My first impressions after a couple of lessons with GM Alex Colovic

I am since a while here. I tried often to find a buddy to go through my and his games, in an attempt to reduce the use of an engine in the post-mortem. One thing I really would like to do is a list of my common mistakes. Of course you can do this with an engine, but this is boring and most strong players and coaches tell you to avoid using immediately an engine.

I didn’t have success, though. Even if people agreed to analyse the game with you, more often than not you will never see these analyses. There are some very rare exceptions (like SeniorPatzer, thanks), but usually you end up working alone. And there a lot of people planning here.

Interestingly there are some clubs where they allegedly analyse games, but it is not easy to find one where people are really working consequently. In one of these clubs it seems that people are working seriously, but you have to be rather strong to participate (something like 2000 plus, if I remember well).

One day I woke up and told myself I have to hire a coach. My choice was the GM Alex Colovic (GIDE Elo 2454, highest 2516), as I am working with his repertoire books in Chessable (if you are an ambitious player and need a full repertoire as black against everything but 1.e4 you should check his books, they are in my opinion the best books in this website! There are based on QGD with ...Be7 instead of ...Nf6).

I payed already in advance because I know myself: I would make one lesson, blame myself and skip the whole thing.

I was right. Usually I am sweating trying to analyse a position. My problem is that I play almost exclusively Daily Chess and don’t have to calculate. My main calculation training is basically doing simple tactics 2 to 4 moves long. But even this I don’t do properly.

The first exercise in my first lesson was about tactics. I had white and could grab a rook, winning the quality. I told Alex : “I don’t know the best move but I am sure that I don’t have to take the rook, this would be too simple” and I was right. After some thinking found the key move. Another puzzle was about smothered mate, and I struggled a little to find the key move, but after I did the whole thing was easy, Queen sac with mate with knight, you know the trick.

With strategy and endgames I struggled a lot. Interestingly, the endgame was about an idea that I know from Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual, and only with a lot of help (our feel like a little kid, really) I could tell that the whole thing is about stalemate.

Alex is very kind, and it is just fantastic to see his chess brain working. In a certain position he ask me my plan, and I didn’t considered a move because it would open lines against my king. He told me that with only rooks on the board without queens this is not relevant. He told me to play the other side and he began to waist time moving his king back and forward, giving me time to build up my attack - but there was no attack at all, of course. What I like mostly to do is to analyse my own games (I didn’t check them with an engine, of course). I commented the game and he comments my comments and ask me questions about some critical moments.

What I noted from my first lessons is that I should taken more care of my center. And in a certain position I had the opportunity to close the center with space advantage and a great position, but I didn’t . Or: I did it later when my opponent forced me to do so, and there I saw that I had a terrific position.

Some people would say that the thing is too expensive, as GMs are asking 80 to 120 dollars for a lesson. But his price is much lower than this!! I am not sure if I should tell the price here, but it is much lower than most titled players that I saw here or in other websites. You can contact him and ask him directly if you want, just google his name).

But I am still searching a player to work with me. Somebody interested?