Chess Star After-school clubs After-school Chess" puzzles workbooks Summer chess camps Chess Star Rookie and Open Blitz For Kids Parents Page Chess Books For students
Chess Star Blitz Jan 7, 2007 Sign Up for Chess Tournaments on-line

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Akhmilovskaya

Three Times US Women’s Champion

I played chess professionally for 13 years, 1977-1989. In 1986 I played a match for the World Championship Title. My highest USCF rating was around 2500.

My other achievements include:

Two Time World Chess Women’s Olympics Champion
Three Time Russia Women’s Chess Champion
Three Time United States Women’s Chess Champion
Winner of many International Women’s Chess Tournaments

My Sunday column “Chess Studio with Elena Donaldson” is published weekly by Seattle Times since 1995.

CHESS CAMPS K-6 grades

http://www.chessplayer.com/camps2007.htm.

I run my summer chess camps since 2000 : http://www.chessplayer.com/elena_camp.htm. I am also directing Orlov Chess Camps in Seattle since 1995: http://www.chessplayer.com/camps.htm. Total we teach over 300 students on all our camps each year.

I also run several local scholastic tournaments, and many other events.

AFTER-SCHOOL CHESS CLUBS

http://www.chessplayer.com/after-school.htm

We are teaching in 14 schools in Seattle and Northshore.
q All levels, or combined: Complete Beginners, Advanced Beginners, Intermediate/Advanced.
q "After-school Chess" puzzles workbooks for everyone, on four levels.
q LearnChess@Home program, with homework weekly to interested students. For my chess club and private students only, free!

“AFTER-SCHOOL CHESS”

puzzles workbooks

The “After-school Chess” workbooks on four levels for school chess clubs. http://www.chessplayer.com/workbooks.htm

The Workbooks are available in four levels: from Complete Beginners to Advanced.
Puzzles workbooks make a big difference for the teacher during the class. It allows the teacher to follow students’s progress and for all students to work at a different pace.

TOURNAMENTS

http://www.chessplayer.com/SignUpToPlayChess.htm

TEACHING CHESS IN SCHOOLS
K-1 GRADE

A special curriculum for school teachers to teach pre-chess in Kindergarten and First grade.

“BEGINNING CHESS ACADEMY”

http://www.chessplayer.com/begin.htm

A 50-page workbook for complete beginners to use at home. It will help parents to teach chess a young child (5-7 years old) in a few weeks.

Private TEACHING

No space is available, please contact me later in spring for next school year.

Currently all my students who work with me for at least a year improve to advanced level.

My goal is to teach students how to think and make good decisions during the game. I do not have the only goal to grow chess masters but also use the game of chess to develop valuable skills for academic excellence. My teaching methods, based on Russian chess school, will give the interested students a great tool to future success if they decide to compete in high level tournaments and study chess beyond scholastic level. I follow classical rules in chess and teach my students based on their own style and their individual vision of chess.

I am not a self-taught chess player. I was lucky to learn chess and how to work on chess from best World’s chess masters - World Champions G. Kasparov, A. Karpov, B. Spassky, M. Botwinnik, D. Bronstein, and many many other top players. When I was a teen I was sitting in the same classroom with G. Kasparov. For several years I was a student in the several chess schools taught by World’ top players.

2006-2007

So far I have several students already qualified for Tournament of Champions that will take place in April 2007. I have several new students and I am sure all or most of them will make it to TOC by March of 2007.

I am continuing to teach at four local schools, and working with a small group of private students. This year my time is very limited as I spent most of my time with my son traveling to his tennis tournaments.

After a recent chess success in spring-summer of 2005 my son decided to take a break from chess and switch to playing tennis full time. Boys do that at his age! He did not work on chess since summer 2005 so it was not a surprise to me that on the December 2005 US Scholastic National Grade Chess Championship in Houston, TX he only scored 5 points out of 7, and came only #16 in the third grade competition. My other several students played very well at Nationals in Houston scoring 5,5 out 7 in tough competition, all placing high. They all won trophies and improved USCF ratings.

Final 2005-06 results

Seven out of my eleven students have qualified into Tournament Of Champions. http://www.chessplayer.com/stars.htm.

At the State Championship my two students scored the perfect 5/5, most of them ended with 4/5. My student won Tournament of Champions in 4-6 section, and my son Nicholas came # 2 in K-3 section, After a several months break from chess he finally decided to play chess, the night before the TOC.

Private lessons:

I am now teaching part-time to have more time with my son. I may have a spot for bi-weekly private lessons.

For private lessons I accept beginning (or low intermediate rated 1000 or so, grades K-3) students who did not have previous private coaching.

I have requirements for the students who will be working with me:

1) Come to lessons weekly / bi-weekly (every second week)

2) Play tournaments regularly

3) Parents are asked to do homework (or follow up) with students

I currently teach chess privately and in local area school chess clubs. My students successfully play in the State and National tournaments. This year my eight students qualified to play in the Tournaments of Champions – the strongest scholastic tournaments of the year.

My three students scored 6 points out 7 at Nationals in Nashville 2005, and one finished with 6.5 points out of 7. My five students became State Co-Champions at the WA State Elementary Championship 2005 and two students finished with 4.5 points out of 5.

To respect privacy of my students I prefer not to disclose names of my students on this page.

My son, Nicholas Orlov, who is now only 8 years old, won the K-3 section of the Tournament of Champions 2005 http://www.whsca.org/TOC2005.html. In 2004-2005 school year as a second grader he won several 4-6 grades tournaments with a perfect score 5:0. His WA state rating is over 1500.

Nicholas took 2nd place in K-3 grade at Nationals 2005 with 6 points out of 7. Later in April 2005 Nicholas became a Co-Champion in the fourth grade at the WA State Elementary Championship (he played up for his team).

My Villa team came third at the state Championship 2005 in grades 4-6. I started teaching the chess club at Villa Academy three years ago, it was completely a “home-grown” team of 5 players. They made a big improvement over three years, but, to our disappointment, it was hard to compete against other two teams that attract many best players in the area every year from other local schools.

June 2005 Nicholas qualified into the World Chess Network Scholastic Championship finals, finishing on the top 8 out of 200+ players under age of 9. In the WCN Scholastic Finale that was held in Las-Vegas in July 9-10, 2005, Nicholas finished second, winning $1,000 prize.

In Orlov Summer Camps (June and July 2005) Nicholas won both Masters sections, and both blitz tournaments in a strong competition. http://www.chessplayer.com/Orlovcamps05.htm

It is very difficult to coach own child and my son’s achievements came as a result of a hard work and a teaching system I developed (and also learned from leading Russian coaches) over ten years of my practice.

For now I want my son to play chess well for his development and for fun, but I don’t mind if he decide to quit chess and move to something else later on. My son is also quite good at tennis that he loves very much.