Saturday 21 July 2007

David Levens

Last night I went to my first chess class with David Levens. He usually coaches juniors, but agreed to do a class for adults. There were four students and it was great. I was worried it might be set at too easy a level, but if anything it was at too high a level for me personally. He started off by giving us a few problems to solve, which were actually mate-in-3s. It took me a long time to just solve 2 out of 6. They were usually sacrifices and had a common theme of discovered attack and double check. He went through the answers and talked about the idea behind the course leading to the ECF Gold Certificate. He then played over a few games using the French Winawer opening. I was amazed how tactical and wide open the main line is! We then paired up and played each other using the opening. I'll definitely be going back next week.

It felt good listening in person to someone with such a wealth of experience, rather than just reading a dry chess book.

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