The chess students I am going to miss

Having taught chess full time for a decade or so, in the past year, I had to stop coaching 3 of my students as they have to do their National Service (mandatory 2 years military training).  I had taught them from primary school all the way to junior college (about 8 to 10 years!). I suspect this is peculiar to chess training as I doubt tuition teachers teach primary school subjects all the way to A levels. It is also a sense of pride and joy I had seeing these kiddos grow up to become fine young men, with 2 of them doing National service (one in Commandos unit, and the other in the Navy) and one more about to start his final exam preparation for JC2.

What these 3 fellas have in common is that they carried on chess training week in, week out even when they do not compete seriously in events. They just learn chess for the sake of enjoyment and as an intellectual activity, to complement with their other pursuits and of course, their studies. 

I'll first start off with N. He has never shown any inclination to compete in local events but in spite of that, we just carried on with chess training all the way. He also dabbled in Muay Thai and drumming. However on one occasion, I managed to drag him to my place to play against the other students for a rapid event, in the condo function room. That day, the opposition he faced were the National Junior top 10 types and yet, he acquitted himself well, scoring 50% against them in the event.

Also, he maintained a 2000+ rapid rating on the internet chess servers but he sure as heck cannot play blitz to save his life. But he really put quite the effort in training, which is quite unusual for a casual player. One day I was caught by surprise when he asked me to fill up an online form detailing my experience coaching him.  I was requested to indicate what he has done well as well as suggest areas of improvements for his International Baccalaureate CAS Supervisor review.

I was even more astounded when I realized he had noted down in the form what he has learnt during our online lessons for the past few years and how he has applied the ideas.

Of course, my feedback was very positive as he has really put the massive effort to train hard.  Now that he will proceed to attend medical school in the UK next year, I guess chess training will be out of the question in the long run.

Here's a game where his lack of opening knowledge clearly showed but he rallied strongly to repel White's threats gradually. He slowly but surely turned the tables. White missed a back rank mate tactic and it was all over.

Next I am going to write about E who was the student I have taught for the longest time, 10 whole years. Even when he was in primary school, he wasn't particularly ambitious about chess. On one occasion, he had qualified to play for his school's first team (which practically guarantees a National Schools Team medal),  However, one of his chess mates who was on Team 2, asked him if they could exchange places and he readily agreed and E ended up captaining Team 2. So like N, we basically trained week in week out and he played a total of zero standard time control events for 9 whole years, dabbling in the odd rapid event. He also made himself available whenever other students needed sparring partners to train with before they ventured to play in overseas events. 

However, two years ago, he suddenly decided that he was going to take part in a Standard time control FIDE rated event in Australia. Basically, he was just equipped with a 'busy-man' opening - e4 with g3 lines against almost anything and King's Indian/Pirc vs any White opening and we focused on other aspects of chess. After all, he won't have time to really flesh out serious opening lines - he was also in the basketball school team (as well as Track and Field). But for this event, he really did solid preparation - We worked on all sorts of side-lines within his White Closed Sicilian repertoire to avoid getting out prepped by his subsequent opponents and he scored an undefeated 3/4 with it, beating a top Aussie junior as well as a Singaporean National Training Program member. He subsequently managed to claim the Top Unrated player prize in both the standard and blitz events, bringing his initial rating for both standard and blitz to 1800+.  He ended his chess 'career' by helping his school to 2nd position in the National Schools Team event. 

The game he played resembles the one above as he got outplayed in the opening, then start to set his opponent problems and then pounced on an inaccuracy to clinch the game.

The last of the 3 fellas is L, who used to play Asian age group events when he was in Primary school. However, as his other activities increased, his chess tournament activity subsided. In his junior college years, he was also a school councilor and in the school choir, He also served as the assistant conductor of an orchestra. However, within my group of students, even as their Elo ratings overtook his and even when they claimed national junior titles, most of them would recognize that he is a very difficult player to beat when we had internal events. Like E, he also decided to have a last chess 'hurrah' in Basel, Switzerland. Apart from a massive Elo rating gain. he managed to pull off this beautiful win culminating in a brilliant queen sacrifice.

In conclusion, yes, it's very fun to teach future champions. But even for those who don't have such aspirations and just love chess for what it is, teaching them is also very rewarding and makes the job very worthwhile. That's why we coach, isn't it, for the love of chess.