Feb 02

I’m seeking to improve my chess game. I’ve played casually for years now and recently have been more deliberate doing 1-2 games per day against the Squareoff AI. This is a physical chess board which communicates via Bluetooth with an app on your phone and allows you to play other people online or play the computer. What’s nice is it generates the chess notation file at the end of the game which you can then upload to Lichess.org for Stockfish to analyze your mistakes and to run whatif scenarios of how the game might have gone otherwise with different decisions. This coupled with the daily chess quizzes on Lichess and occasional study of the theory via their large lesson library is the best way I’ve found so far to improve.

What I ideally want though is to find someone who I mesh with who can weekly review my games and then do a weekly 30min zoom with me to walk through the games using those as an opportunity to correct my mistakes and teach strategy & tactics. It’s nice to have the computer tell you where errors occurred but it would be far more helpful to have someone talk me through the “why” behind the mistake and what I should have been thinking in that situation.

I’ve posted below my last few games from Evernote. If you know anyone who is both adept at chess but more importantly, a good teacher who can analyze where I’m at and help accelerate my progress, please send him/her my way. I would welcome any intros and am happy to pay their hourly rate to test them out and convert to a monthly retainer assuming it’s a good fit. Thanks in advance.

Game Date
Lichess URL
Post-play Summary
Reviewed
2/2
White. L. Was down significant material early on but came back at the end. Similar to last game, very interested if I had a chance to win and botched it with the end game. Ultimately tried to bring my Queen to the back line and pile drive with the rook but that didn’t work out.
[]
2/1
White. L. Was down early but made a nice comeback attempt. Got into a near-checkmate and was able to check him then ran his King all the way around. Very curious about the close quarters end game on the right side of the board and if there was an opp at any point to pull it out or if I was destined for L at that point.
[x]
1/31
White. L. I made mistake early on when I let him get bishop buried deep on my side on same line as Queen and then I brought my King forward instead of taking with B2 pawn.
[x]
1/31/21
White. W. He blundered early and lost Queen then I lost mine. I was up a few pieces all game and blew a couple checkmate opps. Eventually promoted a pawn and trapped him with Queen/Rook
[x]
1/30/21
White. W. lost the Queen early in a dumb move then tried to trap his Queen while he disemboweled me. Kept it fairly close all things considered until end where I made a dumb move and guaranteed checkmate by trapping my king close to his side.
[x]

And yes, my interest in chess far pre-dated Queen’s Gambit. But that Netflix series is, I believe, doing for chess what Karate Kid did for martial arts and what Hunger Games did for archery in terms of getting youth excited about it. Anything that steals back young minds from Tiktok is a win iMO. cheers

2 Responses to “Looking for a chess coach”

  1. Markus says:

    Hi, may i have some info about you to contact you? Discord/ email skype or whatever

  2. Satish Nair says:

    Not sure where you are with your chess skills but lots of chess.com coaches or coaches in India can help you change the the way you think about chess.

    I was given a position where white had castled, rooks were on e1, a1 queen on d1, bishop on f1. All the white pawns were on their original square. e pawn was exchanged. I start by thinking about developing my bishop on g2 because that is the only piece not developed, but my coach pointed to me about the underdeveloped black pieces and a vulnerable black king, so he suggested I break open the center and start creating a serious threat. Bishop can be unleashed anytime once the center breaks using the f1-c4 with a check.

    Anyways coaches can really help unwind these small things.

Leave a Reply

preload preload preload