2008 State: Whining Coaches*

At one point, I happened to overhear a coach complaining about Barrington and Cary Grove gaining an unfair advantage with the help of GM Yuri Shulman, an opinion that was apparently shared by a handful of coaches. The alleged problem was not that these two schools were paying a grandmaster to provide coaching. Instead, the disgruntled coaches were apparently concerned that Shulman had collected a database of games played by various high school players from his chess camps as well as his coaching and that this database was being used by those two schools to prepare for their opponents in the state tournament. These coaches apparently believe that Shulman’s databases should be open to everyone. Happily, the officials were not impressed with these complaints.

In my humble opinion, these coaches should grow up and quit whining. If your team loses a match, try to set an example of class and sportsmanship for your players rather than blaming the loss on some alleged malefaction. As an expert chess player, I can assure you that the advantage to be gained in preparing for specific opponents in a tournament like the IHSA Championship is minimal. Moreover, differences between schools in the resources they are willing and able to devote to training, coaching, and scouting opponents is a fact of life in every competitive activity. Finally, any player who attends one of GM Shulman’s chess camps is sure to be rewarded by an increase in chess understanding that will vastly outweigh any competitive disadvantage that comes from revealing his playing style.

The biggest hindrance to preparing for specific opponents is lack of time. Other than the first and fifth rounds, players do not know who they are going to play until minutes before the round begins. There is no time to prepare for an opponent even if there were much benefit to doing so.

In my experience, the value of preparing for a specific opponent decreases very rapidly for players below master level. When one grandmaster looks at another grandmaster’s games, he may notice a particular weakness or strength in handling a particular type of ending and take that into account in his games. However, two high school players rated in the 1500’s are never going to be able to make that kind of determination about each other. Moreover, even if they could, they are not going to have the skill to steer the game into that particular type of ending. Even with my rating of 2058, I cannot imagine any situation in which I would not be a fool to forego the move I thought objectively best in the hopes of exploiting some imagined weakness in my opponent’s skill set. Moreover, given the learning curve upon which high school players are operating, it would be foolish to assume that any player’s skill set is the same as it was as recently as a month ago.

I will admit that it is nice to know what openings my opponents are likely to play. If I know that my opponent plays a variation that I have had a great deal of trouble handling recently, I might be wise to avoid it. On the other hand, in The Road to Chess Improvement, GM Alex Yermolinsky says that deviating from openings with which you are familiar for fear of your opponent’s superior understanding is one of the worst evils. He is always delighted when his opponents do so. I know from personal experience that my biggest upsets have occurred in games where I played complex openings against strong competition.

In short, the time a high school player spends looking at his own games in order to identify and correct his own weaknesses is going to be overwhelmingly more valuable than time spent examining a potential opponent’s games in the hopes of identifying and exploiting his weaknesses. The single exception to this would be an opponent who chooses to rely on the surprise value of inferior or offbeat openings. I have only occasionally studied the Wing Gambit in the Sicilian simply because it is so rarely played. However, if I were to know that someone in the field of an upcoming event regularly plays it, I would spend some extra time looking at it and neutralize the surprise factor. Some high school players are attracted to offbeat openings and may suffer from having their repertoires generally known. However, I personally have no more sympathy for players who purposely choose crappy openings than I would have for a high school football team that tried to get by on trick plays.

The second point is that scouting is a fact of life. When a foot ball team makes the state playoffs, they try of find films of their opponents, and, I assume, they have to be willing to trade their own films in order to get them. If these coaches think that there is some advantage to be gained by scouting opposing chess teams, then they should contact coaches in other conferences to exchange databases of games. I think they would quickly find that it is very poor use of their time. As far as Schulman’s chess camps go, I am highly skeptical that he obtains information that gives the teams he coaches any tangible advantage, but to the extent he does, it is no different than coaches who see football players or baseball players at camps they run. They are certainly entitled to use their knowledge when they face those players as opponents. The only thing unethical would be to teach those players badly at camp in the hopes of exploiting those weaknesses in competition, and I don’t think anyone could ever accuse Shulman of that.

Any coach who is interested in scouting players in the Mid Suburban League or in scouting me is welcome to do it here. Barrington used this material to scout and beat Prospect this year, but that does not concern me for two reasons. First, Prospect was not outplayed in the openings which is the only place where Barrington could have gained an advantage. Second, as long as I am a volunteer coach, my goal is to promote chess generally as well as help the Prospect players. If Prospect ever decides to pay me, my attitude may change.

In sum, I hate it when coaches whine about pairings, tie breaks, or steward’s rulings. As far as I am concerned, complaining about scouting is just one more type of poor sportsmanship that sets a bad example for the players. The thing to do when you lose is to congratulate your opponent for a job well done and move on.

*These remarks are also posted on the Illinois Chess Association Discussion Forums.