RIDING ON THE WINGS OF YOUR GAMES

I admit, that as a chess coach, I am overly preoccupied with improving the chess skills of my students in the shortest possible time. Consequently, I have spent a lot of time studying chess prodigies like the Polgars, Robert Fischer, Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin, Parimarjan Negi, Hou Yifan, and most recently, my favourite by a mile, Wei Yi.

I have been obsessed with finding out the single most important factor in developing a chessplayer’s overall tournament/match performance. This is not just because I want to be a better coach, but also because I am worried by my own inability to do well at tournaments whenever I make out time to play. Could it be hardwork, talent (sadly, the understanding of this word varies widely), strength of sparing partner(s), ‘psychological presence’, discipline, literature studied, physical fitness or nutrition? Let me rephrase: if given a 12 year old player with a 2,050 FIDE rating, what will be the best line of action to take if given 18months to get his rating to 2400. While having never achieved this, since my highest rated student is just at 2203 at the moment (his peak rating was just several points higher) and I admit he did most of the work that got him there on his own, I know it is fully achievable. My Peak rating was 2180 and after shedding over 100Elo points this year, it’s down to 2076.

Before we talk about coaching input, I have to state here that the quality of the raw material is important. The student, all other factors like health, etc being equal, must be passionate about the game, must want to achieve the set goal and above all, believe it is attainable. Now, back to the coach. The coach must first identify the student’s strengths and weaknesses and set out with the basic task of improving strengths and shoring up weak points. Then there is the other fundamental task of designing and following an appropriate regimen. 

Luckily, we don’t have to always learn from our own experiences or mistakes; we can learn from those of other’s. We have the benefit of “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Does this mean studying their games, I mean, the games of chess giants? A simple “Yes” or “No” won’t suffice here. Of course, like any other person that has gone through the games of the chess greats, from Morphy to Carlsen, would have realised, one is able to pick a lot of ideas, and gain a lot of insight by this ritual. But doing that exclusively can only get you so far. A chess player gets more relevant insight by studying his/her own games. An epiphany? Sadly, No! I found out after a lot of research. However, with the benefit of hindsight, it makes a lot of sense now. When you study your own games, and work on them, the probability that that study will be relevant is very high, in contrast with studying a game between Magnus Carlsen and Viswanathan Anand. Most chessplayers will agree that you can learn a lot about an opponent after playing just a few games with him/her. When you analyse your own games, you get a better understanding of your thought process, thinking pattern and more importantly, the factors you put into consideration before taking a decision on the eventual move. I have started implementing this, both for my students and myself, and the results have been magical thus far. 

Factors such as nutrition, physical fitness, playing loads of game, analysing games of the greats, studying tons of literature on the various stages of the games, tactics training,…etc, are all important to get you to that desired height. But the ‘King Factor’ is to study one’s own games.

Chess development is indeed simple when things are done the right way!

 The list below shows chess players that became Grandmasters before their 15th birthday:

No.	Player	Country	Age
1.	Sergey Karjakin	Ukraine	12 years, 7 months, 0 days
2.	Parimarjan Negi	India	13 years, 4 months, 22 days
3.	Magnus Carlsen	Norway	13 years, 4 months, 27 days
4.	Wei Yi	China	13 years, 8 months, 23 days
5.	Bu Xiangzhi	China	13 years, 10 months, 13 days
6.	Samuel Sevian	United States	13 years, 10 months, 27 days
7.	Richárd Rapport	Hungary	13 years, 11 months, 6 days
8.	Teimour Radjabov	Azerbaijan	14 years, 0 months, 14 days
9.	Ruslan Ponomariov	Ukraine	14 years, 0 months, 17 days
10.	Wesley So	Philippines	14 years, 1 month, 28 days
11.	Étienne Bacrot	France	14 years, 2 months, 0 days
12.	Illya Nyzhnyk	Ukraine	14 years, 3 months, 2 days
13.	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	France	14 years, 4 months
14.	Péter Lékó	Hungary	14 years, 4 months, 22 days
15.	Jorge Cori	Peru	14 years, 5 months, 15 days
16.	Hou Yifan	China	14 years, 6 months, 16 days
17.	Jeffery Xiong	United States	14 years, 6 months, 25 days
18.	Anish Giri	Russia	14 years, 7 months, 2 days
19.	Yuriy Kuzubov	Ukraine	14 years, 7 months, 12 days
20.	Dariusz Świercz	Poland	14 years, 7 months, 29 days
21.	Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son	Vietnam	14 years, 10 months
22.	Daniil Dubov	Russia	14 years, 11 months, 14 days
23.	Ray Robson	United States	14 years, 11 months, 16 days
24.	Fabiano Caruana	Italy	14 years, 11 months, 20 days

                                                                                    ---Source: www.wikipedia.org

NB: The federations listed against their names are those which they belonged to at the time of attaining the International Grandmaster title.

See you at the top!