By Adrian Mikhalchishin
For every player, facing a World Champion is an event in a chess tournament and in their chess career. It's always important and interesting to compare oneself with the strongest player and to see if, as the great Vassily Smyslov used to say, "World Champions are chosen by God!" Of course, it is an exaggeration, but it is a fact, that without the help of divine intervention we cannot imagine ourselves as a World Champion. But the main characteristics of all World Champions are a huge love for the game and ta titanic work ethic (except Tal and Capablanca!).
Thus players try to show in such games that they are not worse, nor do they deserve less and want to understand what made their opponents World Champions.
This is a difficult and important time for their trainers. It is a good opportunity to show pupils, how it is necessary to work on chess to become a great player and to get renewed inspiration after such a game. After a negative result, it is important to study how to reassess and improve one's own chess and to see some of the technical advantages of the champions to improve their own game.
A positive result always gives a boost, as it gives the impression that becoming a champion is not too far away and all that is needed are additional efforts during the training.
In my trainer's career I have had a few encounters with World Champions.
At the beginning, I was a second of Oleg Romanishin during the Soviet Championships 1975-78,where he played champions such as Karpov, Tal, Petrosian and Smyslov. And there were a lot of successes as Oleg was capable of beating anybody at that time. So, together we worked with another future great trainer, Arshak Petrosian, and got a lot of experience. It was our basic trainers education and we are grateful to the great person Oleg Romanishin and feel pity, that he did not keep his fantastic level from those times.
Later, many years ago, I helped Maya Chiburdanidze to prepare her opening repertoire against Nona Gaprindashvili. It was not so complicated work, as I had nothing to do with the match after this.
Then I worked a great deal with Anatoly Karpov against Garry Kasparov,who was extremely strong in the opening preparation. We all had difficult times, despite the fact that we had some of the best opening specialists, such as the legendary Efim Geller and Lev Polugaevsky. I remember the terrible pressure felt by my friends, Romanishin, Beliavsky, Dorfman and Vaganian, facing World champions. They all were absolute top in the 70s and 80s, but were unable withstand the pressure the World Champions applied.
In the nineties I started to prepare more top female players like Zsuzsa Polgar, Alisa Maric and Zhaoqin Peng. They all played at the top and Zsuzsa even became World Champion, while Maric was in the top five a few times and Peng was a top ten player. However, other than Maya Chiburdanidze, who had lost interest in her chess and devoted herself to her religion, they did not play directly against World Champions. So, preparation was mostly psychological ,as she avoided main lines and tried to play for technique. Champs have a huge psychological weapon , which is their influenced on their opponents. I remember that I could not convince Alisa Maric, who feared no one, to play more active against Zhu Chen in her best year.
It was necessary to try to reach reasonable positions from the opening, to avoid technical positions, and to try to change the curse of the game's fourth hour.
Mikhalchishin working with young Turkish talents
Nowadays, training the young Turkish Women's team, I have met with world champions occasionally.
My girls are rated much lower and it is possible to meet World Champions in the FIDE Grand Prix or the European Individual Championship.
Training top Turkish players Kübra Öztürk (middle) and Betül Cemre Yildiz (right)
Betul Yildiz played Hou Yifan three times in the last edition of the Grand Prix, and consistently got very favourable positions from the opening, but then started to make typical girl's mistakes - no more active moves forward. So,it was the first part of her general preparation - to explain, that her objective is just to press forward. Her opponent wants simple technical positions and will not be very happy with sharp play where the chance of making a mistake is much higher. I told her that top players hate pressure from the lower-rated players! Openings are not a problem, as her last level of preparation is sufficient to face even a World champion! It was partially psychological preparation as taught by Chinese table tennis trainers. Their psychological preparation is to convince (and to prepare) pupils, that their technical preparation is at the top.
About Adrian Mikhalchishin Born in 1954 in Lvov and a Grandmaster since 1978, is currently among the top 5 world trainers and the Chairman of the FIDE Trainers' Commission. The Ukrainian trained the team of USSR in 1980's, national teams of Slovenia, Poland and the Netherlands, and was the trainer of Anatoly Karpov (1980-1986), he trained Zsuzsa Polgar, Alexander Beliavsky, Maja Chiburdanidze, Arkadij Naiditsch and Vassily Ivanchuk. He is also the trainer of the Turkish Women's team and is the author of several Chessbase DVDs. |
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