From an amateur Chess player to Europe’s №1
In March 2015 I started training and mentoring Yahli Sokolovsky, an 8.5 years old kid before his first national chess tournament. A while afterward in November 2015, I wrote a short (and quite ridiculous) post in Chess.com about the long process ahead of us. This week the International Chess Federation (FIDE) published its rating list, which measures players’ chess levels according to their wins and losses. In this month’s list, Yahli was ranked #1 in Europe and #3 in the world for all people born in 2006 or after. I would like to share with you a little bit about the process of developing Yahli’s talent.
Yahli’s career development was a hard task, but the focus was always on the long-term goals. Ever since we started working together 5.5 years ago I always disregarded short-term achievements. The results never mattered. I only cared about the process of him learning and improving. You can imagine how challenging it is to tell a young kid that losing and obtaining a vital lesson is better than settling for a draw and missing the experience.
Yahli is now at the top of his form, but things were not always so bright for him. My main goal was always to connect his motivation for hard-work to the game itself and not to the outcome. Development and progress in chess are not linear, and as you can see in the graph below — things were not going so easy in the last two years. By diverting Yahli’s and his family's focus from the results to the process, I was able to maintain his ambition during a lot of hardships.
I must say that focusing on the process is not just a manipulation to maintain hard-work. I genuinely believe that the long-term benefits derived from the process of learning and playing chess are more important. Parents should remember they develop a kid who is a chess player and not vice versa. I think that no kid’s life should be limited only to chess, and that chess should be seen as a tool for developing the kid‘s future.
These days Yahli continues to pursue his dreams. He uses self-management tools like monday.com and toggle as if he wasn’t 14 years old. He also trains online with the best coaches in the world and improving his English. He now leads the ISR-ch semi-final tournament(in which I was honored to lose to him) and I wish him great success.
I hope that Yahli’s story inspired you as much as it inspires me. I encourage you to set yourselves or your children long-term goals and work persistently to achieving them, whether it may be in chess or in any other area.
