Crossing 1400: The importance of having a coach

When I started this blog I said that my goal was to reach 1600 by 2018 and I was barely playing at 1200. By early January I decided to look for a coach to help me improve my game and after sending several e-mails I found an International Master from Skopje in Macedonia (Dejan Stojanovski).

Although in the many lessons I had so far I learned many important aspects of chess theory like poisoned pawns, consequences of poor development, calculations, etc the most important, at least in my opinion, contribution to this 1400 achievement was to teach me the pace of the game. One advice he gave me was to stop playing bullet chess, and to limit the 10 minute blitz games. He also made me consider moves for a fixed amount of time during training sessions which helped a lot to see that often the first move we choose is not the best one.

The game that brought me over 1400 is not one I would be proud to show to my coach, in fact my opponent resigned in a winning position, but that I will write about in a future post.

If you love chess, I would strongly encourage you to find a good coach, it’s worth every cent you invest in it. You’ll play better and you’ll begin to enjoy the time you spend with chess even more.