Steering Them Right
A coach’s guide to getting — and keeping — students ready to play their best
This article originally appeared in the August 2025 edition of Chess Life Magazine and is reprinted here with permission.
By Matan Prilleltensky, Executive Director of the NSCF
Like in chess itself, it’s better for a chess coach or teacher to learn from the mistakes of others. But also like in chess, the mistakes you make yourself have a way of being the most memorable and instructive.
As a young student teacher, I went to Nationals for the first time in 2011 as the coach of a strong elementary school team. In the weeks leading up to the event, I met kids during the school day to grind tactics. During the event itself, we had team meetings. I even taught a short lesson before every round to drill opening principles into everyone’s minds.
None of it worked. The tactics problems were beside the point (they were too difficult and there weren’t enough of them to make a real difference); the lessons drained some of the kids’ limited attention, and the team meetings were neither here nor there. Several kids underperformed, and the results were below expectations.
Fortunately, results give you immediate feedback on your work. I made some conclusions and decided to do things differently moving forwards.
I certainly don’t take credit for the multiple National Championships my various teams have won since then — some schools are more set up to compete than others. But when a bunch of kids overperform, it makes sense to think about what their preparation and routines for the event had in common. Rather than detail the evolution of my thinking over the years, I will get to the point — the principles I think coaches and players can successfully use both before and during a tournament.
Before
For almost all scholastic players, Nationals should be approached as a normal tournament. Solving puzzles, usually tactical in nature, forms the basis of independent work on chess. The benefits are immense and varied: Better tactical vision during games, fewer blunders, and more accurate calculation are top of mind. But also, as players become more likely to see short tactics inside variations, they also play more aggressively and confidently.
If you are looking for a resource for day-to-day solving, there are many listed in John Hartmann’s article in the June Chess Life Kids. But the main thing is to solve problems mindfully: Focus as if you’re playing a tournament game; write down your solutions, and check your answers, either independently or with a parent/coach. Some people say you can only absorb a few new patterns each day, but I don’t agree; the point of diminishing returns is real, but I think you have to do quite a bit of tactical solving before reaching it. An hour a day of solving goes a really long way.
Even at relatively low levels, a solid opening repertoire is very helpful. Players have access to more interactive resources than ever before — new Chessable courses are released every week, many of them at an amazing level of quality and depth; Modern Chess also produces courses that I have found extremely useful. But it’s not easy to distill this fire hose of information into what will appear in practical play at various levels, so students tend to have a hard time working on the opening phase independently.
If you are a coach, I suggest asking yourself, “What positions will they actually get in a tournament game?” What constitutes relevant opening theory varies wildly at different levels of chess. Check what happens in the student’s openings at their rating range in the Mega database; the results can be extremely revealing and will help you understand what they need to know.
If you are a player, every game you play is a chance to deepen your understanding of your lines. I think it was Andy Soltis who preached going one move deeper every time. In other words: Figure out where the game left your notes. (If you don’t have opening notes, I suggest making some yourself, either in a Lichess study or ChessBase.) If you were the one to deviate, try to understand and remember the purpose of the move you were meant to play. If your opponent deviated, and you didn’t find the optimal reply, try to understand the best move and add it to your notes. You can even do this after online blitz or rapid games. You may also find that this motivates you to take these online games more seriously.
Please don’t get the impression that I think tactics and openings are the be-all and end-all of chess improvement. But they definitely help, and they might be more likely to offer an immediate return on investment than other forms of training.
During
Once the tournament starts, I try to help the kids play their best, rather than teaching them new information. At a very young or basic level, I think kids benefit greatly from analysis of their games between rounds. You may identify a massive improvement early in the game that avoids an opening disaster or inflicts one on the opponent. The blunders that happen in these games offer many opportunities to reinforce some simple process goals for the next round. For example, at the recent SuperNationals, I asked students to think about their opponent’s threats, look for their forcing moves, and blunder-check their moves before playing them.
Analysis of stronger students’ games during Nationals is a tricky one for me. I generally advise them to rest in between rounds and leave chess alone — it’s a long tournament. But when they play a tough game, they always seem to want to look at it! In those moments I tend to default to what the student wants: Strong players have some idea what will help them play their best, and I think analyzing the game may help them process it (especially if it’s a tough loss) and put it behind them until the tournament is over.
Speaking of stronger kids, I think that very often what they most want during a tournament is a friend. I normally refer my students to an IM or GM coach when they reach 1800, or sometimes even 1600. But I have regularly worked with my “graduates,” including kids up to 2000, during Nationals. These kids of course value technical chess advice and opening preparation, especially from someone who knows them and is deeply invested in their success. But I think the real job of the coach in those moments is to transmit confidence to the students.
For example, before a critical last-round game in the K-8 Championship section at this year’s SuperNationals, one of my graduates asked me which of two opening lines he should play. One led to a nominally higher engine evaluation than the other, but I told him he wasn’t going to play against Stockfish, and asked him which move he had more confidence in. In the absence of extremely specific knowledge about what the opponent is going to play, I think this type of common-sense directive is what’s usually needed. The better you know the kid, the better you know what to tell them. He did win the game, and I don’t think it had much to do with the opening.
Coaches of school teams or large groups have the secondary task of managing their students throughout the tournament. Everyone has their own way of doing this; I will offer mine in the hope that it is useful for some of the readers.
I try to keep it low-key. I’m not big on team meetings, although there is a time and place for everything. The team room should be a calm, friendly atmosphere suitable for occasional brief preparation before games and analysis afterwards. Students should not waste their time and energy in between rounds hanging out in the team room! There is obviously a social component to scholastic chess tournaments, but part of what makes it fun for kids is striving to perform to the best of their ability. They all want to win but often lack the self-discipline to put themselves in the best position to do that. As a result, they need (and want!) an adult to force them to do the things that will help them be successful: Rest in between rounds; eat reasonable food; get a bit of fresh air and skip the screen-induced dopamine hits.
What about parents?
Parents can also help in getting a child to do the things they need to do to be ready for the next round. Otherwise, a parent’s job is to support their child as much as possible throughout the event: Focus on the process, be happy for their successes, and support them in the difficult moments. A tough loss is not the time for home truths or criticism, and if either of those are ever needed, they should come from the coach, not the parent. Chess is a tough game, and the value of a parent’s unconditional love and support is incalculable.
At the end of the day, some sense of perspective is helpful. Yes, Nationals is a major event. But it’s one of many tournaments, large and small, that students will play in over the course of their chess careers. The most important thing is to enjoy the process and put yourself in a position to do your best. We are all very lucky to spend a weekend engaged in this amazing game!
