Private coaching is, of course, the most effective way to improve one’s playing standard. Most players rated 2700 owe their success to years of support from grandmaster coaches. Parents who wish to support their children’s development should consider this approach. But it is never too late for adults to seek professional help either. This provides plenty of fresh inspiration, helps you break out of ingrained patterns and equips you with the tools to help yourself.

Group training is more affordable and equally beneficial, as it offers plenty of scope for interaction. I organise webinars once or twice a year on topics of general interest, with a focus on ‘the middle game’. I also provide training for clubs and small private groups. Please feel free to get in touch.

Below is a list of the areas in which I can help you.

Game Analysis
Of course, you can only fully benefit from the wealth of experience gained from playing if you also analyse your games. Ambitious chess enthusiasts therefore analyse their games using a chess engine. Whilst this is, of course, very good, it initially has only a limited educational value. The engine shows us the ‘what’, but not the ‘why’. To understand the game and the mistakes made at a conceptual level requires painstaking detective work, and many lack the time or inclination for this. Collaborative online analysis is very popular with my clients because I am able to translate machine language into human language. I have conceptually decoded chess (see also my series ‘The 444 most important questions for success in chess’) and have a detailed, coherent system of values which helps me to develop didactically effective terminology. Here is a list of typical analysis objectives:

  • Solving the opening problem
  • Understanding the course of the game and changing positional assessments
  • Expanding one’s general understanding of chess by learning new patterns, thinking routines and concepts
  • Categorising mistakes in order to better understand one’s own strengths and weaknesses and, where necessary, tailor training accordingly

Game Preparation
Game preparation not only improves your chances of success but also sharpens your knowledge of the opening. There is no better opening training than that which is motivated by upcoming games. Here is a list of what game preparation involves and how I can support you with it.

Tactic Training
Tactic training is very important, as it allows you to practise four different skills at once:

  • Tactical motives (triggers for tactical calculations)
  • Tactical objectives
  • Tactical mechanisms
  • Visualisation (moving the pieces in your mind’s eye)

In principle, you do not need a coach for tactical training. However, it can be helpful to be taught the methodology by a professional.

Building a sound Opening Repertoire
The opening is very important, as it determines who enters the middlegame with a positional advantage (= objective advantage), better positional knowledge (= subjective advantage), a psychological advantage and a time advantage. The quality of one’s opening repertoire also influences one’s development as a chess player. Here you can see what I mean by a good opening repertoire.

Specialised Middlegame Training
Openings and the middlegame form a single unit. There is no point in playing twelve moves of theory and then finding yourself without a plan. You are then faced with a special situation and may well be playing against an expert. I therefore recommend that everyone thoroughly study the relevant pawn structures and strategic concepts, as well as the resulting plans and winning ideas – in other words, the positional logic of the most important openings and variations in their own repertoire. The advantage of this specialised middlegame training over general training is its greater practical applicability. My opening training naturally incorporates positional logic and can therefore also be regarded as specialised middlegame training.

General Middlegame Training
Alongside specialised midgame training, general midgame training also has its place, as it provides a solid foundation for positional understanding. To understand the middlegame – which includes the late opening and sometimes even the early endgame – the following are required:

  • On the logical-abstract side: an objective and comprehensive evaluation system that encompasses all positional categories and concepts, as well as their overlaps and interactions, in an organised manner. Of course, metagame aspects also have to be included.
  • On the concrete-visual side: a collection of model games that can illustrate each individual concept.

In addition to a self-contained system of evaluation with comprehensive terminology, I have a large collection of thematically organised model games at my disposal. In this context, I would like to refer once again to my 444 questions, as well as to the ever-growing number of seminars and webinars. These can, of course, also be covered flexibly in one-to-one lessons and private group training sessions.

Endgames
I cover strategic endgames and rook endgames very thoroughly, but can also make a valuable contribution to other technical endgames and studies.

Fees
One-to-one tuition: EUR 50 per hour

Group tuition (up to 6 participants): EUR 75 per hour

Group tuition (up to 20 participants): EUR 100 per hour