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Report – WYCC 2006 – Batumi, Georgia

Corno Klaver

Except for a few aspects e.g. food, the tour was well organized overall and a great success.
A lot was learned from both the players and the coaches.
Thanks to Bridgette for organizing an excellent and interesting tour. I really enjoyed the tour and gained a lot of knowledge and skills for the future.

Coaches:

    • The 5 selected coaches worked well together as a team to achieve good results for the players.
    • For 3 of the coaches (Frans, Mabusela and I) it was a new experience and a lot was learned on this first tour. It was an uphill battle but more experience was gained throughout the tournament.
    • I think that all the coaches can learn from each other to make the ultimate team.
    •  Each coach had their own strengths and weaknesses and the more we work together the better performances we will achieve.

Players:

The top 3 performers were Melissa Greeff, Angelique Hattingh and Marcel Roberts.
There were a lot of other players that fought hard and achieved good results for themselves as well as for the team.

I’m just going to give a short summary of the performance of the players I coached:

    • Elmie van Rensburg: Points (4,5) Elmie impressed me very much. She took every game seriously and was prepared to sit and think for all her games. She gained more confidence throughout the tournament and played some excellent games.
    • Laetitia van Wyk: Points (4,5) Laetitia also played some excellent and well fought games to achieve her score. I think she really enjoyed the tournament and was always prepared to learn new things with a smile on her face.
    • Nadia Joubert: Points (3) Nadia performed well for her first year u/12. She struggled with a few games but a lot of knowledge was gained from these games. She has great planning and strategizing skills and played some fiery, attacking games.
    • Leanne Naidoo: Points (4) Leanne also struggled at the beginning but got herself into gear and started playing some great games growing in confidence. She learned a lot throughout the tournament, but must be prepared to work hard at the board.
    • Jason Naidoo: Points (3,5) For his first time he learned a lot overseas. He has great talent and can become a very dangerous chess player. For most of his games he was in better position and he must just learn to convert more of those games.
    • Marcel Roberts: Points (5,5) A very dangerous chess player at the board. Like Jason he struggled to convert winning positions, but as he gains more experience, more points will come. He was outplaying some of the top rated u/10’s in his group with a great talent for South African chess.

Areas of Improvements:

My main point of discussion in my report are the areas where I think we can improve in the future and what I have learned form the tour:

    • Firstly I think there should be a training camp before we leave, where all the players and coaches meet each other. Here we can sort out which players get coached by which coaches. Different openings and styles can be put with the applicable coach. It is also part of team building.
    • There was a great lack of opening knowledge from most of the players. I think that in future the players must concentrate much more on studying openings before the tournament. As soon as they know they’ve qualified for the World Youth tournament they must start setting up an opening repertoire and forward it to the national coaches. The coaches can then give them some extra tips and lines to study.
    • Converting rate: The conversion rate was very low. Lots of the players were in winning positions and took a draw because they were too scared to loose or just gave the position away. A lot more time must be spent at the board when you have a winning position to work out how to finish the games off. Also players must learn to go for the win and not just take a draw because they are scared of loosing.
    • Coaching the younger players instead of trying to prepare them for their games. Why? Because there aren’t a lot of games of the younger players on the chess database. Thus making it very hard to prepare for games. I think that it’s a much better idea just to carry over my knowledge and coach the younger players instead of going over opening lines and trying to prepare them. Yes, I must go through their openings to teach them a few new lines and help them with the lines they struggle with, but I think training them and carrying over my knowledge is a very good idea for the younger players. Openings should be learnt before you come to the tournament. Too much time was spent teaching openings instead of really teaching the players new ideas and skills.
    • Then from the coaches’ side I think we can work more together as a team and help each other’s students at World Youth. With more knowledge put together we can achieve even better results.

Thanks again for the opportunity
Corno Klaver