Rook Reflections - Episode 2 with GM Hovhannes Gabuzyan

Hi everyone,

Here is the second episode of the Rook Reflections podcast which always happens live on my Twitch channel, but I'll always upload the whole interview to my YouTube channel as well! In my Blog, without aiming to cover the whole interview, I’ll only show bits of it

In case you missed the first episode, then you can check out that interview here: Rook reflections - Episode 1 with WFM Alessia Santeramo

In this 2nd episode I invited the Armenian Grandmaster, Hovhannes Gabuzyan, who is also one of the lead coaches at one of my favourite chess improvement websites, ChessMood. They have 400+ hours of Grandmasters’ courses that can help you even more to improve your openings, tactics, endgames, and many other aspects of your game! I also have a personal link, which can offer a 20% discount if you sign up with it (and this way you also support me)! https://chessmood.com/?r=Szefru 🙂They also have educational streams on their Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/chessmood

So let's see how the interview went!

F: If I am right, now you focus on coaching rather than on your own improvement. Am I correct?
H: Yes, 2-3 years ago I started playing less, less and less, then I decided to fully retire. You can see me one day in a tournament, but it will be only for fun, not for professional purposes. Nowadays, I’m more in for coaching, so I’m still in chess, but from a different side. [...]

F: I saw on ChessMood that there are two different kinds of openings, one for lower level, and one for higher level players. Why is there a distribution? 
H: For now we have two kinds of openings, one is simplified, and another one is more advanced, for approximately above 2000 rated players. There is a big confusion, where many chess players make mistakes by thinking that they need a GM level opening. They think that even if they are 1500 rated they need to know the variations until move 15, the best engine lines. Because of this I have seen many chess players struggle, get annoyed, get depressed or even quit this sport. The thing is, people under 2000 need practical, easily understandable openings where they know how to develop, they know the middle game ideas, they know what to play for. Above that level they might need variations that go deeper into the opening, because they already understand why certain moves have to be played, while, if you ask the other group why they played that move, they will say ‘I have no idea, I just learned this move from the engine/book’. You know you are advanced, when you make a mistake you understand and can explain why it was a mistake in your strategy and you know how to punish it. How many 1500 rated players do you know who know the opening deeply and can recite a line until move 20? Not many, because most of the time in their games the opponent plays something different already on move 3-4. [...]

F: What do you think is the most important psychological skill if you want to become a good player?
H: I think this is a very complex question, because we are all different, we all have our different personalities, fears, strengths which will affect our game, and we might need to work on different things, so I cannot answer this question. However I can tell you what helped me the most; “Never resign early”. I always made my opponent sweat for their win. I have this memory; I was 11 years old, about 2000 FIDE rating, when I played a tournament where there were many GMs, IMs, and I took 4th place! It was such an achievement, but how did I do it? In one game I didn't resign against a very strong opponent and I got a draw. I remember I didn’t care about anything, I was just playing chess. In every game, every tournament, whenever I got into a bad or hard position I was fighting. Of course, I didn't always survive, but I promise you, if I didn’t blunder anything instantly, my opponents were struggling to beat me! I’m not saying that you should keep playing until checkmate, even if you are down two Queens, just make your opponent struggle to win. This ability affected my chess a lot, on an instinct level I became a fighter, and was able to fight until the end.

F: And what if you had to mention a couple of mental/psychological skills, not only one? Would your answer be different?
H: Okay, so imagine you blunder during a game. Some players just let it go, some others start blaming themselves, “oh my god, I’m an idiot”, “why did I even start playing chess?” and so on. It’s important to forgive yourself, and continue the game regardless of what happened. One of my favourite examples is, imagine that you are driving a regular engine car, and you turn on the AC. Usually, this will take power away from the car, and your car will perform less. During the game, it’s the same, if you have side thoughts, it will take away from your power. You should always try to give your 100% to keep playing, and not to your thoughts. If you are distracted, it’s terrible. How to deal with this? If you feel that it’s tilting you, just stand up, go for a walk, get some water, and return with a refreshed mind. If you can’t do that, just try to forget it and focus on the game, and deal with it, punish/blame yourself, and of course, learn from it LATER, AFTER THE GAME. So basically, one of the most important psychological skills would be controlling your emotions. [...]

