Teaching chess - Weibel Chess, 2011-2015

Coach Uyanga, CalChess State Championship 2015, Game analysis room, Photo by Dr. Kirshner

 In 2011, I first join the Weibel Chess team as an instructor. Alan Kirshner, the founder of the chess club, built an incredible competitive chess program in the country. It was my privilege to train their advanced class and special girls team for the state and national championships. As much as I loved lecturing, my favorite part of the training was providing a deep game analysis with the students. In addition to going over their game with the coach, students must write their own analysis with their own words. See below my advice on how to annotate your game!

CalChess Grade Level, December 2015, Game analysis room

CalChess Grade Level, December 2015, Game analysis room

CalChess Grade Level, December 2015, Game analysis room

CalNorth Youth Chess Age Level Championhip, Febraury 2015

National Chess Day, 2012, Weibel Fall Quad, Playing Blitz with the students!

In 2015, We traveled to Chicago for all-girls national championship. Not only I was there to support my students, I was also offered to give a talk at the opening ceremony in front of an audience full of young talented girls.  It was amazing to share a little bit of my own story - how I started to play chess - and encourage girls to pursue this wonderful game.
Check out the link for the us chess article :http://www.uschess.org/content/view/13038/818

All-Girls Nationals, April 2015, Chicago

All-Girls Nationals, April 2015, Chicago

All-Girls Nationals, April 2015, Chicago

 For the third year the Weibel Team won the Under 12 Team All-Girls Nationals and Under 8 group took second. Weibel girls absolutely rock!

NM Uyanga Byambaa's on Annotation

Analyzing your own game is the most important aspect to improve. The purpose of the analysis is not only finding your mistakes (of course this is very important), but to improve your thinking process. Going to the next level definitely requires better thinking process.
The thinking process includes these main concepts:

• Why you’re doing what you’re doing?
• What did you think about your position during the game? Are you winning, equal or losing?
• Why did you make this decision?
• Did you constantly double check you moves before you moved? Did you figure out what your opponent trying to do before you moved? if there were any checks or captures, did you seriously consider all your options?
• Did your opponent’s move surprise you? Was it expected?
• Did you recognize the critical moment of the game?
• Did you calculate certain variations? How far did you see?
• What were you thinking during the game?
• Did you have a plan? What was it?
Your analysis should include answering these questions.
Note that these concepts are not just your moves, it also related to you opponents moves. That means you should make a comment on one or two of your opponents moves in your analysis. 
I often see comments like: “pawn to center”, “minor piece development”, “rook to the center”, “king running away from check” and etc, these are not a part of your thinking process. These are just a label of your move.  At the level of most of the Weibel players, these kinds of comments are very obvious and, therefore, there is no need state.
You don’t really have to do the opening moves or obvious recaptures.  Instead of saying “king running away from check”, you should say “since king in check, running away is my only choice or best options. I have these possibilities  blah blah blah. I don't want to go there because blah blah. I thought going this square is the best option because blah blah.

When you analyze your own game, you should first do it on your own with chess sets in front of you to write down your thinking process. Next, put it in your chess engine. Computers will only help pointing out your blunders and tactical mistakes or suggest good moves; however, it doesn't help your thinking process.

There are some good examples of analysis in the following link. You should check it out.
http://uyangabyambaa.blogspot.com/ See game:
Graham Grindland (2030) - Uyanga Byambaa (2171) [E99] Sacramento Chess Championship (4), 05.07.2014
http://uyangabyambaa.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2013-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2014-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=2 See game:  SAMIR ALAZAWI (2003) - UYANGA BYAMBAA (2075)
Another very effective thing you can do in your analysis is to make a conclusion. I make my students do this and I witness tremendous improvement in their games.
Point out 3 main mistakes in your game. Answer these questions.
Why did I make that mistake?
What could I have done better instead?
How do I fix it?
Finally, sum up your analysis: What did you learn from the game? Write it down. It could be anything. For example:
I learned that the most natural moves are not always the best.
Instead of recapturing automatically, there might be an in between move I’m missing.
Sometimes double pawns are fine because they make my pieces more active in the open lines and diagonals.
In time pressure, moving too fast is not a good idea.
In Sicilian dragon, castling opposite side gives me good chance to manage a strong attack and etc.

Of course, it’s a lot of work. GM Jesse Kraai told me once, that he spends months to going over just one game. He’d write 10-15 pages of analysis. I was highly impressed and motivated at the same time. He has an incredible work ethic!   However for me, it takes one or two days, sometimes just few hours. I recommend  for our Varsity Team players that they spend at least an hour to working on their own game. 

Just take it slow. You don’t have to do all this once, it will take some time. Make sure to put more details in your analysis on the critical moments of the game including certain variations you see during the game.
 
http://www.calnorthyouthchess.org/WeibelChess/Uyanga-on-AnalyzingChessGame.html

 Here's Weibel Chess's official website :http://www.weibelchess.org/

Having dinner with bunch of amazing chess coaches and advocates!