The Enduring Legacy of NM Dan Heisman: 30 Years of Chess Coaching Wisdom

[@MarkPersoonlijk]

For me, this one is the most interesting episode up till now! 30 years of wisdom by a great chess coach, he’s sharing the meta perspective (adult) chess improvement. It is AMAZING! Everyone who’s serious about getting better should watch this episode at least one time. Btw. Now I am even more sure about my decision to watch all your YT videos and buying your courses Dr. Can! I am on the right track. If you read this Dan Heisman, thank you for sharing your wisdom with people over the world. Very generous, thank you! One of the interesting insights shared: knowledge just being 33% of what is needed grow as a chess player. And pattern recognition is important, but just a part of being strong. And evaluating skills are underestimated in chess improvement. The part about time management, great great great! From now on I will write down my thinking time in my game annotation when it’s obviously more long than in general in that game. Thinking time says something about my insights and way of thinking. And the part about luck in chess haha, I never thought of that. It’s like life. You can do well and still be unlucky. And the other way around too. But it’s still smart to think ahead, improve oneself and do the best as we can. Now I am listening to this episode for the second time 😀

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Thank you soo much for this amazing feedback, Mark! Hearing this from you is great. We did not show any positions here, so you can listen to it while driving or doing laundry :)

[@JohnWongchessjazz]

Wonderful collaboration of the 2 most instructive people for young beginners! Dan nails it on coach-student chemistry. I have released several who can't subscribe to my teaching. Sometimes it's the expectations of parents who need results before committing to more lessons which makes it difficult for coaches to lay out their objectives in the lessons over the course of time.

[@EliDollinger]

Fantastic episode. It inspired me to play more classical games.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Glad you liked it, Eli!

[@GaryWalters-tk2lp]

What a plesent guy to have on your podcast and so knowledgeable, a great episode to listen too and I especially liked the part where your discussion revolved around the five step process, I'm obviously now tuned into the blunder check process because of your teaching but would like to hear or see a little more on how the more advanced side of is my move safe actually works, fascinating stuff indeed 👍

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Glad you liked it Gary! We could have talked for 5 hours, easily!

[@VihaGowda-z3m]

Another masterclass. It connects to the hearts of true students. There is so much to take away from this. -> Don't jump start (rapid), play classical. Play moves with a sense of reasoning. -> Perseverance is key, don't quit when minor setbacks -> knowledge and skills 🎉 Many more.... I'm gonna watch this multiple times. It's a blueprint for learning the great game. Many many thanks to Dr. Can ❤❤❤

[@Dr.CansClinic]

❤️ So happy that you found it beneficial. He has so much wisdom accumulated across the years.

[@VihaGowda-z3m]

@@Dr.CansClinic a comment on Dr. Can's background. Ravens and Longship pushes me to think you're from Vikings lineage 😊

[@Dr.CansClinic]

@@VihaGowda-z3m I am about to find out soon (I just ordered a kit from MyHeritage :))

[@TheChessFiles]

Great content by two of the best coaches ❤

[@Dr.CansClinic]

❤️

[@pasadenapsych44]

Another great choice of guest. When I first read Dan's counting concept back in the day I smacked my head - this would have saved me so much trouble! Nobody else wrote about it like he did. I would like to hear more about analysis v. evaluation - I think to many of us those are just words, but they are important words. The idea of rapid games being a not-very-useful in-between time control was quite interesting. Re guests, two that I've never seen and might be difficult to find: Jeff Coakley, mentioned here, great books. Elizabeth Spiegel, the coach of those kids in Brooklyn in the movie Brooklyn Castle (recommended). Cheers. Great stuff.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Thank you so much for your excellent feedback. Indeed, there are so much more we could discuss. Next time hopefully! I took note of the names you recommended. Thank you!

