The Official Website of the 2008 Under 18 World Champion

Teaching Philosophy

In my opinion, there is an art to matching a student to a teacher. In my experience, most of my prospective students are young players, usually between 8 and 16 (I of course do accept older students as well). Young players are often very talented, but their lack of experience means that they will have some holes in their game, and everyone will have different holes. Different teachers will be better or worse in some areas than others. To give an example, a former helper of mine, GM Dmitry Gurevich, is a very powerful positional player and endgame player, and would be a great choice for someone trying to improve this aspect of their game, but I don’t think he would be the best choice if someone was trying to learn how to assess and approach the white side of sharp Sicilian middlegames. All specifics aside, in general it is much more important for a coach to be an experienced teacher than a strong chess player. If a coach is rated 300 points higher than you, that is more than enough. I am not super experienced at the moment, but I certainly have had a few consistent students for quite awhile, and they all have had good things to say about me. However, while I may not be as experienced as other coaches, I can offer one thing that they may not be able to- I went from playing my first tournament to an IM with a World U-18 Championship title under his belt in just 7 years, one of the steepest learning curves ever and I gained an average of over 200 points a year, with some coaching but a very limited amount. I can take my students through the same courses and paths that I took, and hopefully it will work equally well for them. The most important thing is to keep the right attitude toward chess. So often I see players who rely on trick openings and ultimately end up in unpleasant middlegames when their opponents avoid all the cheapos.

Often I would spend my chess studying time looking for new openings and cheap trick ideas, rather than studying much more integral and meaningful aspects such as ensuing middlegames and common themes within them. Also, so often when people lose they try to make excuses for it, but this is the absolute worst thing you can do. If you lost, there is a legitimate reason and an area you can improve on. While I was not always like this, I now cannot remember the last time I lost a game and did not ask my opponent for a post-mortem. These are the 2 main things that I changed after having the aforementioned wretched results, and I was too blinded by success and trying to rationalize my ideas before that I stalled out for about a year. If I can help my students develop this kind of productive attitude which is conducive to improvement, I think they will experience much further success. I have not yet had a large enough sample size to draw any definite conclusions, but I would not be surprised if my approach toward chess and my teaching methods would lead some students to very sharp and fast improvement and others to, well, no improvement at all. This is the main reason I think it is so important for a student to find a coach who is a good match, and while I certainly hope I will be a good match for everyone, I definitely cannot guarantee it.

Lessons themselves will usually follow a structured route. I will start by looking at a student's games, analyzing the games with them. This will not only help them when I suggest different moves or ideas, but it will also give me an idea of what parts of their game need work. After this preliminary stage is complete, I will try to balance the time between analysis of the students games and many other things, such as calculation exercises or analyzing a top level (2700+) game together. I also have quite a large supply of chess books of all kinds in PDF files, and occasionally I will send my a student a book that I feel will help him improve his game, no charge. In terms of opening choices and theory: I firmly believe that it is very important for a player to get a middlegame position that they feel comfortable in, and that will of course vary from player to player. There are many openings that are approved at top level, and as long as a student is playing solid openings rather than dubious ones, I will let them make their own choices in that regard. However, it would be a cause for concern if I saw a student playing the Latvian Gambit, for example. I also do not approve of goofy systems as white that have no ambition to fight for an advantage, rather just to get a position where all your moves will be easy (the London System and Colle System come to mind). This is not to say if a student wants to change his openings and wants my help I will not offer it- Of course I will and we will dedicate some lessons to it. But, if this is the case, they must be the one to take the initiative.

Lastly, I must say that at the moment, I consider myself a player first and a coach second. This means that I will be traveling a lot in this upcoming year to play tournaments all over the world. When I am out of town, I of course cannot give any in person lessons, and I will not teach online lessons during a tournament. I will, however, teach online lessons if I am out of town and in between tournaments. I will give a student at least one month’s notice before I go on any trip, and my tournament schedule for the near future is available on this website as well.