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Today, I have the pleasure of telling you about an old student of Elizabeth’s and mine , who went on to excel as a player and a coach — National Master Mubassar Uddin!

Nolan has an interesting chess background: He played in his first tournament at the age of 13, didn’t have a non provisional rating for two years, and became a National Master before his 18th birthday.

When I started teaching, I didn’t have any particular understanding of how chess players improve — just my own scattershot experiences. Elizabeth immediately showed me a few things:

Last year, we had our first ever camp. We put an amazing team of instructors together, almost all of whom are returning this year. It was a huge amount of work, but also a blast. There is something special about working with highly motivated teachers at the top of their game.

By now, I understood that typical American approaches to teaching beginners are incorrect, moving so quickly through the basics that most students never master them. I knew how to help a young beginner develop their vision of the board, building up their chess as if constructing a castle.