Last year, an announcement was made that the Boy Scouts of America would issue a Chess merit badge. A more recent announcement said that it would start being made available to boys on September 8.
Does anyone know the requirements for the merit badge? I haven’t seen anything official yet. Boy Scout sites have said that the associated pamphlet has gone to the printer, which means the requirements have to have been approved. I don’t know the process for releasing requirements for merit badges, so perhaps the requirements are kept secret until the actual pamphlet publication, which is supposed to occur next month.
At any rate, if anyone has any knowledge or inside information, or preliminary versions, I would like to know. I’d like my son to get this badge as soon as possible. I suspect that one of the requirements will be something along the lines of “organize a Chess tournament for you patrol, troop, school, place of worship, or other organization”. If that one is in there, I’d like to do it even before the badge is officially available, so that when it becomes available, he can submit the paperwork the same day.
Unfortunately I think you’ll be disappointed when Sept 8 rolls around. One year is a very short timeline to put full focus on a new merit badge considering volunteer committee work, requirements development, book research, typesetting, and printing for 400+ Scouting councils. Granted, at the bottom I note that a chess MB has been discussed for years, but that has been among troop-level volunteers, not the committee members who could make it happen.
Disclosure: I’m not on the national Advancement committee. I’m an Eagle Scout, current national adviser, and work closely with one of the largest and most organized national committees.
Without an official BSA announcement, I seriously doubt the national Advancement committee will confirm or deny what is currently in the works for merit badges.
The announcement was made by the Sinquefields, not the Boy Scouts. See my quote at the bottom for why I think the announcement was made. In the context of Scouting merit badges and their history are pretty serious; the BSA has not made any announcement about a chess merit badge.
Please cite a link of the “more recent announcement” of Sept 8 and the “Boy Scout sites” that claim the requirements have gone to the publisher. I have not seen any traffic on a chess merit badge on the “major” volunteer Scouting websites (usscouts.org as a prime example). Scouting.org does not have any announcement(s) on the subject.
It’s my belief that there is no chess merit badge yet, and that the requirements do not exist at this time. At any rate the requirements won’t be released until the requirements books came available from the Scout shops. The last new merit badges came out in 1997 so I couldn’t tell you if the BSA announced the new badges ahead of time. I was 15…and earned Climbing only months after it was released. The requirements were not announced in advance in 1997. I doubt the new badges were announced ahead of time either; on Scouting’s national levels it is better to heavily promote new and approved programs than
Incidentally your question was also asked in the CLO forum (“Is this badge available yet?”). My response:
Bingo! The scout-wire.org link is the ONLY official announcement I’ve seen, even if it’s a bit under the radar.
You’ll have to accept that after decades of “rumor this, rumor that” in Scouting I don’t believe it until I see it. I’m glad I was wrong. It will be interesting to obtain a copy of the requirements and see the list of contributing authors.
Actually, last year Geocaching and Robotics were added. I think a couple of others as well, but those are the two that I remember.
I must confess that I have mixed feelings about a Chess merit badge. It appears that it will be real, but I wonder about what the requirements will say. Unless they make the requirements very difficult indeed, there will be hundreds of boys who will be able to stick out their hands and grab the badge. My guess is that someone with 50 tournament victories and an 800 rating will get the badge with very little work, and I doubt that my son is the only one in that category. There will probably be some sort of “help run a tournament” or “organize a tournament” requirement, and that might slow down some people.
Yeesh. I’ve spent too much time with the older youth (16-21). Another “Yeesh” is for Geocaching as its own badge; that should’ve been merged into a GPS section of Orienteering. I digress, but that gives you a flavor of the even small comments some new badges generate.
The Cub Scout belt loop requirements are probably just the starting point. Think of all the ways those requirements could be scaled appropriately from an 8yr old non-USCF-member to a 13yr old non-USCF-member.
I have seven Eagle palms…over 50 merit badges…there are some “grab” badges in there. But the “grab” badges depend on the boy and his extra-Scouting interests. Any sports-related badges were very easy for me.
If I were your boy’s MB counselor…I’d have him bring some non-USCF scouts with him to earn the badge. Use his chess skills to influence others. The point of Scouting is the leadership…badges are just one of many vehicles to make that happen.
This raises an interesting question/issue. Will the requirememts for the badge focus on organizational activities or chess performance, or both and in what mixture. It would be great, IMO, if the weight of the requirements were on organizing a tournament or perhaps a chess club within a troop or school.
A long-time standard of merit badges is to heavily weight the requirements towards activities that any young man could accomplish if he put the time and effort into it.
If ratings are involved it will be something like, “Participate in a USCF tournament; review your provisional rating online.”
