There's a place for FIDE chess trainers
Much credit is given to professional chess players in this wonderful field of chess. We know of Grandmasters (historically and presently) like Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, and Magnus Carlsen. However, as there are FIDE Grandmasters, what if I told you that there are FIDE certified chess trainers? Being a FIDE trainer is much more than the chess coach who takes on students and charges an hourly fee. FIDE Trainers are specially certified, and we will discuss those details today!
The FIDE Chess Trainer — what is it?
There are several types of FIDE trainers, just like there are several types of FIDE masters (FM, IM, GM, etc), however, we will get to that later.
Essentially, a FIDE trainer is extremely credible, because they have been approved by FIDE, the world chess federation. The fact of the matter is anyone can call themselves “a chess coach” and charge a certain fee to give lessons and make money like that. And if he has students, then great! However, if he turns out to be a bad teacher, students will stay away, and the chess “instructor” will be left with little to no chess income.
The more credibility you gain, the more student interest!
The FIDE Trainer Categories
There are five categories of FIDE Trainers/instructors/teachers etc. We will briefly gloss over the first three, not that they are insignificant, we need anyone we can to promote this great game! Just that they have similar requirements, so the top two positions are which we will pay attention to.
- Developmental trainer — required 1400 peak FIDE rating or higher
- National instructor — required 1700 peak FIDE rating or higher
- FIDE instructor — required 2000 peak FIDE rating or higher
Of course, as mentioned before, every category of instructors have a place in the chess world … we must not be elitist and assume that super GMs are the only players who can teach!
However, the two high-level categories that remain are the FIDE Trainer and the FIDE Senior Trainer.
The FIDE Trainer Information and Requirements
The FIDE Trainer is the second-most prestigious title among chess trainers. There are not very many of those in the world, and for good reasons! The requirements to be a FIDE trainer are as follows:
- Must have a peak FIDE rating of 2300 or above
- Must have been an overall chess trainer for 5 years or more
The last point reflects an important quality of any trainer in any area, which is experience. If/when you have the experience, you know how to properly teach a concept, you understand the struggles of youngsters and many other things necessary to be a good and compassionate trainer.
The Senior Trainer and their requirements
The FIDE Senior Trainer is a serious title in chess, just like the Grandmaster title. And just like the Grandmaster title, there are very strict requirements you must go through in order to obtain that title. As there are a lot of requirements, we will list them one by one, and give explanations for why it would be important for a high caliber trainer to have such qualifications:
Rating and credentials:
In order to become a FIDE Senior Trainer, you must be a GM or IM (Grandmaster of International Master). Just to refresh, the GM and IM titles require a 2500 and 2400 FIDE rating respectively with the appropriate norms.
Let's talk about something, I was just talking about how you don't need to be a GM to train others, so why is it a big deal here? Well, first of all, a GM is not going to be teaching Scholar's mate prevention!
The things a GM would work on with an aspiring chess professional would be extremely advanced, stuff like openings, concrete calculation problems, endgame studies, and going over their games. This stuff is way too intense for the 1000 player to endure!
There is also a requirement of 10 year's experience as a trainer, and as mentioned previously, experience is very key to be a good trainer!
Languages
Now this one might be a little confusing but will make sense once you. FIDE Senior Trainers are required to be fluent in at least two foreign languages, and they must be FIDE approved. FIDE approved languages include English, Spanish, German, Russian, etc.
