âMy Days As a Teenage Chess Teacherâ, 2021-02-22 (; backlinks; similar)â :
âŚI thought I would add a few remarks on my very first job as chess teacher, which I did at ages 14â15.
Chess teaching isnât mainly about chess. A chess teacher has to have a certain mystique above all, while at the same time being approachable. Even at 14 this is possible. Your students are hiring you at least as much for your mystique as for the content of your lessons.
Not everyoneâŚwanted to be a better chess player. For some, taking the lesson was a substitute for hard work on chess, not a complement to it. The lesson for them was a fun social experience, and it kept the game of chess salient in their minds. They became âthe kind of person who takes chess lessons.â I understood this well at the time. Some of the students wanted to show you their chess games, so that someone else would be sharing in their triumphs and tragedies. That is an OK enough way to proceed with a chess lesson, but often the students were more interested in âshowingâ than in listening and learning and hearing the hard truths about their play.
Students are too interested in asking your opinion of particular openings. At lower-tier amateur levels of chess, the opening just doesnât matter that much, provided you donât get into an untenable position too quickly. Nonetheless openings are a fun thing to learn about, and discussing openings can give people the illusion of learning something importantâŚ
What I really had to teach was methods for hard work to improve your game consistently over time. That might include for instance annotating a game or position âblindâ, and then comparing your work to the published analysis of a world-class player, a la Alexander Kotovâs Think Like a Grandmaster. [The book is not concerned with advising where pieces should be placed on the board, or tactical motifs, but rather with the method of thinking that should be employed during a game. Kotovâs advice to identify candidate moves and methodically examine them to build up an âanalysis treeâ remains well known today.] I did try to teach that, but the demand for this service was not always so high.
The younger chess prodigy I taught was quite bright and also likable. But he had no real interest in improving his chess game. Instead, hanging out with me was more fun for him than either doing homework or watching TV, and I suspect his parents understood that. In any case, early on I was thinking keenly about talent and the determinants of ultimate success, and obsessiveness seemed quite important. All of the really good chess players had it, and without it you couldnât get far above expert level.