Dan Hronchek

I'm a 43 year old chess coach from Holland Michigan, USA. I have played chess around the world, but mostly stick to my home turf in the Midwest US. I love studying chess with others and thinking about chess pedagogy. In 2014, I wrote a chess text book so elementary teachers could put chess into their classrooms. Those resources are no longer publicly available. Send me a message if you'd like a copy.

I've recently played my 22,000th game on lichess.org! I've been frequenting online chess servers since 2002.. so I imagine the hours are significant. I've stopped keeping track. I've played in a few tournaments over the years with some strong finishes, and a few catastrophes. I won a medium sized event in Berlin Germany in 2007, which is probably my best tournament win.

Arthur Bisguier (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Bisguier) once told me that years ago a person could become a chess master after reading just one book. It's a little harder these days, but even so, I've been fortunate enough to be a small part of the growth of six national chess masters over the 19 years or so of teaching. One of those NM's has now become an IM, and another has become a GM. However, I should disclose that I was such a small part of their growth that I am barely a footnote in their huge list of accomplishments. I was there, and I saw it all. Nice work guys. ;)

I'm still searching for a good way to express what a person should expect to gain from 19 years of coaching experience, but it seems to be different for each student. What the player needs, we go there. If you come in with an open mind, I will find the weakness in your game and help you work on it until it is gone. I have seen enough diversity in players to understand that we are all built differently and need different things to progress.

The field here is prompting me to add diplomas and best student results so.. I had 6 students gain more than 500 points on their rating in 2020, with the best performer at +700 points... I no longer track this stat, as the effort is significant. I don't work with that many students, as they tend to stick around for quite a while. My highest achieving student to date gained 1200 points during the 3 years that we worked together, and is still climbing.

I was briefly part of the chess doctors - a small twitch broadcast that covered international tournaments and training lectures. I have roughly 6 years of in person classroom experience with 20+ students.

If you are looking for chess enrichment for your home school programming this fall, please reach out.

I am a flexible teacher. I love teaching the end game and working backwards toward meaning, but am happy teaching from the beginning of the game forward also. Both methods have proven successful for students here on lichess.org. As for the middle game, I prefer to analyze games with a home grown approach using a combination of logic and intuition. I can teach you how to piece together an evaluation of any position and have confidence in that evaluation. I have recently added a skill in teaching clock management where I can help you understand your own decision making process within the confines of a time control.

I prefer to do a short consultation via phone/skype/other before we put together any lessons - send me an email or lichess message that includes a few times when we can talk or play a few games (dan.hronchek@gmail.com). Everything I do is tailored to the player, discovering together where the holes are in knowledge and psychology of chess.