Chess coach

Chess is a game of knowledge and skill. As your coach, of course I can enhance your knowledge, but I especially hope to improve your skill in applying it to practical situations. My primary emphasis is on analytical technique, posing problems appropriate to your level, and helping you to practice it with puzzles and game scenarios. I will ask you questions about your games as we review them, and give you lots of problems to solve in the endgames especially.

Capablanca taught that the game should be studied from the endgame first. That is the most solid foundation to build your understanding of chess. The famous Russian school of chess taught this way too, from the end backwards. Unfortunately, without a coach it can be difficult to learn the endgame since unlike the opening, you won't encounter the situations in your games, until when you do it may already be too late! But 'book' study can be dry; it is difficult to really assimilate understanding just by playing through examples. Often times the best learning comes from hard experience and learning from one's mistakes, so I have collected hundreds of instructive positions that serve as good analytical exercises, and scenarios that you can practice playing against me under time limits. This way you will improve your analytical skill, learn how you react to these positions under tournament conditions, and thus remember the basic positions better.

I strongly believe that by going through this endgame course, your endgame foundation will be laid, your theoretical understanding firmed up, and your opponents will begin to fear you more and more as the game progresses. You will know what positions to aim for and how to win them when you arrive. And the analytical approach to our study will help your thought process throughout the middlegame as well. The limited material of endgames makes both sides' objectives clearer and makes it easier to clearly visualize the resulting positions in analysis, focusing instead on making branches of an analytical tree, evaluating them, and drawing a conclusion about what is the best move to play.

My own coaching specialties are the endgame course and the development of an opening repertoire .. both knowledge of specific opening moves and having a strategic sense about the positions that result from them. I like to divide a lesson into equal parts of endgame study, game review (usually focused on middlegames), and opening analysis. I have numerous repertoires prepared and will enjoy tailoring your repertoire to your chess interests and talents, to your skill level and your amount of studying time.

If you are interested in taking lessons, please contact me. I am available for lessons both in person and online.

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