School chess clubs are the grassroots of the scholastic chess world! — Without them, few students would have the opportunity to play at all except in far less dynamic circumstances. A school club, under ideal circumstances, could and should offer a broad range of peer opposition in a fair and fun atmosphere — much more like what kids could expect to experience in formal competition. It can also be a focal point for learning about many aspects of chess and to develop a broad range of chess-related skills and knowledge — technical, psychological and experiential!

The school chess club is more than a fun place where kids can spend an hour or so fiddling with a chess set. — At the club, kids can: iron out internal problems, like the expectation that they should always win; engage in typical, relevant social/sporting interactions; learn something about how to conduct their forces; and gain familiarity about competitive expectations, rules, and etiquette. Many of these are simple and 'automatic' learning situations they share with their peers, and others require some supervisory involvement .

The administration of a school club can be fairly simple. — With a little more parental involvement and some reasonable funding, it can become quite a bit more structured and effective. Some funds must go to buy equipment, and thankfully, chess is reasonably inexpensive. Other learning resources can cost a bit more: a chess teacher might be a volunteer, or a club may elect to hire a professional or buy course materials to provide a curriculum for the basic through advanced levels. Some additional training aids might also be indicated — there are a lot of items available, from workbooks, demonstration boards and notation sheets to interesting and exciting videotapes, computer training programs, and a thousand-and-one chess books to build a library!

There are several levels that a school club might attain:

• Basic — provides equipment and space for kids to meet and play
• Primary — adds a 'teacher' (usually a volunteer) to provide an introduction to moves and rules for new players, and some structure to club play
• Secondary — divides players into skill levels, and provides some appropriate instruction to each … formation of a school team becomes less problematic
• Advanced — provides a professional instructor to help at all levels, with an emphasis on developing a competitive team — tournament rules and skills, notation and clock practice, structured club play with an internal rating system
• Championship — adds the full weight of parental involvement, presenting access to and use of training resources, reduction of wasteful and unproductive activities, and regular time devoted to lectures on advanced topics, discussion and drills

There are several levels that a school club might attain:

• An internal ranking system — by adding a club rating calculation based on serious games' results that mimics, even approximates the USCF system.
• A club database — by encouraging the members to submit, even input all their tournament games into a proprietary team database (see related entries under Resources and Activities — Projects), the club can quickly obtain a growing sample of information about other local competitors' play that can be used to prepare its own players for subsequent tournaments. Although this may seem a bit farfetched — the likelihood of meaningful correlation is only moderate — consider both that it will become more relevant for those likely to be seated at the higher boards, and that familiarity with such structured preparation – used increasingly by the successive rating levels, and practically mandatory for international players — will benefit every member in some way.
• A reduction of frivolous activities — meaning time wasted by unstructured play and those silly variants like Bughouse and "give away" which not only do not provide anything in the way of a constructive chess experience, but may actually promote bad habits and retard, or even degrade real gains in such critical areas of chess development as pattern recognition, analysis, and judgment. While it is true that kids may enjoy such folderol, the sponsors and parents, keeping in mind the true intent of the club, should maintain their control over activities – one suggestion is to offer the students free rein only as reward for sustained periods of seriousness and positive tournament results!

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