I am Dusan Colovic, 51 years old FIDE master from Serbia. I am married and a father of two daughters. I have a secondary education with a focus on natural sciences and mathematics. I live in a small town in Western Serbia, located 150 km away from Belgrade. I started playing chess at the age of 10, participating in school and youth competitions and joining the local chess club. During my junior years, I dedicated a lot of time to chess and quickly became one of the top players in the club.

After completing high school, I met the conditions for the FM (FIDE Master) title by crossing the 2300 rating threshold. I decided to pursue a professional career in chess. However, at the age of 33, life circumstances changed, and I withdrew from professional chess, finding a job in the Health Insurance in the Republic of Serbia. During that period, I played chess less frequently but regularly participated in official team competitions in the country.

In 2019, due to a change in life circumstances, I left my secure job in public service and returned to my great love for chess, this time as a coach on the Chess.com platform. This fulfilled my wish to work in life doing what I love.

PLAYING EXPERIENCES:

I have been playing chess for over 40 years. Until 1991, I primarily participated in school and youth tournaments and regularly visited the local chess club, where I accumulated valuable chess experience. After that, I began actively playing in open tournaments in the country, providing opportunities to compete with players from abroad and further improve my chess skills. I also regularly participated in team championships with considerable success. Interestingly, I generally achieved better results in team competitions than in individual tournaments.

In 2003, I stopped actively playing chess and limited my chess activities to one or two tournaments per year. In October 2015, I reached my highest rating of 2395 points, but unfortunately, I couldn't surpass the magical threshold of 2400 points for the title of International Master. Nowadays, I rarely play and am mostly dedicated to teaching.

TEACHING METHODOLOGY:

I base my chess teaching on my personal experience, and I aim to impart that to my students. I am a proponent of a classical approach to learning chess. This means we learn chess starting from endgames, then move on to the middlegame, and finally, study openings. Why do we start with endgames? The answer is quite simple. If we make a mistake in the endgame, we won't have the time to correct it later, as there are only a few pieces left on the board. It's much easier to correct mistakes in openings or the middlegame, whereas in the endgame, it is exceptionally challenging.

We begin by learning simple endgames, those with a few pieces on the board, and work on basic tactics (two-move or three-move combinations). Once we master that, we move on to more complex positions where we have to calculate multiple variations with a greater number of moves. Afterward, we focus on studying openings tailored to the student's playing style.

For homework, I always assign a chess study with a tactical element because I believe that tactics should be practiced daily, as chess is essentially tactical. Whether we prefer to play tactical or positional, without tactics, we cannot be a good chess player.

My favorite quotes:
"In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before everything else." ~ Jose Raul Capablanca
"People who want to improve should take their defeats as lessons, and endeavor to learn what to avoid in the future. You must also have the courage of your convictions. If you think your move is good, make it." ~ Jose Raul Capablanca
"The ability to work hard for days on end without losing focus is a talent. The ability to keep absorbing new information after many hours of study is a talent." ~ Garry Kasparov

Chess Lesson Rate: $25 for 1-hour lesson

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