Personal training is a very effective way of increasing your playing level. Every 2700-player owes his strenghts to years of collaboration with a GM trainer.

Below I list the most important areas in which to train and also point out the possibilities to involve me as a coach.

Playing games
Playing is the most intensive form of training because the emotional context allows you to reach the highest level of concentration. In addition, you get a good insight into the status quo and create the conditions for game analysis.

Analyzing your games
Of course, you can only fully benefit from the wealth of experience that comes from playing if you also analyze your games. In this context, it should be mentioned that blitzing on the Internet without subsequent analysis is of relatively little use, apart from entertainment. I therefore recommend the ambitious chess friend to play only as much (1-2 hours?) as one can later process analytically. Here is a list of possible goal for the analysis:

  • Solving the opening problem
  • Understanding the course of the game: Who was better, when and why?
  • Broadening your general chess understanding by recognizing new concepts and patterns.
  • Categorization of the mistakes in order to better understand one’s own strengths/weakness profile and, if necessary, to adjust the training measures accordingly

The analysis with the engine should be regarded as the minimum program. It provides information on mistakes, better alternatives and the numeric evaluation of the position. However, it does not automatically provide you with information on a conceptual level. It therefore only makes a limited contribution to achieving the above goals and does not really prevent the same mistakes from being repeated in other environments.

I hence consider the online game analysis with a professional to be one of the best forms of training out there. With my students this method is very popular.

Preparing your games
Preparing your games not only improves your chances for success, but also boosts your opening skills. There is no better opening training than the one motivated by an upcoming game. Here is how I can help.

Tactics training
Tactics training is very important because you actually practise three different skills here:

  • Knowledeg of tactical patterns
  • Knowledge of tactical mechanisms
  • Visioning (moving the pieces in the mind’s eye)Basically, you don’t need a coach for tactics training. However, it can be helpful to be enlightened by a professional about the multitude of mechanisms and the best procedure for tactics training.

For a beginner or post-beginner it would be helpful to get introduced to the multitude of tactical mechanisms and the right thinking routines by a professional.

Building a reasonable opening repertoire
The start of the game is particularly important, as it decides about who is having a positional advantage, the psychological initiative, more time on the clock and the better knowledge of the given pawn structure. A good opening repertoire should meet the following requirements:

  • High-quality
  • Resource-sensitive (matching strengths, weaknesses, age, available time, etc.)
  • Economical (efficient and sustainable)

Be assured that my opening training manages to meet these requirements.

Special middlegame training
The opening and the middlegame have to be regarded as one unit. There is no point in playing twelve moves of theory only to be left without a plan. You are then dealing with a special situation and may face an expert on the other side of the board. Starting the game with 1.a3 could very well put you in a better position, by contrast. I therefore recommend everyone to study the pawn structures, the ruling strategic concepts and the resulting plans, i.e. the logic of the position, for all of your major openings. The advantage of this kind of special middlegame training compared to the general one is the higher possibility of application. However, generic and comprehensive middlegame training forms a solid basis for your general chess understanding and should therefore not be neglected.

My opening training naturally includes the middlegame logic and can therefore be understood as opening and special middlegame training at the same time.
Generic middlegame training
To understand the middlegame, and that includes the late opening and early endgame, you need the following elements:
  • On the logical-abstract side: a comprehensive and objective value system, which covers all possible categories and concepts in orderly form (here is a glossary, without claim to completeness).
  • A collection of model games for the topics above
  • On the concrete side: a big vocabulary of pawn structures and micro-patterns

I have built up a comprehensive value system with a detailed terminology. Every concrete phenomenon on the chessboard finds its proper place in this chess world view and can be logically explained. I am able to present any topic you like from the glossary above. Also, look at this list of topics already prepared for seminars.

The endgame

Here, I already covered the topics of strategic endgames and rook endings by seminars. Also with regard to other technical endgames and studies I have to contribute a lot.

Fee
EUR 50 per hour