Ivan Mandekic: Mr. Lputian you are here in the role of President of the Appeal Committee, but I also highly appreciate you as a chess player and Grandmaster, and I’m very much looking forward to talking with you. After analyzing the results in the first five rounds, your players are dominating the men’s competition, so this fact is an additional motive. Just before this interview, we attended your presentation of the methods of working in schools with beginner chess players, where you presented an interesting computer program for beginners. It is now clear that Armenia is placing a great importance on the youngest and thus you are creating a large number of players from which, of course, quality is born. Let’s start with what happens when a young talented player is discovered in a school? Opširnije… »

I have been present at the European Youth Chess Championships for 15 years, in the role of trainer and other functions. I must tell you that until now the best organized European Youth Chess Championship was held in Sibenik in 2007. There, the Croatian Chess Federation provided great accommodation, excellent food and good playing conditions, but here in Porec, everything is at an even higher level. I would especially point out the playing conditions in the beautiful “Zatika” hall. Opširnije… »

Ivan Mandekic: You have worked as a trainer in many countries, most recently in Slovenia. What can you say about the talents and the training work outside Russia?

Adrian Mikhalchishin: In Russia and the former Soviet Union there were even trainers’ faculties. I know a few people from this region who studied in Moscow, Zsuzsa Polgar in Minsk, and at these institutions an enviable level of trainers was created, but now the number of these institutions is getting smaller. In the West there is a big problem with the basic level of education. In this sense Yugoslavia was always better because there was a tradition and people who have passed on the knowledge from generation to generation, but these trainers were not appreciated enough. I, as president of the FIDE Trainer’s Commission, think that the trainers do not work enough on bettering themselves. They should pay more attention to learning psychology, pedagogy and work methodology. Opširnije… »

To begin our conversations about chess, I think we could not choose a better speaker than a chess expert, publicist and erudite, Adrian Mikhalchishin, the Ukrainian grandmaster with a Slovenian passport, the Chairman of FIDE Trainer’s Commission. Adrian is just old enough to connect us and take us back to the time of past greats such as world champions Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal and the young Anatoly Karpov and Gari Kasparov, but he’s also young enough to familiarize us with the contemporaries and the current champion Magnus Carlsen as well as other top chess players of the younger generation. Opširnije… »