Requirement 1: Discuss with your merit badge counselor the history of the game of chess. Explain why it is considered a game of planning and strategy.

Requirement 2: Discuss with your merit badge counselor the following:

Requirement 2a: The benefits of playing chess, including developing critical thinking skills, concentration skills, and decision-making skills, and how these skills can help you in other areas of your life

Requirement 2b: Sportsmanship and chess etiquette

Requirement 3: Demonstrate to your counselor that you know each of the following. Then, using Scouting's Teaching EDGE, teach someone (preferably another Scout) who does not know how to play chess:

Requirement 3a: The name of each chess piece

Requirement 3b: How to set up a chessboard

Requirement 3c: How each chess piece moves, including castling and en passant captures

Requirement 4: Do the following:

Requirement 4a: Demonstrate scorekeeping using the algebraic system of chess notation.

Requirement 4b: Discuss the differences between the opening, the middle game, and the endgame.

Requirement 4c: Explain four opening principles.

Requirement 4d: Explain the four rules for castling.

Requirement 4e: On a chessboard, demonstrate a "scholar's mate" and a "fool's mate."

Requirement 4f: Demonstrate on a chessboard four ways a chess game can end in a draw.

Requirement 5: Do the following:

Requirement 5a: Explain four of the following elements of chess strategy: exploiting weaknesses, force, king safety, pawn structure, space, tempo, time.

Requirement 5b: Explain any five of these chess tactics: clearance sacrifice, decoy, discovered attack, double attack, fork, interposing, overloading, overprotecting, pin, remove the defender, skewer, zwischenzug.

Requirement 5c: Set up a chessboard with the white king on *e1*, the white rooks on *a1* and *h1*, and the black king on *e5*. With White to move first, demonstrate how to force checkmate on the black king.

Requirement 5d: Set up and solve five direct-mate problems provided by your merit badge counselor.

Requirement 6: Do ONE of the following:

Requirement 6a: Play at least three games of chess with other Scouts and/or your merit badge counselor. Replay the games from your score sheets and discuss with your counselor how you might have played each game differently.

Requirement 6b: Play in a scholastic (youth) chess tournament and use your score sheets from that tournament to replay your games with your merit badge counselor. Discuss with your counselor how you might have played each game differently.

Requirement 6c: Organize and run a chess tournament with at least four players, plus you. Have each competitor play at least two games.