Above - Rashid Ziyatdinov being interviewed by Ollie Turner of Galway Bay FM

For much of 2004 and 2005, one of the top chess players in the world, GM Rashid Ziyatdinov lived in Galway and gave chess lessons to anyone who was interested.  During his period in Ireland he won the Kilkenny Masters He left Galway and Ireland in 2005. A bit like Mr Miagi from the Karate Kid, he was also a very interesting guy to hang around with as well as being an amazing blitz player.

His main book, GM RAM, consists of positions where you have to completely understand what's going on.  His mantra was to know these things 'cold'.  In other words, they became part of your hard-wired memory (RAM) instead of something you have to consciously think about.

Rashid was very open to helping in any way to promote chess and took part in a 'friendly' (with Galway's resident chess master Yury Rochev) in the Bold Gallery in Feb 2005 to publicize the weird chess pieces from Graham Knuttel.  As you can see by the Rashid's commentary to those games in that article, their friendly turned in some serious chess, even if it was hampered by the heavy pieces (50+ kgs of silver apparently!).

Although Rashid is now based in Moscow, he is available for online coaching - at least one of the guys in the club is doing this.   You can chat online with him on his website and set this up if you want.

-ronan