- May 1
- 2 min read
Howdy! It's the Chess Friends!
Today, we will talk about our process and how we got to this point. Back in September 2024, as we approached the 2024-2025 school year, the air was filled with possibilities. As we played more chess, we found more and more kids reaching out with questions about what it takes to play in tournaments. We realized that there are lots of books on tactics, planning, openings, endgames, etc. but we wanted to do something different. We dabbled with the ideas of writing a fiction book, a graphic novel, and more, but ultimately decided it would be most helpful to write a nonfiction book by kids for kids, in a question-and-answer format, so that you can have three chess friends (your authors) by your side at every step of your chess tournament journey!
We then set out to collect a whole bunch of questions from kids, coaches, and parents. We decided to meet every week, alternating between Zoom from our homes and Grand Central Bakery in Wedgwood, WA. During each meeting, we would brainstorm ideas, answer some questions, and give ourselves assignments for each week. In addition to writing, we edited each other's writing, drew some comics, made some cover ideas, and planned next steps. In our next post, we will share some things that didn't make the cut.
As the school year progressed and we played more tournaments, we kept adding to our list of questions. Eventually our list grew so big that we needed to start combining questions and choosing which ones were core to our goal of helping you be ready for tournament chess. As we worked on comic strips, we came to the realization that maybe it would be more effective to use a single pawn friend we made in Procreate, called Peshka (Russian for pawn), and came up with fun blurbs in line with the questions and answers. We also decided to add some tactics puzzles and hints in the form of Haiku we wrote, a Japanese style of poem with a 5, 7, 5 syllabic structure.
When we had a rough draft, we created a blad (formatted teaser for marketing) and sent it to friends to write Testimonials. Developing this website was also a challenging learning experience for us, and we chose the WIX platform to help us along the way. We're continuing our weekly meetings now and focusing on editing, formatting, and marketing, not to mention eating good pastries together!
Three Cheers, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends!
The Man Benji, The Myth Sarang, and The Legend Vivi
P.S. How do you say Pawn in your language? Put it in the comments and let us know!
- Apr 24
- 1 min read
Updated: May 1
Howdy! It's the Chess Friends!
In our next blog post, we will share more about our writing process but today we want to share a bit about one of the most important aspects of book writing... drumroll please... MARKETING! Marketing is sharing your project in a way that brings more people to it. While we're doing some final edits and preparing for publication, we've created this sigma postcard/bookmark (with a chessboard on the back) and this website to help spread the word!
We will take it to tournaments, speaking events, and share it with as many friends as we can. Please help us out! We've already had visitors to our site from USA, Canada, UK, Serbia, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, India, and Russia and hope to fill our map! We want to be world famous!
The Man Benji just returned and shared in Europe. The Myth Sarang and The Legend Vivi will be sharing their past book and this one at Mechanics Institute in San Francisco, CA, at a book event between rounds 3 and 4 of a USCF and FIDE rated tournament Sunday April 27! They also plan to give out cards to their opponents and friends at the biggest chess tournament of all time, Supernationals, in May, and the US Open in July/August in Wisconsin, as well as several tournaments at home like the Washington Open!
Three Cheers, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends!
Benji, Sarang, and Vivaan
- Mar 20
- 1 min read
Updated: Apr 10
Howdy! It's the Chess Friends! In our book, we will answer your most frequently asked questions about chess tournaments, organized into three phases: Before the Tournament, During the Tournament, and After the Tournament. We will also have a little friend throughout the book and training puzzles with haiku hints to help you on your journey. An example of each are shown below. Enjoy!
Does playing chess make you smarter?
There are many academic studies that show that chess helps a great deal with academic achievement, particularly in STEAM fields, like math. Chess also helps you navigate emotions: how to win graciously, how to process the loss, and how to reflect and bounce back. It helps with pattern recognition, strategy, tactics, planning, making decisions under uncertainty, focus, spatial reasoning, as well as patience, calm, making friends, etc. It also helps tremendously with memory. It’s also an area where you get to interact with people from all over the world, of all ages, from all walks of life, so it can help you get comfortable with everyone over fun, shared experiences.
Puzzle time!
Dubious Knight move.
Do you see the win for White?
This is Scholar’s Mate.
Over the next several blog posts, we will share more about our creative process, including further examples of questions and answers in the book, our little friend, and haiku puzzles. Any suggestions for what we should name our pawn friend? Leave your answers in the comments below or email us at chessfriendsbooks@gmail.com.
Three Cheers, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends!
Benji, Sarang, and Vivaan