I Don't Teach Openings. Here's What I Teach Instead.

I don't teach openings. That's an unusual thing for a chess coach to say. Most programs lead with them. So let me tell you why I don't — and what I do instead.

Openings are a script. Chess isn't.

Here's the problem with teaching kids openings first. An opening is a script. It assumes your opponent is going to play their part. When they don't, the kid is lost. And in my experience, the opponent stops following the script by about move four. Every time.

So you've got a kid who has memorized this beautiful opening, they get to move five, the opponent does something they didn't prepare for, and now they're staring at a board they don't understand. They make a bad move. They lose. And here's the part that bothers me — they walk away thinking they're bad at chess.

They're not bad at chess. They were just taught wrong.

What I teach instead

I teach understanding.

Here's what that looks like, day one: kids learn how the pieces move. Not the strategy. Not the opening. Just the movement. We start with the rook — straight lines, four directions. Then the bishop — same idea, just tilted. Then the queen — combine the two. Then the king — same as the queen but only one square at a time. Then we get to the knight and the pawn, and those two have special rules. So you add levels of complexity.

Once they know how the pieces move, we don't play chess yet. We play the racetrack game. Race your rook around the board. Lose to someone whose rook is faster than your knight. Realize knights are slow. Pick the rook next time. That's how learning happens — not by me telling them "knights are slow, don't pick that car." They figure it out at the board. They learn by making mistakes, and that's the point.

Then we get into the real stuff. What each piece wants to do. Why the center matters. What "developing a piece" actually means. Why some pieces are powerful and the same piece three squares over is useless. Why a weak square in your opponent's position is something to attack, and why the kid attacking it needs to understand the idea behind the attack, not just one move I showed them.

That's understanding. Not memorization. Understanding.

My proudest moment as a coach

I had a kid in class who'd been playing for about a month. I taught the class a concept — there's a weak square in the opponent's position, here's a way you can attack it. We practiced it together. I made sure they could see the pattern.

Then I told them: your opponent isn't going to let you do exactly this. You're going to have to be creative. The weak square might be on a different square next game. The defense might come from a different piece. You'll need to find the principle, not just the move.

This kid went home and played a bunch of games. And the next week, I watched what he'd done. The weak square moved — it wasn't in the same spot as the example we practiced — and he found it anyway. He attacked it in three different games, three different ways. Not the move I'd shown him. The idea I'd shown him.

A kid who didn't know how the pieces moved a month earlier was now playing chess with strategic concepts. That was my proudest moment as a coach.

That's what understanding does. A kid who understands chess can play any opening. A kid who memorized openings can't play chess.

What this means at the kitchen table

Here's the part parents don't always see. If your kid memorizes openings, they'll look impressive at the kitchen table. They'll know the moves. They'll sound smart. And they'll lose to anyone who plays a slightly weird first move, because they have no idea what's actually happening on the board.

If your kid understands chess, they'll look slower at the kitchen table. They'll think before they move. They might play the opening "wrong" because they're thinking. Then at some point — usually around tournament three or four — something clicks. They start beating kids who know more openings than they do. They start finding moves nobody taught them. They start playing chess.

That's the goal.

What I'm actually measuring

Other coaches measure ratings. I get it. It's a number, it goes up, parents can show it off. That's a real thing. But I don't measure that.

I measure whether the kid loves the game.

If they show up Monday excited to play, that's success. If they go home and do puzzles on the tablet instead of playing Roblox, that's success. If their parents tell me at the grocery store that their kid won't stop talking about chess, that's success. I ran into a student of mine at a restaurant a few weeks ago, and his parents told me he can't put the tablet down because he loves playing chess on it. That's the metric I care about. Not his rating. The fact that a kid is choosing chess over Roblox is, to me, a huge win.

Ratings come. They come faster than you'd think when a kid loves the game. I've watched one kid 5X their puzzle rating in two weeks once they got their confidence and fell in love with the game. But the love comes first. Always.

If your kid loves chess, they'll put in the work. If they put in the work, the rating will follow. If you go the other way — push the rating, drill the openings, treat your nine-year-old like Magnus Carlsen — you'll get a kid who quits chess at thirteen because it stopped being fun.

I'm not interested in coaching the next Magnus. If you have the next Magnus, you don't need me. You need a world-class coach in the city your kid happens to live in, and the odds of that being right here in Carmel Valley are astronomical. Astronomical. What I am interested in is giving every kid in Carmel Valley a chance to fall in love with this game. That's it.

That's the whole job.

What this means for you

If you're a parent thinking about chess for your kid, here's what I'd tell you. You don't need to know chess yourself. You don't need to drill openings with them at home. You don't need to buy them a chess book and quiz them on tactics.

What you need to do is let them play. Show interest. Ask them what they learned. Don't ask if they won.

And if you want to actually help them get started, I made a free 5-day video series for parents who don't play chess themselves. Five minutes a day, five days, and your kid can play a full game by Friday. You won't need to know a single rule yourself.