Nabbollini, student of GM Arturs Neiksans, won the u800 round-robin tournament in the inaugural CoachChamps 2025. Though he won with a 5.5/7 score, it wasn’t totally smooth sailing. Hhart10k, IM Levy Rozman‘s student, beat him in the penultimate round, but he recovered with a clutch win in the end.
The round-robin for Group 2 (rated 800-1999) is on Wednesday, October 8, starting a t 11:00 a.m. ET / 17:00 CEST / 8:30 p.m. IST.
The teams in CoachChamps 2025 are set for the main event in October. The eight coaches—GMs Arturs Neiksans, Ben Finegold, IMs Levy Rozman, David Pruess, Andras Toth, WGM Dina Belenkaya, CM Can Kabadayi, and NM Robert Ramirez—have each selected four students whom they will have one month to train.
Final Standings
Here is where coaches stand after day one.
CoachChamps is a competition to decide who is the best chess coach, by putting the students of eight coaches up against each other. There are four separate tournaments, each with a designated rating band. In each, we will see an eight-player round-robin played at the 10+2 time control.
- Group 1: 0 – 799
- Group 2: 800 – 1199
- Group 3: 1200 – 1599
- Group 4: 1600 – 2000
Last month, we saw coaches draft their picks for the event. Ever since, their students have trained diligently—with guidance—for game day. Tuesday was just the first day of four. You can see the pairs of coaches and students below:
Moonzzs (coached by CM Can Kabadayi) and jayy_dizzyy (coached by WGM Dina Belenkaya, who was only a little biased in the commentary) were the players with the best start. Moonzzs won all three of her first games and was the last player on a perfect score.In round one, she landed a checkmate in only 15 moves against southernrun (coached by IM Andras Toth), and then found the checkmate in two in the following position.
Round three was her quickest win, which she accomplished in 13 moves against Thanos-V (coached by NM Robert Ramirez).
The hot start was followed by four losses, however, and Moonzzs would finish sixth with the three points she earned.
Jayy_dizzy, on the other hand, was the other strong starter who had a more stable trajectory. She would ultimately finish in second place, with five wins and two losses. Belenkaya made no effort to hide her delight with the student’s performance, as you can see in the clip from round one, when she checkmated with two queens.
Her two-win streak was only stopped by the winner of the tournament in round three. The eval bar jumped from all-white to all-black in the blink of an eye, with Belenkaya yelling, “Noooooooo!” with a table slam.
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Out of 28 games, just two were drawn. The first one was the encounter between Nabbollini and Wioldhorse, coached by GM Ben Finegold. Nabbollini pointed this out as being one of the most challenging rounds, where indeed he blundered a full rook but managed to draw.
Spookily, commentator Ramirez managed to call the blunder just seconds before it happened. Asked to explain how, he offered: “When it comes to dropping pieces, I’ve been there many times.”Â
When it comes to dropping pieces, I’ve been there many times.
—Robert Ramirez
That half point was in fact the difference between Nabbollini and his closest rival, jayy_dizzyy; so, in hindsight, one can say that this miraculous save won him the tournament.
Wioldhorse would go on to finish in fourth-fifth, along with hhart10k, on 3.5 points. Her win in round five (scoring a hat trick) was a bit in the style of World Champion Mikhail Tal, in that many of her pieces were hanging. The Latvian legend once said, “There are two types of sacrifices in chess, sound ones and my own,” and we can say that the sacrifices in this game belonged to the second camp.
By the way, the second draw of the day, Belenkaya called that one just seconds before it happened too. Jakesactually, coached by IM David Pruess, was so close to checkmating but allowed a classic stalemate.Â
Nabbollini later revealed that his strategy was to play simple chess and wait for his chances, and we saw this pay off quite well in round five against JakesActually. White went for the fishing pole trap, but that only works when the pawn is on h4. It took Black two moves to do it, but he captured the free knight and went on to win.
Nabbollini explained his approach:
Throughout the tournament I was just trying to play it simple because of the level we’re at. King safety, dominate in the center, waiting for mistakes, just the simple things. Initially I wanted to play all kinds of moves that I’d like to play, but I just changed my mind at the last minute and decided to play simple chess.
The final round was a nailbiter, as even a draw would have meant tied first for Nabbollini and jayy_dizzyy. Nabbollini won, allowing no nonsense, but Belenkaya showed a beautiful swindle that could have changed the course of history.Â
Nabbollini was, of course, thrilled to win the tournament and he also commented on how hard he had worked for it. He said, “I worked really hard and I really have to thank my coach because he quickly identified the areas I needed to work on and we’d been working persistently on those areas.”
What he realized was that before CoachChamps, he was “playing, not training.” He added: “I was putting in a lot of hours, but they were not directed hours.” The goal, of course, is to keep this momentum going forward, to keep using study time efficiently.
I was putting in a lot of hours, but they were not directed hours.
—Nabbollini
Lastly, the best piece of advice he got from his coach was, he said, “Keep it simple and don’t lose on time.”
The tournaments will only get stronger from here on out, and up next we have the u1200 group. You can see the players and their respective coaches listed below, and follow along on Wednesday!
CoachChamps 2025 is Chess.com’s tournament to find out who’s the best chess coach in the world. Any community member can participate in CoachChamps, but eight star coaches draft students on September 10. They then have until October 6 to help their student improve. Round-robins for each rating band go from October 7-10. The time control is 10+2 and the prize fund is $25,000; coaches earn prizes, while students win exclusive online coaching sessions, one year of free Diamond membership, and a $100 Chessable voucher. The winner of each round-robin will also win an exclusive piece of signed merch.
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