3 Things I Learned as a Chess Coach

“I’m barely improving, even though I’m playing for hours each day."

This post is for you.

I am confident that the 3 things I share in this article will bring your game to the next level if you take them seriously. I am not currently working as a chess coach, and in my next blog post I’m going to explain the reason for that.

Still, having spent a few years working with private students of different levels (ranging from 600 to 1800), I like to think that I learned a thing or two along the way (or 3!) and I’m excited to share.

This post gives you an opportunity to step back and think about the philosophy behind chess improvement more generally so that you can be more intentional with your training. Make sure you stick around until the end; the last point is extremely important. So, without further ado, let’s get into the 3 Things I Learned as a Chess Coach.

1) Game Analysis Is The Key

If there’s one cornerstone to my chess philosophy which I would recommend to absolutely any player or coach, this is it: annotate your games.

Every single one of my students learns how to annotate their games. A good deal of our lesson time is spent analyzing those annotations. The point that you need to take away is that our mistakes are not only represented by the moves we make, but by the thought process behind the moves.

If I play a move, then suddenly realize I hung my knight before realizing he can't actually take it because of a nice tactic, I still made a mistake even though the move was fine. That mistake won't come out in my game, but it will in my annotations (if they're done correctly).

Digging into the thought process through game annotations is a highly effective way of pinpointing the real mistakes going on, so that you know your weaknesses. And at the end of the day, understanding your weaknesses and then patching them up is the ultimate path to improvement. 

This is why I am so against ‘cookie-cutter coaching’; teaching a vague lesson about calculation technique isn’t going to do much for an 1100 student who can’t stop blundering, or a 1400 who is consistently lost out of the opening.

As a final point on this topic, I want to mention that I fully practice what I preach and I annotate every single one of my tournament games, digging deep into my thought process to uncover my strengths and weaknesses. I believe this has been the main catalyst for my improvement over the last few years spent working without a coach. 

In one of my next posts I’m going to do a deep dive into how to annotate your games, so check back in over the next few days if you want my thoughts on how to maximize improvement with game annotations. Or better yet, drop a follow so you get notified! Okay, let's move on.

2) Tactics, Tactics, Tactics

I'm willing to bet that most people would be able to improve their game if they replaced some of the time they spend playing games by doing tactics.

I know a lot of people who are addicted to online chess and spend hours on end playing, often without any improvement. If you are one of those, I suggest you cut into your playing time a little by solving puzzles, which are just as fun and addictive (especially on chess.com, with puzzle rush and puzzle battle available).

It doesn't take much to explain why tactics are so effective; chess is almost entirely a game of pattern recognition, and the more quickly you can spot patterns the better you will be. Tactics are the ultimate way to improve your pattern recognition. And if that isn't enough to convince you, then go ask any strong chess player and they'll tell you tactics are a key part of their training. So here's the actionable point: allocate more of your chess time to doing tactics and it will pay off.

As a quick shameless promotion, if you’re serious about chess improvement and want to do unlimited chess.com tactics including puzzle rush and puzzle battle (and everything else that comes with premium), I would really appreciate it if you use my link and help me out (along with getting a nice discount): Premium Membership. Okay, let’s move to the final and extremely important point.

3) Slow Down

Many of the students I start working with play a ton of blitz and bullet. This is fun of course, but the problem is that without having much time to think during the game, it’s very hard to work on and improve your thought process. Don’t get me wrong, you can still improve to a point with blitz if you're smart about it but it is much harder.

Essentially, my recommendation is this: take your rapid rating seriously. Treat it like OTB players treat their classical ratings. Play rapid games (10|0 at least, 15|10 if you’re feeling spicy) only if you feel that you are able to really focus and exert effort on the game. When you’re tilted or tired but still want to play chess, just play blitz or bullet.

Often, this switch to prioritizing rapid comes with an adjustment for players who are used to playing blitz, and it can require some discipline to actually slow down. So challenge yourself to use your time and not just end a rapid game with 9 minutes (which I see all too often). This will also give you much higher quality material to annotate and reflect on, which will lead to improvement.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this post! I put a lot of energy into it and I plan to do a lot more blog posts in the near future, so I’d appreciate it if you could drop me a follow and share it with someone you think it could benefit. And last but not least, drop a comment with any thoughts you might have; I will respond to all of you!

I'll leave you with this: pick one thing to take away from this article and put into practice immediately. You won't regret it.