As you might have guessed, Story Time Chess: Level 3 takes another step beyond the basics, introducing tactics that help even the youngest students through the notoriously tricky middlegame.

Middlegame is chess lingo for the moves played between the opening and the final phase, or endgame. The middlegame can be challenging to navigate, as it tests your ability to follow through on your plan while your opponent does all they can to foil it and implement their own.

King of the Castle

In our Level 2 Strategy Expansion, kids discover the Secret Missions: three rules of thumb to follow any time they start a full game of chess. The second Secret Mission is castling, a special move that keeps the king protected while increasing the other pieces mobility.

Because castling is a complex maneuver subject to various conditions and caveats, we kept Level 2s explanation simple. By contrast, Story Time Chess: Level 3 leads children on a deeper investigation of castling in a recurring mini-game we call Castling Quiz, a series of puzzles that explores the full castling rules in all their intricacy.

Multiple Castling Quizzes throughout the book provide readers with all they need to know about this powerful tactic which opens the door to the middlegame in profound ways.

Analyze This

Forming good habits is crucial to chess success, as no player can get by on instinct alone. Its especially important for young players to get in the habit of examining the whole board before making a move.

The first chapter of Story Time Chess: Level 3 introduces board analysis with fun mini-games that relate back to the stories. For instance, the first mini-game in Chapter One asks readers to help King Shaky find the winning move of a chess game against his new adversary, a crafty magician named King Richard.

Chay-chay-chain Chain of Pawns!

Though theyre sometimes used interchangeably, strategy and tactics have distinct meanings: A strategy is a high-level master plan, while tactics are individual actions taken to carry that plan to completion. And as any experienced chess player will tell you, you cant win a game without careful tactical deployment of the pawns.

But many beginners mistakenly undervalue their pawns. They might assume that, because theyre so numerous and slow-moving, pawns are easily expendable or less important than their flashier teammates. The truth is, pawns are extremely powerful when they stick together in pawn chains, diagonal lines or V-shaped formations in which the leading pawn is defended by the pawn diagonally behind it, and so on down the line.

Story Time Chess: Level 3 introduces this vital tactic by dropping readers into an in-progress mini-game of Queen vs. Pawns, an exciting scenario in which the pawns can only achieve victory by sticking together. Your child will see their brave little pawns in a whole new light and never look back!

Rank and File Recon

Our exploration of middlegame tactics in Story Time Chess: Level 3 continues with a foundational organizing principle of the chessboard: ranks, the horizontal rows of squares, and files, the vertical columns.

Number of Players: 2-4 Players
Playing Time: 20 Minutes

Recommended for ages 3 to 103.

WARNING! CHOKING HAZARD - Small parts. Notfor children under 3 years.

.