F: What is it that people are doing in their chess improvement that they shouldn’t be doing?
H: Maybe how much importance they give to the engine and the way they use the engine. When a person googles chess, they will see that the engines are “the lord of chess” so they start believing everything that it says. In one of our recent ChessMood podcasts it was said that you don’t need engines earlier than when you have a 2300 FIDE rating. Players are relying on the engine’s power so much in the openings also, for example in a position the engine says that White is +1,50, and they say it’s winning for White, but they are ignoring the most common concept in chess in my opinion. It’s about the practical understanding of situations. On my own, I quite often went for positions that are bad from the engine’s side but practically lost for my opponent. [...] Afterall the engine is a machine, it doesn’t have feelings, emotions, weaknesses, unlike us mortals whose brain is not made out of iron, therefore you need to bring your decisions to a practical field. Sometimes I open the engine and as a GM I wonder why it is suggesting a certain move. Regardless of if you are coaching or learning, you should always keep a practical mind when you work with the engine. [..]

F: Do you think everyone can reach GrandMaster level with all the necessary and right work, or do you also need talent?
H: Talent is always useful, yes, it can help you, but I think it is doable even without it if you put the right work in it. However there are still many other conditions. Let’s first understand what it means to become a GM. It’s training, it’s practicing, it’s fixing your mistakes, it’s traveling, it’s choosing the right tournaments, it’s working with a good coach. In my opinion, it’s impossible to become a GM without a coach. If someone one day becomes a GM without a coach I would say, wow, I didn’t know about you, but I’d still keep my opinion, it wouldn’t happen the second time. That’s how sure I am. There are approximately 2000 GMs out there, so out of 7 billion people there are only 2000, so it’s not something easy. Becoming a GM without talent is doable, but it’s a huge complex of work. Nowadays it’s probably even easier than it used to be back in my day, because now there is more material available online. [...]

F: Have you ever used some sort of psychological warfare against your opponent?
H: Haha, yes! By my nature I play very quick chess. Even in classical games quite often I was leaving my opponent in time trouble with me having more than one hour on the clock. So one of the things that I frequently used when my opponent had time pressure, without being sure that my move was the best, I had a very confident face and played move-on-move, they made a move, I made a move instantly. I wouldn’t let them breathe a bit, no break, no washroom, no water… keeping them tortured. Another time, when my opponent came late to the round, approximately a few minutes before they were about to get forfeited, I saw that they arrived and made the move. They saw me also, but I wouldn’t go back to the board, instead I was walking around, watching others’ games, letting the time get equalized and that’s when I went back and started playing.

F: Haha, wow, that’s a nice way to say “screw you!” What was the result of that game?
H: Yes, I was like, okay, let’s play in the same conditions. Hmm, I’m not sure, it was long ago, maybe we drew. 

A bit later we also discussed annoying behavior over the board, and Hovhannes shared this interesting story about cultural differences: 
H: I will tell you the following guys: all my life I played chess in the European and Asian region, never in the US. But then I went to study there, and of course I started playing lots of tournaments, and I noticed an interesting difference in how people do chess there. In Europe I have never taken a chessboard with me to the game, but in America, regardless of which board you are playing, you need to bring a chess board and a chess clock with you. For me that was like…WOW. So, then on my first tournament I was running around saying, “guys where is a chessboard?!”. I finally bought one, and I was never giving it to anyone, because I was so stressed and afraid that they wouldn’t return it, and I would have to go find them. [...] 

Another thing I saw was that it was okay to eat during the games. Not just a small thing like a snack, one of my opponents was eating soup at the board! Just like that. I’ve never seen anything like this before! Here in Europe I was raised to not eat anything bigger at the chessboard, so I was shocked to see this. I am not saying it’s wrong, I understand that it is normal for people around there. I would never start eating chicken wings at the board, because I wasn’t raised that way, but then I saw people who did it, so then I was comfortable with it. Sometimes you can do or see someone do something weird and think, ‘oh, this guy disrespects me’, but they have seen this, they were raised like this, and they are not aware that it is annoying or can be seen disrespectful. You never know what their chess background is, who was teaching them. 

These are only parts of the whole interview. In the YouTube video you learn:

• About how ChessMood is designed to help you improve your chess
• How to plan your training based on your level.
• What he thinks is one of the most important skills you need to practice in order to become better.
• About general chess improvement like: why it is bad to play bullet, what other psychological skills are important to become a good player, how to win winning positions, how to pick a tournament, if there is an age limit to chess improvement
• Even more funny or interesting chess stories

If that sound exciting, then please, check out the full video on YouTube :