Playing against students is a crucial aspect of a chess coach’s role, particularly in preparing them for significant tournaments. In today’s lesson video, I play a final practice with a student before the US Junior Chess Congress. This prestigious tournament, which will occur this weekend in Northern California, has longer time controls so practicing how to budget time properly is critical for my student’s success. Our final training game was also an opportunity to identity weaknesses that need extra focus during the tournament. For decades, I have used this comprehensive approach to not only hone my students’ technical skills but also build their confidence, ensuring that they are fully prepared to perform at their best when it matters most.
In today’s livestream training game, I had the black pieces in a Petrov Defense, Classical Attack, Marshall Variation (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nf3 Nxe4 5. d4 d5 6. Bd3 Bd6) which is named after the great American chess master Frank James Marshall who played it 7 times in his career. I mixed up my theory before the tenth move which resulted in a highly imbalanced position which favored my student. However, in the complex middle game I took the time to use the “Checks, Captures and Threats” method to good effect and was able to grind out an advantage. Of course, winning the game is not nearly as important as demonstrating how to manage my effectively.
Of course, not everyone has access to a chess coach for training purposes. For chess parents trying to prepare their child for chess tournaments, I recommend finding your child a sparring partner to practice the time control used at the tournament for at least one game before attending the competition. Make sure your child is notating their moves and, in the margin, have your child write down what the clock shows every five moves. This way, you can gauge their rate of play and address any time budgeting issues before the tournament. Finally, use the game analysis feature on chess.com to discover where your child could have made better moves. After doing this, should you have any concerns, feel free to reach out to me for some free advice. A big reason why I am one of California’s most popular scholastic chess coaches is because I am always happy to help other chess parents.