Hello Learners Chess Parents and Friends! Our Spring 2018 Before and After School Chess Clubs are starting up next week! A few of our clubs are already full and many others still have space. Please do get signed up soon so we can get the appropriate number of coaches placed to coach your child's club this Spring! Click here to register if you haven't yet. Remember, all students need to re-register for the Spring. Also: Check out our upcoming tournaments! Spring Single Day Camps: February 19th (President's Day) and March 8th and 9th (APS Parent/Teacher Conferences) Spring Break Chess Camp! Sign up today! March 19th-23rd And stay tuned for the announcement of our summer camps coming soon!

Puzzle Solutions from our last email : Beginner/Intermediate Puzzle: The Back Rank Mate! This is a forced Mate in 3 for white. White will move, forcing a certain response from black, and then again, and then finally checkmate: all forcing moves. We'll send the correct solution in our next email.

Solution explained: To find the solution to this puzzle, it is important to recognize that Black's King is behind three of it's own Pawns and thus could be checkmated on the "back rank" of the board with a Rook or a Queen. And then it is important to notice that White's Queen and two Rooks are all pointing at the same e8 square that is only defended twice (by the Black Rook on a8 and the Black Knight on f6). Then all White has to do is move the Queen or Rook to e8, get captured, then recapture with a queen or rook that is left, get captured again, and then finally recapture with the final piece that can on e8, delivering a back rank checkmate to the Black King.

Advanced Puzzle: Fun Anti Chess Puzzle! Here is a fun one if you haven't seen it yet! White to move and NOT CHECK MATE! In this puzzle most any move White can make will checkmate the Black King. Except there is one move White can make that will not checkmate the Black King. We'll send out the answer to this one in our next email.

Solution explained: This is a tough one, as most any move White can make will deliver checkmate to the Black King. It is fun to see all the checkmates that White can do and what makes them checkmate. But the puzzle is to find the non-checkmating move. And in this case the only move that works is to move the g6 Rook to c6. The reason this exact move is necessary is that then the Black Rook on b7 can go capture the White Bishop on h7 that will be revealed to be giving check when the g6 Rook moves. The reason he has to go specifically to c6 is that in any other scneario, the Black Rook on b7 would be pinned/ stuck in place by the a8 White Bishop, which would be giving the Black King check if the Black Rook were to move.

Chess Practice Online! Learn and Brush Up on The Basics Here is a link to easy interactive chess exercises for your kids to learn or brush up on the basics . Here is a link to more difficult interactive chess puzzles for our more experienced returning players .  Both these links come from the free and open sourced chess website, lichess.org. The site is free and has no ads. You can create an account for free and set it to "kid mode" for your kids to play on without you having to constantly monitor.

Support Learners Chess! Get your Holiday Shopping Started and Support Learners Chess! Shop on AmazonSmile! Use this link to make any purchase you would normally make on amazon and amazon smile will donate 1% of your purchase to Learners Chess Academy! Order Chess Equipment! If you are shopping for chess equipment, you can use this link to purchase any chess equipment at a very reasonable price from Wholesale Chess (sponsors of Learners Without Borders!) and 10% of your purchase will be credited to our account! Go Solar! If you are interested in going solar, you can use this link to schedule a free consultation and if you end up going solar, Learners Chess will receive a $200 donation! Designate Vaya Verde dba Learners Chess Academy as a recipient in your work place giving campaign through United Way  Or make a donation to support our need-based scholarship fund and other charitable projects such as Learners Without Borders and the Central NM Team Chess League! Support Learners Chess!

Thank you for reading and staying connected! -Coach Victor Lopez and the enitre team at Learners Chess

Help Us With Our Email Visibility!  Add this email address and any you receive from Learners Chess to your email address contacts. This will lower the incidence of our emails getting flagged as spam.

Do you want to receive less emails from Learners Chess?  If you have signed up for one of our programs in the past, we have added your email to our email list. If you want to receive less frequent email updates from Learners Chess, you don't have to unsubscribe! This email is being sent to our " Program Updates" list. You can simply opt out of the most common updates, to only receive a quarterly, or annual update about our organization or simply updates that will only pertain to or interest you!  Click here to update your Learners Chess email preferences. Or you may completely unsubscribe from all Learners' email updates below.