Coach’s Corner: Michael Green
For Michael Green, a chess trainer and content creator based in Liverpool, a defining moment of his coaching career took place in Izmir, Turkey. Partnering with GM Dragan Solak, he brought together ten young players from the United Kingdom and Turkey for what was supposed to be a balanced week of chess and sightseeing. But when the Serbian grandmaster announced that they would instead train every day, 11am to 11pm, sightseeing went out of the window. The group immersed themselves into long days of study, sharing in the intensity of living and breathing chess. This experience was unforgettable for Green. He got to witness his students growing, and at the same time, realized how much he was learning himself both as a trainer and as a player.
Since those days, Green has continued to approach chess training with an all-in attitude. Now a certified FIDE Instructor and a player with a peak rating of 2074, he is making his mark as a Chessable author with creative opening repertoires. His most recent course, The Old School Gurgenidze, is a collaboration with GM Damian Lemos. Beyond coaching and opening repertoires, Green connects with chess enthusiasts through his Chess Lifestyle channels, where he combines education with behind-the-scenes tournament vlogs, offering a window into the life of a chess improver and trainer.
In this new edition of Coach’s Corner, Michael Green reflects on his coaching journey and shares practical tips for trainers and players.
What is your chess coaching philosophy?
I’ve now been coaching chess as my full-time job for roughly 7 years (I’m 27 years old), and I’ve never looked back! I really enjoy working with students and trying to help them reach their full potential. Of course, not every student has the desire to become the next world champion, but helping them reach a level where they can feel proud of their ability, and not be afraid to show up to a random chess scene and test their skills, is a really great place to be. I do have a handful of chess students that take the competitive grind very seriously, and probably my most successful student (if I can call him that — I never charged him for any of our training sessions) is 15-year-old Kajus Mikalajunas, who raised his ECF (national rating) from 1700 to 2200 in the space of two and a half years. Kajus’ level, as much as I hate to admit (!), has clearly surpassed my own, but I’m a firm believer that a good coach can continue to coach players above their own playing strength. If you can motivate the student to train consistently, find good materials for them to work with, encourage healthy chess habits, and cultivate a fighting spirit — I believe you can really take a student far.
Suppose a player has only 3 hours a week for chess training. How should they spend their time?
I think it’s almost impossible to suggest an appropriate 3 hours-a-week plan that is optimized for all players! We’re so different in terms of our individual strengths and weaknesses, as well as our different work ethics, which makes a huge difference to the type of training we should engage in. But what I will say is that if you’re below a certain level (let’s say 2000 Chess.com online), I feel like there’s a tremendous variety of paths that lead to improvement, so just pick one, and run with it! I remember GM Daniil Dubov once saying in an interview that training chess when you’re not motivated to train is rather pointless, in the sense that the training will go in one ear and out the other. So when you’re still at a beginner/intermediate level, there should be more than enough areas of chess that fascinate you to want to study and train. So for example, let’s say that you were torn between studying a book on positional chess, or studying a book on endgames, but deep down, you knew that you’re particularly motivated to improve your positional understanding… Then just read the positional chess book! There will come a point in your chess career when you’ll be just as keen to study endgames (probably when it starts costing you half/full points in your games), so just listen to your inner motivations, and follow that.
What is the biggest factor for improvement for players under 1200 (Chess.com)? Under 2000?
So my answer to the previous question probably covers this already! But what I will add is that it is essential that you play a lot. A mistake I often see adult improvers make is that they study hard, but play nowhere near enough games. In this day and age with online chess readily available with a click of a button, it is so easy to gain experience and learn from our mistakes, that if we don’t do enough of this, we’ll simply fall behind when compared to the talented juniors that are honing their intuition by grinding thousands of blitz games online. So play a lot. Analyse the games to learn from your mistakes. And if you only have 3 hours a week to train, I’d dedicate at least half of that time to playing/analysing your games.
What is your preferred way to improve at openings? What's the approach to chess openings that you try to teach your students?
For me personally, I can probably take quite an unorthodox approach to improving at openings because a) I have a complete opening repertoire, b) I’ve written two Chessable courses on openings, and c) I have a decent amount of free time to play lots of online rapid/blitz and learn from the mistakes I’m making in the openings that I play.
So with regards to having a complete opening repertoire, I think this is really essential for every club player to have. The repertoire doesn’t have to be bulletproof to a 2700 FIDE level, but it should be strong enough to reach your own personal chess goals. For instance, I play my unique 1.c3 Venom with White (which is a hybrid opening of Reverse Caro-Kann, and London System), Gurgenidze Modern with Black vs 1.e4, and Modern Benoni with Black vs 1.d4. The Gurgenidze Modern and Modern Benoni are objectively not strong enough to make it to GM (when used as a main repertoire), but I do believe that they’re strong enough to reach a low level master (CM or FM), which would already fulfil my own chess ambitions (if I ever make it that far!). So having a complete repertoire, and having a complete understanding of how to play the resulting positions (no matter what your opponent throws at you), is extremely useful.
As for writing my own Chessable courses, this also has the added benefit to myself that I can use this material to revise my own lines! Since I have a high personal standard for the quality of material that I publish, the lines are actually pretty well written and explained! So because I have a relatively poor memory, and operate much more on understanding when it comes to openings, this is a great help!
