I actually don't know all of what he knows because his sister teaches him things. She gets weekly chess lessons at school. She is also not by any means a prodigy, and is actually not that interested, but being bright and having a good memory, she naturally retains much of what she is taught. He has never beat her but occasionally beats us (which makes sense since DH and I have never been instructed in chess in any way, nor read anything about it--also we don't care very much and sometimes play half-heartedly, which she doesn't do).
He can castle, knows what stalemate is, knows the rank order, and knows how to start the game in the accepted way (DD has taught him this). I don't know about this scholar's mate thing, which I am not familiar with, but it's possible DD knows about it. I'm not sure what you mean by "random starting position" in 1 and 2--we obviously don't play this way so it's hard to say. He also knows about forks and skewers (I don't really even know what I am talking about here, but again, DD taught him this).
What he has going for him in terms of a tournament is that he is in K. I see now that the tournament has a K-1 category so he would not play kids a lot older than he is.
Last edited by ultramarina; 02/12/14 05:54 PM.
