Sony PSP, portable DVD player, iPod, Atomic wrist watch, Barnes & Noble and the Gap gift certificate? What do these items have to do with chess? Well, those are some of the innovative prizes used by coach Saudin of NY Chess Kids to attract kids to compete this Sunday.
I am all for this idea. This is one of the reasons why the Susan Polgar Foundation awarded Dell Laptops and other cool prizes in our past tournaments. We need to motivate kids to be in chess.
Coach Saudin is doing a good job with his kids. Click here to check out his website and program.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
I want my psp 🙂
EXPERIMENT:
In a well known chess-related psychology experiment (circa 1980?), college students were told to wait while the experiment room was reset. That was a fib, because the wait room was the primary experiment room.
The waiting room was purposely a boring place, except some chess puzzle books were on a corner table. By hidden mirror the researchers counted the amount of time the students spent on chess. It was a high amount. Then the students were taken into a pointless other room to do some simple psychology task just to keep them fooled.
That was Monday.
On Tuesday they brought the students in again. This time they paid the students to spend time on chess puzzles in the waiting room. Naturally the time spent on chess was again high.
On Wednesday they brought the students back again. This time the researchers did Not offer to pay the students for chess. Now the amount of time spent on chess dropped a lot!
In a control group that had Not been paid on Tuesday, the amount of chess time on Wednesday was still high, certainly higher than the Wednesday amount for the group paid on Tuesday.
CONCLUSION:
If you pay kids to play chess, then those kids will play less chess than normal when the payments are discontinued.
This phenomenon is not restricted to chess.
Gene Milener
http://CastleLong.com/
In general, motivating with rewards may work on kids, but to raise serious players we need to develop sportive fighting spirit. A win is a reward in itself. At the moment American scholastic chess seems to be stuck in showing kids that it’s fun to play, not raising competitive strong-willed champions. Also true that such types can be rather unpleasant human being, so maybe it’s ok to stay in the chess-is-fun stage. But in the long run, raising serious players needs to go beyond “fun” to “beat them all” concept. Paying for success is a trap parents and educators can get stuck in. At what point do you stop? And how do you stop without demotivating the kids?
I like the idea.
I’ve often wondered if there is emperical evidence that it is more difficult to reach, say, a 2100 rating (USCF rating) if you do not begin tournament chess until after age 25?
Of course, the younger one is the less difficult this achievement would be (especially with lots of practice), but what about those older than 25?
Are there examples?
Thanks.