Chess and Coaching

4 min readSep 29, 2019

“In life, it doesn’t matter how or where we start because along the way, with the help of our loved ones, we will discover and unwrap our gifts.”

Excerpt from the Chess Pawn Speech

For me, coaching is like playing chess. The clients will transform from a pawn into a queen.

The first part of this research is the correlation between chess and coaching.

The second part is the conclusion of the survey I organized for this research.

PART 1: Chess

In chess, there are three stages: Opening, Middle Game and Endgames.

Opening

It is the group of first few moves of a game. There are lots of openings such as the Ruy Lopez or Sicilian Defense. When I played for the World Chess Olympiad in 2018, I used Colle Openings for white.

Middlegame

Right after the opening, middlegame starts. This is the stage of the game that uses lots of analytical thinking process. The Analytical Thinking Process by Louis Holtzhausen

Evaluation
Planning (Strategy)
Calculation

Evaluation is the process whereby the players assess the progress they’ve made towards their objectives.

Planning is the process whereby a relevant strategy is identified based on the current situation. The players rely on their calculation skills to check if the idea is safe. An example of strategy is tactic.

Calculation is the process whereby the players visualize all the critical variations and tactics that exist in the current position.

Endgame

The stage of the game when there are few pieces left on the board. Everything else equal, a winner can be predicted based on the space occupied and time left.

Chess Pieces

Pawn — It can move one only one tile forward each turn. Exception: If the pawn is in its staring position, it can move either one or two tiles forwards, unless it is blocked by another piece. The pawn can only capture pieces which are diagonally forward to it.

Promotion in chess is a rule that requires a pawn that reaches its eighth rank to be immediately replaced by the player’s choice of a queen, knight, rook, or bishop of the same color.[1] The new piece replaces the pawn, as part of the same move. The choice of new piece is not limited to pieces previously captured, thus promotion can result in a player owning, for example, two or more queens despite starting the game with one.[2] Pawn promotion, or the threat of it, often decides the result in an endgame. Since the queen is the most powerful piece, the vast majority of promotions are to a queen. Promotion to a queen is also called queening; promotion to any other piece is referred to as underpromotion (Golombek 1977). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promotion_(chess)

King — The king can move and capture one tile in all directions.
When the king is captured, the game ends and the player is defeated. When a king is threatened, the player must act to defend their king.
Knight — The knight can move two tiles horizontally and one tile vertically, or two tiles vertically and one tile horizontally. He can skip over any piece.
Rook — The rook can move and capture in a straight line horizontally and vertically. If it hasn’t been touched in the game, it can perform castling.
Bishop — The bishop can move and capture in a straight line diagonally.
Queen — The queen is by far the most powerful piece in the game! It can move and capture in as many unblocked tiles horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.

The Correlation Between Chess and Coaching

In Coaching, coaches are following the ICF Core Competencies. See the picture at the right from https://coachfederation.org/core-competencies.

It’s interesting to note that chess and coaching are somewhat similar.

In coaching, the coaching agreement is established. In chess, the pieces are positioned during the opening.

In coaching, coach skills such as establishing trust and intimacy with the client, coaching presence, active listening, powerful questioning, direct communication, creating awareness are essentials during the discussion. This is the moment that the client finds out what’s really the issue underneath the issue that she brought up. Only a skilful coach can bring that experience to client.

In chess, a player that knows combinations and patterns very well can easily plan the attack. A player can plan the early checkmate of the opponent’s king or kainin ang pieces. In chess, being smart is good but what I’ve learnt is knowing more patterns is better than being smart. Only a skillful player can win the game…

In coaching, once the client realizes the real issues, the next steps are designing actions, planning and goal setting and managing progress and accountability.

In chess, once the board is analysed as to amount of space, values of the pieces, the tactics are ready to be executed.