Suhaas Narayanan.
Chess Coach & NM.

Chess When I Was a Kid

I started playing at 4, when my parents taught me how to play. For most of elementary school, I was one of the top-ranked players my age in the country. In third grade, I tied for 5th in the K-3 National Tournament.

That looks great on paper. But it was a lot of pressure from a young age, and I started to explore other interests. By middle school, I was burning out and dived deeper into those interests. I put that energy into STEM and quiz competitions instead: Science Bowl, Ocean Bowl, Science Olympiad, and research. By high school I had more or less retired from serious chess.

The Comeback

I came back during COVID, after my senior year of high school. The Queen's Gambit and the streaming boom had everyone talking about chess, and friends started asking me to play. I started on Lichess, joined my college chess club, and during some time off after my sophomore year I rediscovered opening study through Hanging Pawns. My early repertoire was the Trompowsky, Exchange lines against d5 structures, the Tarrasch and the Hyper-Accelerated Dragon.

The biggest factor in my comeback was my hometown chess community. My friends participated in and ran the Gryphon Games, a Saturday tournament every other week, and I played in them constantly. I won a lot of them, usually while playing down. That's also where my style settled into what it is today: calm and controlled. I'll admit I also picked up a serious Chessable course habit along the way.

The Final Push to NM

Back at university, chess slid down my priority list. My decline started at the Penn Fall Swiss that October, and a rough winter break and a bad Liberty Bell Open dropped me below 2100, after I had peaked at 2146. That was my low point, and it forced me to rethink how I trained.

What I changed

• Finished the Woodpecker Method. Tactics finally stopped being something I avoided.
• Narrowed my repertoire. I dropped the Catalan for the Nimzo and the QGD Exchange, and moved to a simpler, system-based repertoire as Black.
• Focused on one or two things at a time instead of trying to fix everything at once.
• Worked through some of Perfect Your Chess and played training games with lots of review.
• Played for wins, not perfect games, and got serious about time management.

I'm grateful for every training partner, opponent, coach and friend who made it worth it. NM really is the friends we made along the way.

What I'd Do Differently, Warts and All

This isn't a recommendation. For that, see the Improvement guide. This is an honest look at the path I actually took. My biggest regret is that I went too far in one direction, burned out, and then came up short in my weakest areas: endgames and tactics.

My 60 Favorite Games

Here are some of my favorite games from across this chess journey. Not quite 60 games yet though. Wins, losses, brilliancies, blunders - all of it shaped my game.

Core Principles

Your Chess Player Profile

Some say the whole of life is experiencing yourself. It's useful to understand who you are and what you want to get out of chess.

Before diving into a training plan, consider these questions honestly:

Frequently Asked Questions

Writing

Longer pieces on chess and improvement. More are on the way.

Start Here

I came back to chess wanting to reach NM for fun and for pride. This guide is part reflection and part giving back. It lays out the structure and methods I used. The ideas are mostly my own unless I cite someone.

Who should you trust?

There is no chess god and no scripture. Improvement advice works more like academia: people test ideas and share what they found. Try what's commonly recommended, keep what works for you, and drop what doesn't. That includes everything on this site.

It's also worth spending ten minutes on your Chess Player Profile before you pick a plan.

The Areas of Chess Training

Chess training takes many forms. These are the core areas I've found, and each one has more specific skills to work on as you progress. There's a lot to improve, which is both daunting and exciting: there's always something new to learn.

The good news is that you rarely get weaker in the short term (one to six months). You just get rusty or less sharp. Thanks to muscle memory, regaining your form is much easier than building it the first time.

What Should I Do at My Level?

I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here. For a level-by-level training plan, I point people to ChessDojo. It's a training program covering ratings from 0 to 2500, with free and paid tiers, founded by GM Jesse Kraai, IM Kostya Kavutskiy and IM David Pruess. Its Discord is very active, with training games and book clubs.

What I like about it is the focus on fundamentals:

• Play lots of games. Serious games are where improvement starts.
• Review without an engine first. Work out what happened yourself before checking.
• Analyze together. Reviewing games with other people catches what you'd miss alone.
• Cover all the bases. Openings, middlegames, endgames, tactics and calculation all get time.

How I Review Games

After any longer game (10+ minutes), add it to a Lichess study. I keep all my training games together in one study so I can see my progress and spot patterns over time. I also add each game to my opening file for that line (more on that under Openings).

To track results over time, I use a self-analysis spreadsheet for openings and for tournament and training games. Feel free to make a copy.

1. Annotate first, without an engine

• Write down your thoughts move by move. Keep notes brief and to the point, like "expected 7…Ng4 but he went 7…h5."
• Add the key variations you considered and what you thought of them.

2. Then check with the engine

• Request a computer analysis on Lichess to see your accuracy and blunder count. It's the Lichess version of Chess.com's Game Review.
• Compare it with your notes. Where the engine disagreed, write down what it found and why you missed it. For example: "Engine found Nxe5! but I thought there wasn't enough compensation."

