Obviously I have a fascination with record setting young chess players. One thing I've been thinking about a lot is how to attempt to predict (with giant margins of error of course) statistically where individual players are likely to peak. I'll need a much more comprehensive data set for that project than I have yet built, but that's not the point of this thread. From the numbers side of things, I then also began thinking about the "why" piece.

Obviously we talk a lot, on this forum, about training methods. However almost all of that discussion is from an adult perspective, as we're mostly asking for our own benefits. When we do talk about training methods for young players, it's usually been about a situation where maybe we're looking to help with a local chess club, or something similar. Average students, in other words. With respect to all the kids we've worked with, and to the very strong players who contribute so much to this forum, I don't think any of our previous discussions have necessarily pertained to a player who has legitimate aspirations to be a super-GM or maybe even a world championship contender someday.

So the question is, hypothetically, if you had input into a superstar youngster's training, what might you propose above and beyond the general broadly applicable stuff we always talk about elsewhere on this forum?

What might need to be prioritized? A coach (the RIGHT coach) seems like a very high importance item. What would make a coach "right"? What is the right life/chess balance? How important is it for the kid to live somewhere with a rich chess culture and easy regular access to strong opposition and/or coaches? How does online coaching compare to in person coaching?

It's worth assuming, for the sake of discussion, that the kid in question genuinely loves chess and wants to pursue it as far as it will take them. Of course I've been thinking about it for a bit already or else I wouldn't have thought to start the thread, but I'm curious to hear other input before I share much of my own thoughts.

I know a little about Caruana and Nakamura, as they both played at clubs in my area when they were very young. I notice they both went from their initial 3 digit ratings to 2200 in about 4 years, which is of course very fast.

http://www.uschess.org/datapage/rati...memid=12743305
http://www.uschess.org/datapage/rati...memid=12641216

Both were expected to easily make GM, but who knew they would be in the top 10 list? Hikaru seems especially surprising. He appeared to "stagnate" at strong GM from age 18-23 but then jumped up to world class after that. I assume that is something not often seen, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

I'll have to dig up my research on plateaus. Lots of fun stats stuff there

More curious (for this thread) though about their training processes. Do you know anything about what kind of coaching they had during their teen years, after that initial rapid rise that indicated their potential? Or otherwise what their training looked like?

Or is your connection too tangential to know?

Lots and lots of bullet? :P

I'm not sure any of us have access to world champ training regimens, :/.

Yeah, I didn't expect anyone to actually be able to offer real info on what actual top players did during their prodigy days (though it would be awesome if someone could). Mostly I'm curious in no-consequences hypothetical land what we think MIGHT be the optimal path for such a kid. And why. And in what way (if any) it would differentiate itself from a "normal" strong player's approach to training.

I have SOME info that might be of interest to you.

First, I was coached by the same person who has coached GM Viktorija Cmilyte since her young days. Maybe not exactly what you are looking for, but she is in the top-10 women in the world, world champion in many age groups, European champion, Olympiad gold winner, etc. She was considered to be a very big prodigy in her early days (the threshold for that used to be lower back in the day). That person also happens to be my uncle, so I know about their training regimen quite in-depth.

Also, during my time in Dallas I become decently acquainted with Jeffery Xiong and his dad, we spent a lot of time at the Dallas Chess Club just discussing things between the rounds and such.

Finally, over the years I just gathered info from various conversations.

The thing is, they don't really study that much differently from the rest of us - it's just that they do it much much harder. It sounds cliche, but all the prodigies I've known or heard stories about have worked incredibly hard with very good coaches for prolonged periods of time. For example, Jeffery Xiong has been working with 2-3 GM coaches simultaneously since he was about 10 years old. I know for the fact that on weekends when he didn't play in a tournament, he would have lessons for at least six hours a day. Similarly with Cmilyte, many, many hours of work, mostly every day. Also know about Caruana from his personal friends, he has also worked a ridiculous amount since he was a kid. Radjabov, in his own drunken words in a bar, has completely locked himself out of life in his apartment for a full year when he was I think 14 or 15? in order to study because he felt he was plateauing.

Now another thing that is probably the most different from the other guys is training camps. Cmilyte, for example, would go live with her coach for 2 week stretches several times per year. During those stretches, it was all just fitness and chess, 8-10 hours per day of it for that period. No "life" as you call it According to the coach, this is where the real work towards improvement was done, while the every day work on chess was to keep the form in tact and to incremental long-term gains. During the camps, when it was all chess, they could reach the depths of training that one could never reach in a regular every-day lesson, which is shrouded by the "real life" stuff. Mainly those camps would be focused on specific areas of the game, or fixing specific problems/leaks. I know that Caruana also did this with his coaches, but not sure about Jeffery Xiong.

If I remember anything else I will add to it

The Caruanas picked up and moved to Italy, I think mainly so that Fabiano could have access to stronger events. I didn't hear much about him after he left New York.

Last I spoke to Hikaru was in Foxwoods, around 2005 or 2006. He was disappointed that he wasn't getting invitations to the top events in Europe. At some point that changed, obviously, but I'm not sure how it came about. He was starting to get interested in poker at that time as well, but it's a good thing he "doubled down" on chess instead.

Looks like a common theme here. There has always been a consensus that playing the big Swiss system events prevalent in the U.S. is not ideal for players wanting to be world class.

