and position of playing pieces to my exemplar / prototype of "good position").

And even with heuristics / generalized rules of what is "good play" in chess, my brother would still crush me. I couldn't apply them in practice or even see how they applied during a game. I watched and played those same speed chess players in Washington Square Park (I lived in 7-13 Washington Square North just south of the Muse) and was dumbfounded at their play.

I'm sympathetic to the advice that Alien13z gives - because I would not be able to explain *why* standard openings would be superior. Demonstrating their superiority through play would be the best I would be able to offer. Though I wouldn't laugh loudly when I won, instead I'd probably moan that I still don't know *why* I won.

I love deep games, emergent gameplay, etc.. But I also love to deconstruct games and figure out what makes them tick, how rules affect game states ,etc. Chess has always felt impenetrable to me - and not because I can't deconstruct the rules but because I have no insight into my own implicit knowledge about the game. So I wish you LOTS of luck and if you figure out how to school your daughter in Chess I hope you'll throw a few pointers my way.

Mahni wrote:

So I wish you LOTS of luck and if you figure out how to school your daughter in Chess I hope you'll throw a few pointers my way.

I hear that sports analogies work well for maths (for boys)... so maybe Rabbit should try my little pony or whatever she likes.

A. My Little Pony is so 1990.

B. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that Alien13z was probably joking, guys. Letting her figure out her own strategies is actually a pretty good idea. If she likes moving out the pawns on the sides, let her do that and see where it takes her.

C. Anyway, I'm an awful chess player. I always have been. I just have no ability to think more than one or two steps ahead in the game. And, while I'm very empathic with people in personal situations, trying to figure out what they're thinking in a gaming situation is impossible for me. It's all guess work with very low yields of success.

Demosthenes wrote:

B. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that Alien13z was probably joking, guys. Letting her figure out her own strategies is actually a pretty good idea. If she likes moving out the pawns on the sides, let her do that and see where it takes her.

Winner!

trip1eX wrote:

Both races are the same, only 6 different kinds of units and 1 low-res map? BAh. Newb game. I'm waiting for the blood patch and a price drop before I even think about buying.

I appreciate this comment a good deal. I will admit that, at first, it seemed like it was posted to the wrong thread, but then light dawned and I smirked. Heartily.

Let me add that there's no story mode and/or other compelling SP experience. Plus, the animations are really bad.

Demosthenes wrote:

B. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that Alien13z was probably joking, guys. Letting her figure out her own strategies is actually a pretty good idea. If she likes moving out the pawns on the sides, let her do that and see where it takes her.

Demos, see this:

rabbit wrote:

Nothing like how funny a joke is once someone's explained it ...

Demosthenes wrote:

B. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that Alien13z was probably joking, guys. Letting her figure out her own strategies is actually a pretty good idea. If she likes moving out the pawns on the sides, let her do that and see where it takes her.

Alien13z wrote:

Winner!

Yes, I was fairly certain it was a joke, but I still think Alien13z's house was hardcore growing up

And , I will reiterate that I completely agree with letting someone intuit their own strategy. You never know when they will do it a different way that just works. ala Ender's Game.

Also, kudos to Mahni, well thought out post that I would say articulated very well the complexity of rule/strategy articulation

I recently tried to teach someone without a good boardgame base Acquire. This is harder than it sounds as the game is an obtuse business merger and stock simulation that many people at my Church have played for quite some time to a high degree of intricacy. We succeeded without intending to to humiliate him because we kept forgetting to mention little intricate, but very important rules, until we were upon them.

Acquire, really? I've played that with total non-gamers and not really had any issues. Hrmm...

Tonight, on the advice of my best friend Josh, I sat with my daughter just doing end-game puzzles. It completely engaged her. Removing the distractions of the opening and middle game really had her thinking about the basics.