Happy New Year to our chess players. This January marks a major milestone for me: 10 years of teaching chess.

The idea came to me at the end of 2015. As some will know, my own formal experience with chess began in elementary school, when we had a chess club in grades 5 and 6. I definitely wasn’t brand new to chess, and was always board 1 at inter-school team tournaments; our regular team followed with Mickey on board 2, then Max on board 3. The club was run by the Roving Chessnuts, and taught by Richard Roberts, pictured top right in the photo that has long been on the front page of this website (Edmonton International & Reserves, 2014).

I reached out to Bruce Thomas, head-man of the Roving Chessnuts, and Kevin Jones, still principal of Leo Nickerson, and we soon had nine kids in a brand new chess club, in January 2016. In the third year we added a chess club at Lois Hole, then at Ronald Harvey, which unfortunately were cut off by the pandemic hitting in 2020. We did squeeze in the first St. Albert chess tournament in a decade, a few weeks earlier, which gathered 23 players into the Lois Hole gym.

Since then, of course, we have moved online, which has its pros and cons. Our modern teaching tools online are excellent, and most of all I love that we can ensure a full hour rather than squeezing into a school’s lunch break, but there is a loss of the face-to-face, physical-piece encounters. For that, we have the Mission: Fun and Games chess club on Thursdays, early in its third year and going strong as ever.

To end, an announcement: to celebrate 10 years of teaching, my lesson packages will be $20 off until the end of January. You can find the slate of rates and some of my teaching philosophy on the individual lessons page, if you want to take your game deeper.

Cheers for 2026!