It's true that Europe has much better access to various round-robin tournaments, but I don't think mainly big Swiss opens are the biggest problem for the US talent. It's the fact that most of those opens are like 4-5 day tournaments, meaning most days with 2 rounds, when the quality really suffers.. Also, the distances are huge and accomodation is quite expensive, so you have to really have the money in order to play many strong tournaments when you are in the US. Very different in Europe, were, if short on money, you can always find a hostel to stay at for dirt cheap and most Swiss opens last about a week.

I think what ytf is trying to say is we should start a 2p2 chess camp that meets for 1 week every quarter and all we do is study chess together.

Judit can be the coach.

Well duh, we just have to make sure to improve those flyers. They are.....getting there I suppose.

Thanks for the input, YKW!

interesting note about Caruana's development as a kid--he played 700(!) rated events in a 6-year period while he was still in the US. He was home-schooled, and I can't imagine anyone going to a traditional school doing anything close to that.

700 events??? Not games??? I'm struggling to see how that's even remotely possible, home-schooled or not. 2 1/4 events per week? Did he play lots of small one-day three-four round G/45 or G/60 type things to make that count?

http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlTnm...hp?12743305.16

Looks like he played everything imaginable. I know he frequently played on Monday and Thursday nights at the two main Long Island clubs where I played. Most of these were one game a night, but some were more. Then I see a lot of other weeknight stuff AND weekenders in Manhattan and Queens. Just an enormous amount of chess. Then he had GM coaching too. His dad told me they looked at one of my games that his coach was impressed by. They must have run out of material to study if they are digging into my games lol.

That's a cool combo.

Thank you, it was very satisfying to play.

My chess coach who is a FM claims that any 1600 player that gets intense coaching by Kasparov for 6 months 8 hours a day would easily be 2100-2000 by the end of the period.

I think a single day of one-hour Kasparov lesson would be intense

Very nice report!

One should add that Karjakin is another made child prodigy. He had to work through all 5 books the Endgame Encyclopedia. Kortchnoi, outspoken as usual, believes that Karjakin has zero talent for chess -> 100% engine variations + technique to convert.

The first well known case was Reshevsky. His parents made money with him giving simuls as a child. Tarrasch noted that young Reshevsky was playing mainline theory, so it was pretty obvious that he wasn't a "natural" talent, but rather a project designed by his parents.

Mednis once wrote a book about openings that lead straight to endgames and that's pretty much the blueprint for modern chess. Gaining rating in modern chess is all about knowing long forced variations opening variations (Marshall Attack), where only your opponent can go wrong (free-roll).

Have that engine running 24/7 and memorize something about 200 crititcal lines up to move 40 and you should do rather well.

Today at US Women's championship, we've had 3 winning endgames butchered by prodigies with Black and curious post-game interviews where Ashley and Seirawan stressed how many points young guns lose in the endgame and shamed them like a school teacher shames a student who has failed a homework

It was clear from the interviews with the girls that American schoolgirl prodigies' chess prep is not a rigidly planned multi-hour routine.

I've already addressed WFM Jennifer Yu's game in the LC thread.

When Maurice Ashley asked Yu (the interview is at around 5 h 29 min in the recorded video) how much she studies endgames, she admitted that she hadn't counted it, though she said she does do these studies systematically.

NM Carissa Yip has got criticised for her dubious decision vs FM Alisa Melekhina (I'm more of a fan of the latter , but nevertheless).



In this equal position, Alisa made two mistakes in a row: 42. b3? Rc2 (43. Ng1 d3 44. Rxd3 Bb5 was the lesser of evils for White) 43. Kf1? Rxe2! (which I don't mind as Alisa is now rather focused on law studies anyway ) 44. Kxe2 Bxg4+ 45. Kd2 Ba5+ 46. Kc2.



Here, Carissa thought for 12 minutes (!) while the commentators were wondering why there's even room for thought (two bishops are so strong vs a rook in an open endgame), and then took on d1 instead of h3 because she thought 'two passers should win', making the position easily drawn for White as it took time for Black's king to come into action.

When, to finish the interview, Maurice asked Carissa what lessons she had learned from the championship, she got confused again and said she had 'not really' learned anything, though, as Maurice pointed out, at least the cumulative power of two bishops is the lesson to be learnt.

So there appears to be quite a mess in her head, the trainers should address it.

Regarding WIM Agata Bykovtsev, Maurice pointed out that, vs WGM Katerina Nemcova, she should have kept opposite colour bishops as the attacker (Ba8) instead of trading into an endgame (Qxf4) here



and then Yasser pointed out that her winning plan in the rook endgame should have been



to take on f2, move the rook to b2 behind White's passer and advance the 3-to-1 pawn majority on the kingside (instead, she played Rc6 and drew), the interview revealed that Agata had 6 hours' worth of school homework to be done after the game and was coping with both pursuits only due to 'tons and tons of Red Bull'.

So, though her subjects as a senior will be 'easier', right now, her chess prep is getting thrown under the bus so far and she's damaging the health with an energetic drink, whereas e.g. the top rated FIDE girl, WGM Aleksandra Goryachkina, chose a special low-load P.E. college to continue her general education while focusing hard on chess.

Somehow I'm aware of those theoretical considerations (opposite colour bishops in the middlegame, the universal importance of piece activity in the endgame) but some prodigy masters seemingly aren't

The interviews with Bykovtsev and (right after that) Yip start at around 4 h 50 min in the recorded video.

This all makes me think about the sad trade-off between chess and real-life earnings, and seemingly in most cases, chess prodigies who would become an IM/GM with proper effort choose real education to earn more money...

Examples are the mentioned lawyer Alisa Melekhina and also Alexandra Wiener, once the US girls' champion and a soccer amateur but now a financial analyst and Caruana's 'very close friend'.