Captains and coaches

09:04 PM, July 11, 2010
Chess Piece — By Bobby Ang
Captains and coaches

Last Friday I wrote about GM Sergey Karjakin taking up Russian citizenship because, among other reasons, he wanted to move to Moscow where he was going to be coached by GM Yuri Dokhoian. Somebody asked me what was the big deal about the coach.

Well, GM Yuri Dokhoian is a big deal, being a highly regarded coach. The Russian Chess Federation recognizes his worth and has tied him into a contract which stipulates that he cannot coach non-Russians. Can you imagine that? Just so that he can train under Dokhoian Karjakin is willing to change his citizenship!

Another question, how does Dokhoian compare with Mark Dvoretsky?

Answer: They are different coaches for different kinds of people. Dvoretsky, whose official title is International Master, is easily GM strength (he quit the tournament circuit to concentrate on coaching) with a highly technical style. He works only with strong players and has a collection of 3, 000 positions arranged by theme that he will bring out for the students’ study and analysis, after which they will compare notes. And these are not easy positions.

Dvoretsky would be perfect for Wesley So, who has great talent and calculating ability but also a few technical defects.
For a player like Garry Kasparov though, Dvoretsky would not be ideal. Garry is a great player in all three phases of the game, and what he needs is an edge, perhaps a slight initiative gained from opening preparation. With this slight plus his energetic style and ability to muster all the dynamism from the position will be sufficient to bombard his opponent with pressure from all sides, forcing capitulation. He needs Dokhoian to study deeply his and his opponent’s opening repertoire and come up with schemes of play which will give full reign to Garry’s strengths.

Both IM Dvoretsky and GM Dokhoian are titled players, but even a non-master like Victor Kart has contributions. His playing ability might not be so high but he prepares his training material well and is credited with creating the Lvov chess school (Ukraine) in 1960. His pupils include famous names like GMs Alexander Beliavsky, Oleg Romanishin and Adrian Mikhalchishin who himself became a famous chess coach.

The value of a coach cannot be overestimated. World champions Tal (Koblents), Petrosian (Suetin), Spassky (Bondarevsky), Karpov (Furman) and Kasparov (at the beginning it was Nikitin) all credit their chess coaches with being pivotal influences in their chess careers.

For a chess team a coach and a captain are two different things, but because of finances the two functions have to be done by one person. This is because the Olympiad organizers will only shoulder the plane fare and accommodation of the players and one coach/captain.

But whereas in the Philippines the designation of captain is usually a junket position (not all the time, of course), in other countries, Russia for example, the position of captain of the team is very important as he has a large say in the composition of the team. In the ’90s up to Istanbul 2000 this role was fulfilled by Boris Postovsky, and although he was not a titled player he obviously knew very much how to run the team, leading it through a very successful decade even though the powerful Soviet Union team had dissolved into 15 smaller countries, and Russia had to compete for the gold against powerhouses like Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan which previously were a part of them. As an official of the federation averred, “We don’t need a man who can teach such players as Svidler or Morozevich to play chess in seven days.”

Problem is Postovsky migrated to the United States after 2000 and in his stead a former candidate for the world championship, GM Sergey Dolmatov was named captain/coach. He quarreled with the players and a lot of the blame for the failure of their star-studded teams to win the recent Olympiads was put on his shoulders. Now I see from the published Russian lineup that Dolmatov is no longer with the team and it is GM Evgeny Bareev’s turn as national coach. This is a very interesting development as previously Bareev had refused to work with anyone but children.

Here is the full article.