3. Don't over-rely on the engine

• It's a fact checker. It can give useful insight, but don't take its first word for granted. If a line feels funky, play it further until it shows something concrete.
• Ignore tiny differences. A gap of 0.2 or less usually isn't worth your time.

Tournament games

Follow the same process, but go into more detail. You'll have calculated many more lines and had many more thoughts during a tournament game, so get them down. Don't be tempted to open the engine before you annotate. Gukesh famously trained without engines for years.

Keep a tournament journal

During downtime between rounds, write about your mental state, your results, how you feel about your play, your lunch, the nice people you met, whatever comes to mind. It helps in three ways:

• It keeps things impersonal. You see your results more objectively, which reduces tilt.
• It gives you real downtime instead of worrying about the next game.
• It's fascinating to look back on. Sometimes the engine says you won a smooth game while your journal says you were sweating at the board, unsure your attack would work.

Opening Study

Before picking openings, it helps to know what kind of positions you enjoy. Here's the vocabulary I use:

For what it's worth, I dislike symmetrical positions and gravitate toward classical openings, systems and positional lines.

Learning a new opening

• Test the waters. Watch videos, read something short, browse the Lichess masters database, or try a free Chessable "Short & Sweet" course. Check whether it gets you positions you actually want to play.
• Learn the main ideas. A coach can explain them quickly. My students ask me in a lesson, and I send files to study on their own time.
• Then commit. Give an opening a fair shot before switching, and write down why you like or dislike it.
• Don't min-max. You'll play better in positions you enjoy than in the "objectively best" line.

Keep opening files

After each longer game, add it to your opening file for that line, not just your training-games study. That way your comments and the common ideas sit right next to your real games. If I play a 10-minute game in the 7.g4 Semi-Slav, it goes in both places. Then I check where I went wrong and review the relevant lines, so either they don't out-prep me again or I go in more confident next time.

The week before a tournament

Brush up on your lines. If you have a Chessable course, run through its quick review for each system you play. It's one of the best ways to feel confident in your repertoire, because no other area improves as quickly in a week. Still keep up tactics and other training so you stay sharp.

Prep Work and Process

Below NM, I'd rely on courses for your actual lines. Building your own prep can eat a lot of time without making you play better.

• Tools. ChessBase is the gold standard, but I reached NM using Lichess Studies. They work like ChessBase, minus some useful features, but are completely free, shareable, and editable in real time. HIARCS is a good option on Mac, and chessdb is useful for engine evaluations (use it with care).
• Process. Combine a strong engine, the masters database and your own brain.

Picking a prep style

I classify prep using a 2×2 matrix: ambitious or solid, mainline or offbeat. Choose the quadrant that fits the situation, for example a game you must win.

Chess Communities

Your chess community is simply the people you do chess with, and it's the single most important factor in my own comeback. Find one through a Google search, a local club, tournaments or pub chess.

I don't post Discord invite links here, but each community is easy to find with a quick search.

Resources

Where to play and train

• Lichess: completely free. Unlimited puzzles with lots of themes if you get bored of the usual ones, plus studies for building your own database and browsing free public lessons. Public studies are especially good for drilling specific positions, like rook endgames.
• Chess.com: some features need a paid membership, which I don't think is necessary. If you already pay, its lessons from world-class coaches cover lots of topics and are usually high quality.
• Listudy: more free tactics training.
• Chessable: digital courses from world-class authors that make it easy to train and follow the comments. Full courses cost money, but up to five "Short & Sweet" opening courses are free per account. They're my top pick for figuring out which openings you like.

Chess media

Watch a wide variety of chess content that interests you, some for fun and some for serious study. I'm a huge fan of the late Daniel Naroditsky (1995–2025). He was a wonderful teacher who shared his love of the game, and his speedruns remain one of the best windows into how a top GM thinks. The US Chess School lectures are advanced but very good. I also enjoy recaps of top tournaments and following the pro scene, and there's plenty of short-form content if that's more your speed.

More from me

• My annotated games: my favorite games on Lichess
• Books I recommend COMING SOON

Coming Soon

These sections are still being written:

• Tactics & Calculation COMING SOON
• Middlegames COMING SOON
• Endgames COMING SOON
• Mindset & Psychology COMING SOON
• Decision-Making Frameworks COMING SOON
• The Adult Improver Experience COMING SOON

Want help with any of these now? Book a lesson.

Coaching Packages

My Coaching Approach

I coach based on my insights as a player, student, and coach. I focus on sustainable self-improvement, with an emphasis on building general chess understanding and teaching the process of training. Every student is different, and it's fun to shape their journey based on their goals and abilities.

Sessions are available online via Zoom and Chess.com/Lichess. Please reach out for current availability.

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