Originally posted by vipiuLet's do something similar where all the top players (except ilywrin) can coach anyone who is rated 1661 when this post was written...I would offer myself as a student...
let's do something similar with some 2100-2200s training some 1800s...I would offer myself as a student...
Originally posted by David Tebb
I'm far too busy with my own games to be able to coach anyone. In fact for several months I've been declining challenges from lots of players in order to cut down my game load.
So I won't be taking part. But I'd like to make a few comments anyway:
To start with, I don't think it's realistic to hope that someone will improve by 200 or 300 points after just a couple of months of coaching. I keep telling people that there are no easy short-cuts to chess improvement. Becoming better at chess is a long term goal that requires a lot of hard work over a long period of time. In my experience, very few people are prepared to put in the work. Instead they look for a quick fix. They buy a book and expect to improve without even reading it! If you try to coach them, they expect you to do all the work, whilst they sit back and wait for their rating to go up.
I've coached several players in real life and also on this site. Most of then didn't have the right attitude. If I set them homework they didn't do it. I would play friendly training games with them and ask them to think carefully about their moves and then explain why they chose them. That should have been a great way for them to learn something. However they would either play the first moves that came into the head, which was usually a blunder, or they would find a move which was astonishingly strong but be unable to explain it! After the games were over I discovered that several had been cheating with engines.
Maybe I’ve just been unlucky in some of the players that I’ve coached. Or maybe I’m not as good a coach as I thought I was. Although I’m sure I’ve helped some players. The people who benefit most from coaching are the ones who are eager to learn and are willing to put in a lot of hard work – precisely the kind of players who improve without coaching! It’s very unclear how much difference the actual coaching makes.
This is my sentiment exactly. Having tried some coaching before I found the same thing. People expect a quick fix for no effort and then think they are being clever by trying engine moves against you. Unfortunately what a waste of my time.
However, I would like some free coaching and I am sure David Tebb could teach me a lot and it would not be wasted time by him as I would make the effort but as I would never find sufficient time to make the level of effort required to improve by 200 points it would probably be futile unless face to face.
We have a strong (4NCL) player in our club who helps us analyse a correspondence game the club is playing against another club. His thought process never ceases to amaze me, it is so fundamentally different from mine yet when explained so logical. I can come up with some good moves that he misses, even brilliant moves from time to time but short of the raw tactics I often cannot grasp the reason why a delaying move or a slighly more obscure move is better than mine until he shows me the probable position 20 moves on and it is all so obvious. It is his ability to calculate tactics accurately and visualise a strategic advantage 20 moves on that puts him in a class above me and he is "only" 2350 (OTB) - I cannot imagine how a GM thinks!
Originally posted by TyrannosauruschexThat's a great idea... can i be a recipient of your proposal..although my rating is below than you recommend.. 🙂
I have a great challenge to any of the stronger (preferably 2000+ strength) players on the site, an interesting form of competition.
I propose that we each take a player between 1400-1600 and coach them until new year, trying to get their playing strength to about 1700-1800 in that time.
After this, the apprentices will play against each other ...[text shortened]... see how many other players were up for this challenge before committing to the training myself.