Something about mental training.

Repetition: As pointed to above it is most important to reach the place where the trainee is first.

Changes come all by themself when the trainee wants to do something for it.

Ask yourself which hint can be worked through by the trainee. The most destructive hints are the correct ones which are too difficult to understand. The second most destructive ones are the too easy to understand. The wrong ones follow on place three. (That's why tactics is an excellent hint. People self-adjust to the level they need.)


Internet chess must not be crap. 45/45 games can teach a lot. But otb fight with peers does the best for motivation. You described the problems. It's not your task to solve this. Young men find their way.   

I thought I will jump in and offer my 2 cents worth. The junior in question seems quite close to my son's playing strength, 1400 Elo, if Kylemeister's conversion is accurate.

My son's opening repertoire has largely stabilised, but deviating from Markovich's ideal. (Unfortunately he does not like the 2 Knights and yes, I know, the question is why....???). I had to think of what next to do with his training. He still gets a diet of tactics (CT-ART), Endgame (Silman's Complete Endgame Course, Karsten Muller;s Endgame DVDs and moving on to Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual next and with a bit of Polgar's engame exercises), playing through GM games from his opening repertoire (games collected from a database).

He has an hour of coaching with a player of 2100 Elo strength. She and I discussed what to do in that hour. I think because of the brevity of the time and because it is only an hour a week, and because the above things can be done by my son at home, we have decided to focus on activities where the coach's obvious strength becomes an asset: 2100 Elo playing strength.

For this term, the coach and I have agreed that she and my son will work through Vukovic's Art of Attacking Chess. Of course the main benefit is learning to attack which is important for a junior. But also, the coach is able to analyse some positions a little deeper with my son, thereby training and enhancing the skill of chess calculation and analysis and position evaluation.

Similarly, I believe choosing a chess hero and working through the games (preferably using a source with lots of good annotations) will also facilitate similar learning. I think it is harder for the coach (and hard work) but ultimately you are teaching chess by showing chess calculations, analysis, ideas, etc.

If you work in terms of blocks of time, say 10 weeks per block, then you could begin, eg, with Vukovic, then games collection, then endgame collection and so on and perhaps swing back in spiralling cycle.

I remember reading Agdestein's book on Carlsen (Wonder Boy) (memory is a bit vague since I read it in a bookshop!), Carlsen spent a fair bit of time in coaching playing and analysing through games with his coach at the time (an IM but forgotten the name). Of course Agdestein also mentioned that Carlsen basically devoured Emms, black 1 e4 repertoire book on his own.

I think the imperative here is time. You only have an hour a week. Most effective use of the time is actually to "show" chess by playing through GM games, analysing, calculating, strategical ideas, tactical motifs ... The main thing is that you are able to impart your chess knowledge, culture, history and facilitate the learning of calculation, analysis.

To change the opening repertoire at this stage is going to be counter productive. Yes, it may be that the repertoire will have to change but you have to consider how to motivate the junior to change. I humbly suggest that repertoire change should only come later when you "know" your student much better, not only in chessic sense but also his personality and character.

Supporting argument: If at 1400 level, openings do not matter, then it is "safe" to leave the opening repertoire alone and work on the chess (as explained above), Once the kid begin to improve (1700-1800), you can then introduce more open games variety of openings. Again, the consensus on this Forum seems to be that a player should only really have a serious repertoire when he/she is around 2200 and looking at an IM title. So the kid will still have time to "learn" open game openings.

Yes, there is a downside in that the kid is still playing openings leading to closed positions etc and that learning chess should follow the biological principle, from simple to complex. However, we need to be flexible. In an ideal world, where the kid is presented to us as a tabula rasa, yes, Markovich's dictum should be followed. But, ...

All I have to say... is as a student... a coach gets thrown out on their behind asap if they 1) refuse to look at my games or pretend they did when they didn't 2) Tries to change my openings to theirs or hyper focus our time on opening work...

after that... I expect the coach to just simply go with their strengths in teaching whatever that is... i'm sure I will profit from their wealth of knowledge.

There's an evident problem with the idea of picking his brain regarding what he was planning, what other moves he considered etc. in games played at an average of something like 10 seconds per move.  Maybe a common problem these days.  One prospective student of mine didn't have any recent tournament games, but proposed using his ICC blitz games as lesson material.  

I think there must be something wrong/missing with this picture of the kid's strength vis-a-vis his playing experience.

kylemeister wrote on 12/07/09 at 17:27:55:


I have no idea of the significance of chess.com ratings. Having played him OTB in a casual game, he is definably better than 1400. I would judge him to be a class B player. 

1750 on that website is probably, what, a 1400 player?  Talk of e.g. "showing him complicated strategic battles" would seem a bit misplaced.

Openings like the Semi-Slav and the Berlin sort of put me in mind of when I was playing the Najdorf as a D-player.

I agree with the previous post: I'd say one thing at a time - why throw all his repertoire out of the window? If you are going to teach him sth new re openings, e.g. close a hole in his repertoire, then choose sth aggressive or a gambit, otherwise..

Some ideas:
1) Analyse a few of his most important games so to understand his advantages & disadvantages.
2) Pick up a few complicated strategic battles (not necessarily openings he plays) and do some sessions on evaluation of the position. You can also 
3) Teach him imbalances (e.g. positional exchange sacrifices).
4) Tactics & standard endgames can be easily taught through leaflets / exercises (no need to consume valuable coaching time).
5) On the other hand endgame strategy is interesting (and it sounds possible he has some gaps there).
Optional:
6) If you decide to do some opening sessions after all, pick up a few positional struggles to show the concepts, and avoid detailed variations.
7) If you see him lacking middlegame skills you can also work on specific themes like the isolani, minority attacks (a bit advanced topic), or simply attack & defence.

my 2c

N.B.: Better first hear what he is anxious to learn rather than go ahead and impose a topic you are confident you can teach..

Well, I'm sure that Markovich and others who have far more experience than me in this arena will chime in, but I certainly think that at his stage of develoment he should be playing open positions (for all the reasons that many here have stated in other threads).  I would have him play 1 e4 as white, 1...e5 and the Tarrasch defense as black.  If he gets into OTB tournaments against good players and tries to play sophisticated lines like you have listed, I suspect he will get his hat handed to him.  One question you really need to ask him is why he dislikes open positions?