It seems to me, just reading merit badge requirements, that they are very reluctant to put in a requirement that forces a boy to join any other organization to get a badge. They might have a requirement to Do ONE of the following: and one of the options is
“Participate in a USCF tournament.” or “Achieve a USCF rating of at least X”
(I’m not sure what X would be. 500? 300? It ought to be just high enough that almost anyone can get it, but it equires at least some effort.)
I wasn’t aware of the cub scout “academic pin” requirements. I knew of the belt loop, but my kid was so far beyond that when he joined Cub scouts that he didn’t bother with it. The “academic pin” requirements look like a good starting point for a merit badge, but beefed up just a bit.
David, you’re exactly right – joining an organization is highly unusual for a merit badge. Visiting a club/org or interviewing an officer of that organization is usually how things are handled. Scouting serves a very broad spectrum of youth (young men and women, for the Venturing program) across rural, suburban, and inner city environments. As much as possible the BSA minimize costs associated with rank advancement. Requirements that need USCF membership will probably be optional.
I sincerely doubt a minimum rating will be a requirement b/c of a merit badge’s focus on individual effort/interest/improvement rather than ability. I cannot think of a single merit badge that puts a Scout in competition against another person. Even the Sports merit badge is about knowing the rules of your sport and sticking with a training program rather than direct competition. Merit badges are very much about self improvement and expanding one’s knowledge.
An example of this is Physical Fitness merit badge, one of the badges required to be an Eagle Scout. There are health knowledge requirements and physical activity requirements. There is no requirement to run 1 mile in nine minutes. Instead, the requirement reads to run for nine minutes and after a 12 week program (which the Scout designs), run for nine minutes again and show improvement. Some Scouts might go from 0.5 mile to 1 mile…other Scouts might baseline at 1.2 miles and go to 1.4 miles. It goes back to the idea that the badge is achievable to Scouts how put in the effort and improve on their own baseline.
I was thinking of the archery merit badge, which requires the Scout to achieve a certain score in order to get the badge. That’s not a direct competition, but it does require a specific skill level, and not just participation and/or improvement.
It’s hard to come up with something analogous for Chess that doesn’t involve competition. While archery, target sports, and personal fitness can all be cast into competitive molds, they are at their core solitary activities. The competition is just to do your best, and then compare how well you did against how well other people did. Chess is a bit different. Chess inherently involves two people competing.
It will be interesting to see if they mention successful performance at all. If they do, I am confident that a rating based measure will be only one option of many. They may very well simply say, “Play X games of chess” with no mention of wins at all.
My guess is that they will require annotation of some of the Scout’s own games, with suggestions of how to improve play.
Wouldn’t a chess merit badge require the scout to know various things about chess and demonstrate them to a serious player? Show how pieces move, demonstrate castling and en passent, name openings, name and demonstrate various tactics, and elementary mates among other ideas.
I’d throw in some basic tactical themes also. Not mate in X, but rather stuff like picking up material, etc.
I think maybe they need to decide what the chess knowlege should equate to in terms of a USCF rating. I’m thinking 1100 uscf would be good to shoot for. +/- 100 points.
It wouldn’t mean a USCF rating, but just if they were to play in a USCF rated beginner’s tournament, they aught to be able to walk away with a rating between 1000 and 1200 USCF.
I get what you’re saying here. The difference between chess and archery/rifle/shotgun is that chess by necessity involves another person, so the “standard” moves around. Ultimately I think it will be very easy for your boy to earn the badge.
Exactly – demonstrating K+Q, K+R, and K+B+B mates are in the spirit of “become knowledgeable/proficient on an objective scale.” Either the Scout can checkmate the other king within 50 moves or he can’t. Granted, this requires a certain amount of knowledge from the merit badge counselor…but so does many merit badges.
It feels like you haven’t read the previous posts if you’re suggesting a minimum rating.
I don’t know where you guys play Chess, but my rating is 800, and I beat darned near everyone I ever play unless they are a tournament player or serious club player, or at least have been at some point in their lives. I’m pretty darned certain I play Chess well enough to earn a merit badge.
I suspect the “demonstrate standard mate” problems and “know certain named openings” will indeed be part of the requirements. Those are similar to the cub scout requirements, but sufficiently more advanced to be appropriate for older boys.
ETA: I checked the Michigan Chess Association crosstables for a past Junior High Team Championship, and a rating of 1000 would put you pretty highly placed in that field. Some people seriously underestimate just how good a rating of 1000 is. It’s way above merit badge level, at least here in Michigan.
At the high school level in IL, a 1000 rating would put you in the top 4-6 players for many competitive (5-2 or better at state), conference-winning schools, and would even be first board on some schools. So restricting a badge to just players with four-digit ratings would limit it to noticeably less than 5% of the scouts.
