— from Glenn Flear

At the World Youth Championships in Halkidiki each of the six ECF coaches were allocated four pupils to guide throughout the event. Ten of the eleven rounds were at 3pm, so there was plenty of time for preparation beforehand. A typical day would be as follows:

I would wake at 7am, prepare some material for my group of four, take a bath and have breakfast.

Then between 8.30am and 1pm, each pupil would receive at least one hour’s coaching in the calm of their own rooms. After that I would check that everyone was OK.

Apart from work on openings, it’s also important to give out general advice (such as ‘careful with the clock’, ‘be patient’, ‘keep it simple, your opponent is weaker in strategic positions’ and so on) all with the purpose of building up confidence and match fitness.

Sometimes there were ‘matters arising’ so my ‘mornings’ sometimes went on until 2pm. In these cases, after all that(!), I was generally more than ready for lunch!

This may seem like a tough schedule, but the American coaches had six children each (with only 30 minutes guaranteed for each student) and (I must mention) the heroic Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant who, alone, had sixteen Scottish children to cater for! For her, 20 minutes per child still made for a long morning!

The quiet period that followed until 5.30pm wasn’t totally free, as I would often need to prepare a summary of the morning’s course(s), so the player(s) had some notes for the future on that particular opening. I would also make an effort to go for a walk followed by a quick nap in order to recharge my batteries.

From 5.30pm until about 8pm the action would move to the team room downstairs. I would analyze the games of my four, plus discuss some ideas with the other coaches on the games that had arisen. It’s an enjoyable time for all involved sharing anecdotes and experiences concerning the various openings and endgames that we have been analyzing. When the younger ones watch the games of the more experienced ones being analyzed it also adds to their erudition.

After the evening meal, the pairings would come out between 9pm and 9.30pm. Then it was time to check out what my group’s opponents have been playing and then contact my players to see what they had in mind.

The game plan generally involves working out an opening system that creates problems for the opponent. At times, this means learning a new idea from scratch, but ideally it would be revision of a variation that the pupil has already worked on in the recent past. Even better if they have their own notes, but unfortunately this isn’t always the case!

After deciding on the different areas that would need working on, I would start working straight away, researching and preparing material for tomorrow’s courses. Sometimes the older children had some searching questions already and even wanted to get down to detail straight away.

At about 11pm, with everything in order I could relax for half-an-hour before bed. My sleep wasn’t always uneventful, as I would sometimes wake up during the night and found myself still analyzing a game that I was looking at earlier.

So, during the event anyway, perhaps the expression ‘eat, sleep and breathe chess’ is not far from the truth!