How to Read the Chess Blog Posts

By Josh
You may be confused looking at my chess blog posts. You may wonder what 18. Nxf7!! means. In this blog post I'll be teaching you how to read my chess blog posts! First, I'll be breaking down 18. Nxf7!!.
18.
This is the number of moves there have been (so this would be move #18 for white and black has moved 17 times)
N
N is for Knight, so this is a knight moving. If it was a Q, it would be a queen moving. If it was a B, it would be a bishop. If it was R, it would be a Rook moving. If it was a K, it would be a king. If it is any lowercase letter, it is a pawn
x
x simply means that a piece is being captured
f7
f7 means that the knight landed on the square f7 if you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a picture an empty chess board with markings of squares.

image found here

In the beginning of the chess game, white's pieces are on the squares that have 1's and 2's on them and black's pieces are on the squares that have 7's and 8's. The f7 means that the knight is landing on the square that has f7 on it.

!!

The !! means that this is an absolutely SPECTACULAR move! One ! would mean that the move is a great one. A ? would mean that the move is a mistake. A ?? would mean that the move is absolutely TERRIBLE.

What do 0-0 and 0-0-0 mean?

0-0 means that the move is a king side castle. 0-0-0 means that the move is a queen side castle.

I hope you enjoy my other chess blog posts (now that you can read them)!

How to Do Well at Chess Tactics

By Josh
To start I'm going to tell you the three types of puzzle

• Checkmating
• Material Winning
• Avoiding Checkmate and/or Capture

The biggest thing in tactics is deciding what type of puzzle it is.
Checkmating
These are usually easy to find, but can be mistaken for material winning puzzles

This is an example of a checkmating puzzle that can be mistaken for a material winning puzzle. That mistake would be 1.Qxd4?? which would lose your queen after 1... Ba5+! 2. Ke7, Qxd4. Instead, the correct move is 1. Qg3! which will checkmate the opponents king after 1... Ke2, Ba6+ 2. Nb5, Bxb5#. Mate.
Material Winning
These puzzles are about giving yourself an edge by stealing pieces.

This is an easy tactic that probably won't give you many points. If you don't know what to do, the answer is 1. Ne3 which will take the queen in the next move.

Defense

I couldn't find any easy ones, so I went with one that even after completing the moves it still makes 0 sense to me. You can ALWAYS tell when a puzzle is about defense.

I have told you the biggest thing in chess tactics! Happy puzzling!

Potion Brewing in Minecraft

By Jeremiah the 6th grader

Potion brewing in minecraft is quite complicated, so I'm going to show you how to make a few easy to make potions.
First of course you are going to need 1 blaze rod
And 3 cobble (cobblestone) to make a Brewing Stand, and
 blaze powder
 
for the fuel. In order to make most potions you need to make an awkward potion, and in order to do that you are going to need nether wart and water bottles
1.Potion of Swiftness. add sugar➝
2.Potion of Poison, add spider eye ➝
3.Potion of Invisibility, add Golden carrot
➕ Fermented spider eye

=          
I hope this was helpful to all of you minecrafters out there!

Chess.com

By Josh
I almost never play chess in person because I have almost nobody to play it with. I have a few friends that play chess, but they're not always in the mood. I took up Chess.com mainly because I was starting to get to old for ChessKid, which is a part of Chess.com. I instantly noticed a change in the playing style. I also noticed there were a lot more things to do. The most popular timer on ChessKid was 15 minutes, where on Chess.com it is 3 minutes. There were analysers, which were completely alien to me. This is a very fun website, with over 17 million members on it! There is lots of stuff to do to help with your chess skills. The link for the website is here. If you want to you can also look at my profile, which is here, feel free.

How to Win Fast Chess Games

By Josh
This time I'm going to talk about games with 1-5 minute timers. I hope you'll find this helpful!

