"Passion, Pedagogy, Kindness" And Other Keys To Chess Improvement

FM/WIM Yosha Iglesias, who made headlines in 2024 as the first-ever transgender player to achieve the woman international master title, is also a passionate and insightful chess coach. Yosha recently shared several of these insights with Chess.com, including the importance of a passion for the game for both the student and coach, the best types of games and puzzles for students to study to improve, whether teaching is more of an art or a science, and much more.

At what age were you introduced to chess, and who introduced you?

My father was an amateur player who enjoyed playing with his friends as a student and has read a few books. He taught my three siblings and me. I learned the rules when I was five or six years old, but I fell in love with the game when I was eight. My older brother, Iannis, had been going to the chess club for a year and brought many medals and trophies home. It made me so envious that I asked to join the club the next year. 

What is your first vivid memory from chess?

I was nine for my first classical competition, a regional youth championship. I had scored 6/6 before the last round and needed only a draw to win the title. My opponent played the French, I played the boring Exchange Variation, and traded off every piece as quickly as possible to make a draw in a symmetrical pawn endgame on move 20. It showed that I had some talent for the game, but mainly that I lacked natural fighting spirit. In the same event, but in an older age group, my brother won with 7 out of 7. 

Which coaches were helpful to you in your chess career, and what was the most useful knowledge they imparted to you?

When I was 16, I left my family in France to live with a host family in Russia, even though I didn’t know anyone at first and my Russian was rudimentary. I lived in Sochi, where the club was run by Vladimir Doroshkevich. He was an old master who used to play in the finals of the USSR championship. He had many stories filled with great names like Botvinnik, Tal, or Spassky. He conveyed both kindness and authority, and didn’t have to raise his voice to be listened to. He was so passionate about chess that he never refused an analysis, and he would often quote a classic game related to the position. He became an inspiration, and I might not be a chess coach if I hadn’t met him. He made me understand how important classics are both for learning and teaching chess. I never had a personal coach, but I’m forever grateful to Doroshkevich for my year at his club.

What is your favorite or best game you ever played?

I’m more of a boring positional player who loves endgames, but sometimes I enjoy attacking, like in this game played two years ago against Dina Belenkaya.

How would you describe your approach to chess coaching?

Passion, pedagogy, kindness: These are the three pillars upon which I founded my chess academy (an online chess club for French-speaking players, yoshacademie.fr). I put the love of the game at the heart of my training to pass on this passion and foster intrinsic motivation in my students. Once they want to study not just to gain rating points or win championships, but because they love playing and studying chess, I know I have succeeded.

Teaching is an art, and you have to fully master an idea to teach it well. Sometimes I have to work hard to explain complex ideas simply and understandably, but when I do, it gives me great satisfaction. A great chess example should be instructive, but also beautiful and memorable.

Finally, a trainer should never forget that chess is, after all, just a game, and every training session should be enjoyable. 

What do you consider your responsibility as a coach and which responsibilities fall on your student?

Each student is unique, so responsibilities depend on factors like age, mindset, ambition, level, available time, and resources. I’d say the coach’s main responsibility is to help the student love studying chess. If they love the process, they will go further than anyone who is solely focused on rating. They get curious, they start to challenge themselves. At some point, the trainer is no longer necessary.

For young, talented students, whom we often see, we as trainers also have a moral responsibility. Sometimes we are the most important adults in their lives after their parents. We can be role models, so we must behave in an exemplary way. 

Students need to understand—as Botvinnik said—that chess can’t be taught; it can only be learned. The best training must be active. Even the best coaches can’t just transfer their knowledge to their students. The saying 'no pain, no gain' holds true in chess.

What is a piece of advice that you give your students that you think more chess players could benefit from?

I often tell my students, "When you see a seemingly good move, try to refute it." Many players can’t delay the satisfaction of playing a good move when they think they see one, so they play it instantly, only to regret it shortly after. This has always been the case, but I think it’s somehow made worse with the puzzles found on the internet, where most players try the first idea they see. It’s a bad habit for puzzles, where accuracy matters more than speed, and it’s much worse in a game, where one mistake can be fatal!

What is your favorite teaching game that users might not have seen?

I don’t think I have a favorite game, but I love using (grand)masters vs. amateurs games, often taken from the first round of open tournaments. They are usually the most instructive ones. If you want to study an opening, don’t look at games between Magnus and Naka; look at games where one player is above 2500 and the other is under 2000. More often than not, the titled player will win smoothly, perfectly showing how to refute the typical mistakes of the amateur. Here is one example:

What is the puzzle you give students that tells you the most about how they think?

Here is a mate in one I’ve composed. 

The solution is often the last check that the student looks at. It shows that, without pattern recognition, even a mate in 1 can take a huge amount of time. Seeing how the student handles the frustration of not finding immediately a mate in 1 tells me a lot about their psychology. Once they solve it, I ask them whether they want a simpler one or a harder one. It they struggled but loved it and want a harder one, I know they enjoy challenging themselves and they will likely go far. But if they felt hurt in their ego and want an easy one to reassure themselves, I know I’ll have psychological work to do to make them enjoy being challenged. It’s crucial because it’s the only way to make progress. 

If you are wondering, here is the harder mate in 1 that I’ve also composed. Both these problems were published in Jen Shahade’s 'Play Like a Champion'.

Do you prefer to teach online or offline? What do you think is different about teaching online?

For chess improvements, online is much better. But offline is friendlier, so it depends on what the student prefers. Overall, I give more than 90% of my coaching online.  

What do you consider the most valuable training tool that the internet provides?

The ability to record the session is of great value for the student. For us trainers, it’s good to have access to all the resources we own or created (databases, courses, etc.). Google is also helpful when our memory fails us; I often google something like “Nigel Short selfmate Linares” and it redirects me to Short vs. Beliavsky, Linares 1992. That process would have taken much longer with Chessbase. You can often find classic games just by googling a player's name along with a single move. Google “Nimzowitsch Nh1” and the first result will be the classic game Aron Nimzowitsch vs Akiba Rubinstein, Dresden 1926.

Which under-appreciated chess book should every chess player read?

Every adult chess improver and trainer should read about the science of learning and success. Many good books have been written. The French book Le talent est une fiction by Samah Karaki is my favorite, but Carol Dweck’s 2006 famous Mindset: The New Psychology of Success is the book that helped me the most, both as a player and as a trainer. It’s quite simplistic, as it overlooks many sociological factors, but it helped me understand why I was so afraid of training—and why so many of my students are, too. I wish I’d read it much sooner.

From a purely chess perspective, while I might be biased as a composer, studies are incredibly valuable but vastly underestimated. Here I can recommend Tatev Abrahamyan’s new Chess Studies: Solve to Evolve. The selected studies are all classics, useful for players, and ranked by level and theme. It’s a well-structured and instructive course.