Finally, I think playing out your repertoire in online blitz/rapid is so important. No matter how many books or courses you read, you will never get a feeling for what is really played often against your opening systems, relative to your chess level. So you need to play your opening, find out what people play, and if your reference material (book or course) does not cover the lines you are repeatedly facing, then there’s probably a good reason for it (ideally, the opponent is probably doing something very wrong, as opposed to the reference material being poorly written!). So explore this yourself when you analyse the game with Stockfish, and do your best to draw conclusions as to how you can improve on your moves. Of course, it is more than possible to draw the wrong conclusions (especially the lower rated you are), which is why having a reliable reference material is handy so that you can turn to it for advice (or if you’re studying on Chessable, you can directly ask the author yourself in the course forums, and get a personalised response!).
As for my students and the approach I take with them for learning openings, it really depends what stage they’re at with their openings. Do they have a complete repertoire yet? Are they at a level where they can confidently interpret the engine and its advice? Are they old enough to even read and interpret full sentences!?!? So it all really depends. One interesting insight I will share, however, is that when completing my FIDE Instructor course, FT GM Alojzije Jankovic shared that he never teaches his students 1…e5 as a response to 1.e4, because the play is “too negative”, in terms of having to defend the opponent’s attacking threats, and also having to memorise specific defensive moves just to survive. He felt that it’s better to have new students develop their pieces and fight for the initiative with Black, so an opening like the Caro-Kann would be better to teach, for instance. Personally, I also hate playing 1…e5 (mostly for the same reasons!), so even more reason to send my students down the rabbit holes of the French, Caro-Kann, Sicilian, and my personal favourite — The Gurgenidze Modern!
What is your preferred way to improve at the endgame?
If it wasn’t clear from my above answers, I am very clearly born from the British School of Chess rather than the Russian School of Chess (aka be practical, learn from experience, and don’t bother with endgames until they start costing you results!). However, what I will share on this topic, is that you can actually get to quite a decent level of endgames, without the excessive grind of studying theoretical endgames, just by studying some basic endgame strategy. Start by understanding that the most important principle in the endgame is piece activity (it’s crazy to me that not everyone knows this). Then, depending on what type of endgame you have, the importance of piece activity is ranked based on the value of the pieces. So for a rook endgame, the rook (5 points) would be the most important piece to activate, then the king (4 points*), then the pawns (1 point) [*In Jonathan Rowson’s 7 Deadly Chess Sins, he suggests that an active king in the endgame can be valued as ‘4 points’, to help understand the relative strength of the piece]. It is also essential that when you enter into an endgame, you apply schematic thinking (a term you’ll come to understand if you study ‘Endgame Strategy — Mikhail Shereshevsky’). In essence, before you start the usual process of finding good moves, you have to a) understand which pieces to trade, b) work out your plan, and c) work out your opponent’s plan. Until you have this in mind, you MUST NOT touch your pieces, otherwise you will get burnt. So these are just two topics, out of a handful of endgame strategies, that would massively improve your endgame skills overnight. Unfortunately there’s not a simple guide to learning all of this (it’s taken me years of reading different resources, watching different chess courses, and talking to the right people at tournaments to reach this level of understanding… Although, probably out of everything, Endgame Strategy — Mikhail Shereshevsky would be your best bet, but the content is fairly advanced, for Chess.com 2000+ players for sure), but you definitely don’t need to study all the theoretical endgames to start playing endgames well.
Is there anything else you would like to share with ambitious chess improvers?
Sure! So with regards to the ambitious chess players out there, congratulations on finding a passion and dedicating yourself to the chess grind! There are many things in life that we can choose to work towards, but personally, I love how if you put in the hard work for chess, the results will come. That’s not to say that the path is easy, as in, the journey will truly be a test of your mental fortitude, as much as it is a test of your chess skill. Will losing that +5 position against an IM in a FIDE rated tournament be the death of your chess career (I'm speaking from experience here)? Or will you pick up the pieces (both literally, and metaphorically!), and go again? I think it’s also great that chess improvement will (eventually) show up in your chess rating/ELO, with the effect to objectively state that “Player A is probably better than Player B”. There are so many other sports or artistic pursuits that do not have such a metric, and instead your level is decided solely on how the judges are feeling that day (e.g. classical music soloists, performance artists), or judged by the public or critics (e.g. modern art). So count yourself lucky! Having said this, you also have nowhere to hide if you have notable setbacks, and drop 100+ ELO, since it’s all documented on the internet for anyone to see. But on the flipside, nobody can deny you of your greatness if you reach that ELO you’ve been grinding towards! So all in all, it’s a tough journey, but at the ripe old age of 27, there’s nothing I’d rather do than go all in to improve at chess, and I welcome you to follow suit!
With regards to the chess coaches out there, I think if you have a knack for teaching, and a love for chess, then there really isn’t a job out there better suited for us. I think separating our income from the game itself (making money from coaching chess, as opposed to playing chess), is much more sustainable, especially from a mental and physical health perspective! And to share one piece of advice, I’d say don’t be afraid to learn from other coaches to improve your coaching methods. Like how I mentioned already, having spent considerable time with GM Dragan Solak, or GM Alojzije Jankovic — there is so much wisdom out there, both in terms of the chess side and the practical side of coaching. So just keep learning and improving your craft, and the growth will come!
Chessable courses by Michael Green
Michael’s debut course, 1.c3 Venom: a Reverse Caro-Kann and London System Repertoire, was well received and is now followed by a new course, The Old School Gurgenidze, which is on introductory sale until November 3, 2025.
Check out his author page!