Keep an eye on the clock at all times
This is a simple rule that can be the difference between winning and losing. Try to keep your timer higher then your opponents. If you don't then you can have yourself trying to make up for that time with bad moves.

navoj98 vs mathkid1

13. a3, Nc6 14. Nd5,  Nxd5 15. Bxd5, Qxb2 16. Bxc6, bxc6

  17. Rb1?, Qd4? (Both of us completely missed 17... Qxb3) 18. Qd2, c4 19 c3?, Qxd3 

 20. Qxd3, cxd3 (I was very content having won another pawn until to my horror I realized, I only had 4.3 seconds left! I was very panicked which led to bad things.) 21.Rbd1, Rad8 22. c4, f6?? (There it is. I had given my opponent 23.Ne6! putting a fork between my two rooks AND losing a rook would mean I'd lost the pawn on d3, so white would be better off!)

 23. Rf2? (White wanted to win on time!) 23... Bf7 24. Nxf7, 1-0 (Out of time.)

So, time can play a huge factor. A good thing to do is to:

Use opening traps
A personal favorite of mine is this:
1. e4, e5 2. Nf3, Nc6 3. Bc4, Nf6 4. Ng5, h6? 5. Nxf7

Creating a fork between the queen and the rook. This brings me to my final point:

Never Resign
This is a simple rule because of time. Their time can run out and you can still win.

I hope you find this helpful!

How to Play Chess

By Josh

Hello! If you are reading this, you have most likely have never played chess, and if you have then you have probably forgotten how to play chess. The game is simple. The game is played on a checkerboard. when set up properly, the board looks like this:

Let me tell you the names of the pieces

• Pawn
• Bishop
• Knight
• Rook
• Queen
• King

You go through the game taking turns, landing on your opponent's pieces to "capture" them (taking them off the board) and trying to "checkmate" the opponent's king (I will tell you about that later). You cannot land on your own pieces.
I will now walk you through how to move them

Pawn

The pawn can only move forward one space at a time. If the pawn has not moved yet it can move 1 or 2 spaces. The only way the pawn can capture pieces is diagonal. The pawn cannot ever move backwards, even while capturing a piece. If the pawn reaches the last square on the other side (what I mean is that it can't move forward anymore) it will "promote" which means you take the pawn off the board and in it's place put down a different piece (it can't be a king).

Bishop

The bishop can only go diagonal as far as you want and in any direction you want (like, backwards, but it still has to be diagonal). It cannot go over pieces. It captures the same way it moves, diagonal and then stopping at the place that the captured piece was at.

Knight

The knight is the weird piece. It only moves in an L-shape. 2 squares one way, and then 1 square left or right of that direction. This confuses some people, so I'll show you an example.

The knight is going to move two spaces to the left (our first direction), and one space down (or, left of the first left). The knight is the only piece that can jump over other pieces. It only captures by landing on the piece. The knight can't stop in the middle of the L to capture a piece.

Rook

The same movements as a bishop, but only vertically and horizontally.

Queen

The queen is like a bishop and rook COMBINED! It can go diagonal or straight (it can't do both in the same move)! 

King

The final piece, and the most important. It moves just like a queen, but only one square at a time. If the king is in check (it can be captured in the next move) then you must do one of 3 things,

1. Capture the piece putting the king in danger
2. Put a piece in between the attacker and your king
3. Move the king away

If you can't do any of them then you have been checkmated (you have lost)! So, protect your king at all costs! You cannot put your own king in danger.

Piece Worth

Before you win a pawn and lose your queen, take a look at this chart to see what piece exchanges are worth your while.

Pawn is worth 1

Bishop is worth 3

Knight is worth 3

Rook is worth 5

Queen is worth 9

King is worth infinity

Sometimes, people will do "sacrifices" which lose pieces but give them something else in return.

I hope you found this helpful and happy chess playing!

Paper Airplanes

By Jeremiah the 6th grader

Paper airplanes are really fun once you get the hang of making them. Here are some simple instructions for 2 simple planes:

1. Beginner's Plane
   

Step 1. Take a blank piece of paper

and fold it in half like so

Step 2. Unfold

(Make sure you can still see the first fold line)

Step 3.

Step 4. 

Step 5. Refold center fold

Step 6. Fold left wing

(make sure folded wings are level with bottom of fuselage)

Step 7. Fold right wing

Step 8. Flatten out wings

All are optional: add tape across center fold, and, or cut wind flaps on back of wings for tricks.

      2. Speedy Plane

Repeat steps 1-4

Step 1. Fold the left corner again like so

Step 2. Fold the right corner again like so

Repeat steps 5-8

P.S. I will put more planes later