Parents often ask me some version of the same question in the first class: can my child become a grandmaster?
The honest answer: almost certainly not, and that isn't the point. India has 97 grandmasters, in a country with more rated junior players than any other. For India's grandmasters it took about 11 years from first moves to the title, usually with years of full-time training and a talent most of us don't have. Becoming a grandmaster is a gift plus a decade.
Our goal is different. We want your child to be able to make a good decision under a clock, and to know what to do when things are going badly, when they're going well, and when nothing much is happening. A chess game puts a child in all three situations, every game, with a timer running. Life does the same, just more slowly.
The clock: learning to spend time where it matters
Every tournament game has a clock. Run out of time and you lose, however good your position. So a chess player learns, game by game, a skill most adults still struggle with: how much time is this decision worth?
- Don't spend ten minutes on a move you could play in ten seconds. The opening moves you already know should be quick.
- Do slow down at the moments that decide the game: when pieces can be captured, when the king is exposed, when a plan changes.
- Never leave yourself no time at the end. Most children's games aren't lost to a brilliant attack. They're lost in the last two minutes, in a rush.
The surprising part is that beginners usually have the opposite problem: they don't use their time at all. When we checked Lichess games, players rated under 800 used a median of 44% of their rapid clock and blundered almost as often as in blitz. They had the time and didn't spend it. Learning to use it is the first lesson.
In real life: an exam has a clock. So does a board meeting, a job interview and a surgery. The child who has learned to budget 90 minutes across 40 moves is ready to budget them across 40 questions.
When you're losing: make it hard
Every player ends up in bad positions. Grandmasters do too. What separates players is what they do next.
- Don't panic, and don't give up early. A bad position isn't a lost one. Beginners resign or collapse long before they need to.
- Ask what your opponent wants, then stop it. Defence starts with understanding the threat.
- Make the position complicated. When you're behind, simple positions favour the player who is ahead. Give your opponent problems to solve, and they'll often make a mistake.
- Look for the saving resources: a stalemate trick, a perpetual check, a fortress your opponent can't break.
Even world champions spend whole games defending. At the top level, saving a bad position is counted as a skill, not luck.
In real life: a bad start to an exam, a project going wrong, a team falling behind. The habit is the same. Stay calm, work out what's actually threatened, and make it difficult for the problem to beat you.
When you're winning: don't relax
Here's what surprises parents most: children lose a lot of won games. They get ahead, relax, stop checking what the opponent can do, and throw it away.
- Check your opponent's threats before every move, especially when you're ahead. Winning players get careless.
- Simplify. When you're ahead in material, trade pieces. Fewer pieces means fewer tricks for the other side.
- Don't rush. A winning position doesn't need a brilliant finish. It needs safe, steady moves.
- Finish the job. "Winning" isn't "won". The game ends at checkmate.
In real life: the last ten per cent of anything is where people slip, from a nearly finished assignment to a match point. The child who learns to stay focused when ahead is learning to finish what they start.
When it's equal: be patient
Most of a chess game is neither winning nor losing. Nothing dramatic is happening, and this is where impatient players lose.
- Improve your worst piece. If nothing is happening, find the piece doing the least and give it a better job.
- Make a plan, even a small one. "Move my knight to a better square, then push this pawn" beats moving pieces at random.
- Don't force things. An attack that isn't ready usually leaves you worse off.
- Collect small advantages. A better pawn structure or a more active piece won't win today, but they add up.
In real life: most weeks are equal positions. No exam, no crisis, nothing urgent. The children who use those weeks to improve one small thing at a time are the ones who are ready when the big moments come.
Why so many chess players become doctors and engineers
Parents notice how many strong chess players end up in medicine, engineering, mathematics and science. We don't have data saying most chess players do, and I'd be wary of anyone who claims it. But the overlap is real enough to have a long history, starting with four of the strongest players of their time:
- Siegbert Tarrasch, one of the best players in the world in the early 1890s, was a medical doctor by profession with his own practice.
- Emanuel Lasker, world champion for 27 years, earned a doctorate in mathematics. A class of rings in algebra is named after him, and Albert Einstein was a friend.
- Max Euwe, world champion in 1935, held a doctorate in mathematics, taught maths, and became a professor of computer science.
- Mikhail Botvinnik, world champion for 13 years, worked as an electrical engineer and earned his doctorate in it in 1951.
Two of LWSed's own guest coaches, Dr. Bharat and Dr. Kaushal, are FIDE-rated doctors.
Why the overlap? These fields reward the same habits a chess game trains: weighing options under time pressure, spotting patterns you've seen before, checking your work before acting, and staying calm when something goes wrong. A doctor looking at symptoms and a chess player looking at a position are doing a similar thing. We wrote about this in more depth in why doctors make such good chess players.
One honest caution: research hasn't shown that chess makes children smarter in general. Studies of chess classes find small effects at best once they're well controlled (what the research says). The habits transfer when a coach names them and practises them on purpose, which is how we teach.
How we teach this in class
- Every game is reviewed with the three questions: when were you losing, winning and equal, and what did you do in each?
- Clock training from the start: children play with a clock early, so time becomes something they manage, not something that ambushes them.
- Positions from your child's own games, not just textbook puzzles, so the lesson is about their habits.
- Real tournaments: our free Month-End Championship and weekend events give children a safe place to practise under pressure, with certificates and a public Hall of Fame.
If your child turns out to have the gift for chess, we'll help them chase it all the way. Every child gets the habits either way.
Next step: book a free 30-minute trial class, or get a free report on your child's online games to see how they handle winning, losing and equal positions today.
