Hi! I’m GM Sergei Lobanov, a 25-year-old grandmaster (FIDE 2515).
I’ve been playing chess since I was 5 and now combine active tournament practice with coaching and helping strong players prepare for important events. I already have more than 8 years of coaching experience.

Who I work with
I am open to working with students of all levels, but my main focus is on:
– serious club players who want a solid repertoire, fewer simple mistakes and a clearer training structure;
– advanced and titled players who need serious work on openings, calculation and practical decision-making;
– professional players who want deep opening preparation and support with organising their training process and improving all key skills, not only openings.
If you are a professional player interested in full-time coaching and long-term cooperation, we can discuss this format separately.

How I think about training
My main interest as a coach is not only what moves you play, but how you think.
I have worked as a personal second for several top grandmasters, and I have also been part of a training team for a Candidates Tournament. This experience helps me bring practical, elite-level preparation methods into my coaching.

I treat coaching as a multi-functional process:
– Opening work – building and refining a modern repertoire, preparing files and structures tailored to your style, not just copying engine lines.
– Calculation and decision-making – disciplined and systematic calculation of variations, choosing candidate moves, working with uncertainty and time pressure.
– Strategic thinking in the middlegame – typical plans, pawn structures, piece placement, long-term factors and how to handle complex positions without clear tactics.
– Endgame play – practical endgames that actually arise in your games, key technical positions and typical transitions from middlegame to endgame.

What a typical lesson looks like
Each lesson is adapted to what you need at the moment.
Most of the time we go through your own games and work on how you actually think at the board – your decision-making, disciplined and systematic calculation of variations, and realistic evaluation of positions. Depending on the current focus, we can also work with prepared opening files, model middlegames or practical endgames from your tournament practice.

Selected OTB achievements
– Multiple top-3 finishes in Russian Youth Championships (8+ times).
– World U12 bronze medalist (2013) and European U14 champion (2015).
– Silver medalist of the World U16 Team Olympiad 2016 and winner of the World U16 Team Olympiad 2017 with the Russian national team.
– Winner of the St. Petersburg Championship final (2018), with several additional podium finishes in later years.
– World Junior U20 bronze medalist (2018).
– Winner of major international opens, including Moscow Open A 2020, 4th Yerevan Open A 2022 and Mersin Metropolitan Municipality International Open 2024.
– 5th place in Aeroflot Open A 2025, one of the strongest open tournaments in the world.
– Winner and regular podium finisher in strong round-robin GM norm events (Margaryan Memorial series).
– Silver medal in the Russian Team Superleague (2022).
– Qualified for the FIDE World Cup 2025 and the Russian Superfinal.
– Many victories and podiums in rapid and blitz events, including stages of the Russian Grand Prix.

If you are interested in working together, feel free to send me a message here on Chess.com. Please mention your current rating, your goals, and how much time per week you can realistically dedicate to chess.