[@sincity7890]

wise words were spoken

[@jaybingham3711]

27:12 This is a resounding, unarguable "Yes." Whenever this question is broached, the thing that's really being asked is "Is there luck in human chess?" All of the current SGMs agree there is luck. You can go pull up numerous videos of Carlsen emphatically stating precisely that. But, yeah someone 1000-2000 points below him cares to argue otherwise. Mkay. No one really cares if engines play without luck. The game the engines play has now (for all practical purposes) become it's own variation. Human chess though is full of many different kinds of luck...as Dan so eloquently pointed out. And thank you so much for interviewing him. I absolutely love watching his videos!

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Glad you liked it Jay! Dan is great.

[@donaldtrumpjr]

I just grabbed one of your courses. I'm looking forward to digging into it!

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Awesome, thank you! You can ask me anything on Chessable while studying my courses!

[@michaelf8221]

I loved the discussion about "teachable moments" - I totally agree that sometimes it's better to ignore some questions your student asks because the answer doesn't actually generalize or help them. A bit of an XY problem, for those who know that term.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Thanks for the feedback! Generalizability and transfer of the important patterns and chunks is what we seek as coaches.

[@ChessWithMouselip]

I like how Dan said, "...play slow games slowly." That "slowly" is an important adverb.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Excellent observation!

[@MattduCouloir]

I have two of Mr Heisman’s books and follow his youtube channel. I think a lot of times about his recommendations when I play : ok here it’s not worth spending 5 min deciding which rook to play, here it’s fine to play a rook pawn move to kick the bishop etc. Big fan !

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Great to hear that! Time management tips are gold.

[@anthonyjaglal]

A really phenomenal video 💯💯👏👏👏 enjoyed this 🎉i like the point chess is a THINKING game and i tend to believe that over dependantcy on books and computers are taking away that thinking ability,instead of being a tool for research and deeper understanding, memorising is not really thinking, am glad that all the the chess knowledge i have is fully understood,though not very much,love this video 🎉

[@Dr.CansClinic]

So nice to hear your kind feedback ❤️

[@dimebagdonny]

"I am your father" Dan Heisman to Dr Can. :) 01:57:48 Did the great Dan Heisman just name you his heir apparent? At any rate, great interview! Heisman deserves a chess legacy more than anybody IMO. Chess content creators like yourself, Dan, and Andras should be getting at least 100K subscribers/view counts. Unfortunately, this platforms rewards chess entertainers and bravo sierra artists over high-quality content creators. Look up the word 'enshittification'. See phases 2 and 3 of 'enshittification'. Thankfully, Chessable still rewards high-quality content creators like yourself. See phase 1 of 'enshittification'.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

I think he indeed nominated me there as his heir - what an honor! ☺️ Thank you for teaching me a new word. I was always puzzled myself on why Heisman and Toth don't have 100K+ followers despite publishing for a long time. That is definitely a big explanation!

[@dimebagdonny]

All the big social media platforms are like that. Essentially the bad rise to the top and the good get marginalized. It's techno-fascism.

[@Merrick12345]

Your point about being lucky when you make a good move for the wrong reasons reminds me of a widely accepted idea in epistemology: true knowledge requires having the right reasons for what you know, and therefore luck cannot be the basis of knowledge. A well-known illustration of this is the broken clock scenario. If you glance at a broken clock and it happens to display the correct time, your accuracy is simply coincidental, meaning you cannot really claim to have known the correct time, you were simply lucky.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Excellent analogy, thank you!

[@omamoka63]

Two great coaches discussing important topics - what more can you hope? Dan Heisman's 'The Improving Chess Thinker' (2nd Edition) is a great book that complements perfectly Dr. Can's teachings. Likewise, Dr. Can's courses and lessons form an excellent match with Dan Heisman's vast literary and online production. If one could wish something upon the star, my pick would be a printed book by Dr. Can covering the same issues he's already dealt with in his courses. But that would be an overkill, wouln't it?

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Thank you so much for your kind thoughts. Dan and Can - even the names are spelled similarly :) The book idea - perhaps one day!

[@omamoka63]

Thomas Willemze would be an interesting guest. His course "1001 Chess Endgame Exercises for beginners" is very good and versatile.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

@omamoka63 Thank you, noted!

