What Chess Coaches Don't Tell You

[John Upham]

Richard James has reviewed

What Chess Coaches Don't Tell You

by John & Victoria Doknjas

from Everyman Chess

https://britishchessnews.com/2024/07/11 ... -tell-you/

What Chess Coaches Don’t Tell You, John Doknjas and Victoria Doknjas, Everyman Chess, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1781946541

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[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

The Karpov vs Velimirovic game (https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1067928) is very entertaining, but I'm not sure that any of us who flounder way below the 2200 level can actually learn anything from it, apart from that if you play as brilliantly as Karpov near his peak, then you'll probably win lots of games.

[MJMcCready]

You've got two hopes there: no hope and Bob Hope.

[John Upham]

You've got two hopes there: no hope and Bob Hope.

As Frank Carson used to say "It''s the way I tell 'em"

[MJMcCready]

You've got two hopes there: no hope and Bob Hope.

As Frank Carson used to say "It''s the way I tell 'em"

Do you remember any of his jokes? I used to find him very funny. Above Tommy Cooper and Jim Davdson.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Though being better than the latter is a low bar indeed.....

[MJMcCready]

Very little of what chess coaches do is published so I strongly suspect this publication is over reliant on generalizations and are likely to be assumptive with some of their claims which are likely to be unverified since so few coaches have publications and establishing the extend to which they are normative is practically impossible as coaching is principally delivered orally not literarily. That subject matter is far too broad to be covered well by one single publication which will inevitably render it uninformative of chess coaching on the whole. What else would you expect from a book that discusses an aspect of chess so rarely written about leaving you with so little to work with. I wouldn't be too surprised if you gain very little from reading it since coaches should be commeded for what they excel in and achieve and not what they fail to communicate as it's far less significant and drawing attention to failures made by those who are dedicated to teaching chess rather than what they do well leaves you with the impression that the authors don't really know what coaching is all about as what is taught encapsulates the purpose of coaching and what has not been taught does not. I certainly won't be buying it, that's for sure and if it ever sells more than 5 copies I'd be very surprised if not flabberghasted. It's selling point is unlikely to put it in contention for any awards I'd say.

From the review given by Richard James there are some rather assumptive claims made. The claim that the book can help students evaluate what their coaches teach them is highly dubious to say the least as they always know far less and never question what they are taught and instead try to understand it and learn from it so that they can improve, which is the reason why they are there. Students focus almost entirely on learning what they have been taught rather than evaulate the validity of it as they tend to trust their teacher rather than question the importance of what he teaches them.