[This book may be purchased as a Kindle book through Amazon or paperback through Amazon or Create Space.]
This book was updated in March 2024.
Ralph began playing Chess during the summer between 7th and 8th grades. It was an extremely rainy summer, so his mother bought several board games for he and his best friend, who lived across the street, to play. One of those games was Chess.
No one in either of their families knew how to play Chess, so they learned together. His friend always picked up on things much more quickly than he and won most of their games.
When they started high school they were still regularly playing Chess. Their high school had a Chess team. Ralph had seen a girl in the halls whom he thought was attractive and he found out she was on the Chess team. He talked his friend into joining the Chess team so he could get to know the girl better.
After a short time, Ralph found out that he liked the game much better than the girl. His friend soon dropped off the Chess team and he continued.
Ralph attended his first Chess tournament in October of 1961. It was a boarded team scholastic tournament. He was on Board 4. While he went 4-0, the team finished in third place. The bug had bitten and in October of 2011 Ralph played in a tournament that marked his 50th year of playing tournament Chess.
Ralph's last 27 years as an educator were spent in a small high school, located in a rural community, with an average annual student population of 200.
Ralph was lucky in that there were many families in the area that played Chess, but there was no formal Chess activity in the school. He started a competitive team. Due primarily to community support and the pre-existence of Chess in the community, the high school teams started to flourish. In Ralph's 25 years as Chess coach the team won 19 State 3A high school championships, three Grand Championships (first among all high schools regardless of size) and brought home nine team trophies from the fourteen United States Chess Federation’s National Scholastic Chess Tournaments.
Other coaches in his state started looking to Ralph for advice on a variety of Chess topics. So he developed a series of handouts on the topics about the topics for which information had been requested.
Ralph began his involvement in Chess nationally in 1988, becoming a member of the USCFs Scholastic Committee and serving as the committee chairperson for seven years of his 25 years on the Scholastic Committee. Answering some requests, he started giving out his handouts to coaches from several states.
Some scholastic people with USCF suggested that Ralph make those handouts into a book. He arranged them and they became this book, with several additions.
Later this book was used as the book to be tested over for the USCF Certified Chess Coach - Level II.