[@ChessWithMouselip]

One word ... "Keeper"

[@happyhornet1000]

Dan is the God of chess coaching. Please follow him and look up his videos/books, especially beginners to strong intermediates, if you want to improve.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

He is great indeed.

[@happyhornet1000]

@@Dr.CansClinic I should have added that you are a great coach too, you make everything you teach so clear and easy to follow, which is not easy to do. Please keep up the great work.

[@greatdanelegend7001]

What an interesting episode. I don't think I agree on what Dan thinks about how beneficial certain time controls are for improvement. Rapid has got to be better than blitz. Sure, during rapid your time to think about your moves is limited compared to OTB, but you do have some time to think about your moves, and that's what you need to practice. In a perfect world, all people would play to improve would be OTB, but for most adults it's not realistic to play a tournament more than like once every couple of months, depending on where you live. A lot of things he said were great and gave me a lot of insight though. I especially liked the part where you talked about chess improvement as an adult, where he said that you can still improve a lot even as an adult if you didn't already reach your peak as a kid. This is great news for many people, I think. I also liked the story about the 1200 who could visualize perfectly, even 20 moves deep, but had no concept of what he was actually supposed to visualize. What an interesting problem to have. This guy could have probably gotten really good if he had just learned some tactical and strategic patterns and was told to check for forcing moves

[@Arjun-o7c3n]

Great collab ! Sorry if this question has already been answered (I've watched most parts of the vid, but haven't had time to finish the entire thing) but what would your suggestion/advice be as an experienced and fantastic coach to someone who constantly gets into better/winning positions against higher rated opponents in OTB play, but then gets really pressurized and stressed and fails to convert, often ending up losing, especially when in time trouble at the same time ? Once again, thank you so much.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Thanks for the kind feedback. I will talk to a sport psychologist by the end of this month, and I will bring your question to him, as we talk about the mental game.

[@Arjun-o7c3n]

Thank you so much. Looking forward !

[@richardsrensen4219]

NM Dan Heisman is great Dr. Can's take what DH teach and break it down so its more easy to follow where DH teach what should be done Dr. Can's teach how how to implement it .

[@Dr.CansClinic]

❤️

[@Jessikas-Klarinettenoase]

Haha, I am often Lucky with my Moves 😂

[@Dr.CansClinic]

😅 Ah, you just create your own chances! And we know losers tend to say their opponent was lucky.

[@Jessikas-Klarinettenoase]

@ 😂🤩😎

[@tidaveiphone]

What’s the difference between evaluation and analysis

[@michaelf8221]

I've got a lot of students under 1700 USCF and they can't play blitz at all. 15+10 is already too fast for them to develop their basic sense of danger and make moves that don't hang anything. So im not sure it's good advice to keep playing 5+2 games if you're low rated. You won't actually be developing any skills except checking the opening... Until you are good enough to play a full game where you can make sensible moves the entire time.

[@michaelf8221]

I see that at 47:00 they both discussed this very point! Great.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Thank you!

[@bladekiller2766]

Valuable lessons from the coach. There is a small thing that I don't think he is correct, and that's about his zero-sum usage in sentences. Zero-sum is a bias that can happen when we analyze 2 variables, and someone incorrectly thinks that improving one, negatively influences the other, but in reality it doesn't. Alao chess is a zero-sum game even from mathematical perspective. He is thinking about misconceptions and how in certain scenarios there is no rule on whether you have to force more complicated games or not, and that the opposite action is also candidate to consider and might be even better in certain scenarios, so there are always tradeoffs. So I kinda agree with the dislikes...

[@paulwu1301]

I was at around 1,000 playing 30 minutes but it’s been many months since I switched over to 10 minutes rapid and can’t get over the 800 range, I was puzzled why I am getting lower rating comparing to months ago, now I know, I am not thinking as much, I will go back to play the 30 minutes games.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Please keep me posted on your progress after this change!

[@Luis-q4o5j]

Great interview. Thank you so much for the great content and I really think that Dan's KZbin channel has amazing content and you should check it out if you really want to improve your chess.

[@Dr.CansClinic]

Thank you. His channel is so instructive indeed.