IM Aras Vardanyan

25 year old lithuanian - armenian chess enthusiast.
I've been playing chess since I was about 7 years old, but I took a "break" when I was 12. I came back at about 17 and haven't looked back since, reaching the international master title in 2026. I also have a degree in the science of criminology and I'm very interested in many psychological fields, especially learning. This has both helped me as a player and as a coach.
I've been coaching people of all ages for about 6 years now and I've received the official FIDE instructor coaching title, for which I am very proud. I believe everyone can reach their potential with the right amount of deliberate practice and a passion for the game.

I've been very active in tournaments of all time controls aswell as online chess for the last 8 years and I've been steadily improving. Since coming back to chess at 17, I have improved from 1742 to a current rating of 2417, the rapid and blitz ratings have also moved a similar amount. Of course, a lot of this improvement came "randomly" through trying different things experimenting, trial and error, but most of it came from hard work. If this hard work had been structured, perhaps I would have achieved my goals even faster, and this is structure is what I'm offering my students now. In my playing career so far, I've won many classical, rapid and blitz tournaments, I couldn't really name all of them, the most notable for me was the 2025 Warakomska memorial, where I started as the 10th seed in the tournament. Although I'm mostly focused on coaching other now, my playing career is not yet over and my next goal is to enter the Lithuanian national team.
In my years of experience, I have learned that having a playing style is not very helpful, a chess player must be able to do anything that the position requires. A great example is Magnus - he is perhaps stronger in some areas, but he's not weak in any of them, he has no weaknesses and he can play any position basically flawlessly. Hence I believe the best way to get better at chess is to train in the areas in which you are weakest.

I've had experience teaching groups of kids that are just starting out aswell as groups of adult beginners and amateurs alike. Now I mostly do private lessons with students ranging from 1400 to about 2000 FIDE. A big portion of my work is at Chessodoro, where I curate the training of over 50 students, creating new training plans for them every month, analysing their games, as well as communicating with them directly.
I've also had experience being a second to a few grandmasters and I regularly try to work with them to learn more about chess and the good habits of training as well.

I was the coach for the Lithuanian delegation of kids at the World cadet chess championship in Batumi in June of 2026.
I have also experiment with youtube content, but decided that I'm stretching myself too much :)

I believe in being a universal player, being able to do anything that the position requires, not limiting oneself by terms such as "dynamic player" or "positional player". This means that we have to identify our weaknesses and train those areas until these weaknesses have become our strengths. I've had to identify my own weaknesses many times and I've learned to do so effectively for my students as well. I've read hundreds of chess books, so I know good material on every area of chess - this helps me pick the right material for my students, depending on what weaknesses we have identified. If being self-critical is a skill, I believe it is learned. Chess is a game of mistakes, so however well a player thinks he has played, they have to look at their mistakes and think about where they are coming from. This is not a pleasant experience, but it is very rewarding.

My approach to every student is different, but one thing always stays the same - at least once a week we analyze the students' games which were played in long time controls (20+10, 30+20), either on lichess or OTB.
For players that are in the beggining of their chess journey, we start by learning the fundamentals, so that later there are no clear gaps in one's knowledge of the basics. This will also make it much easier to understand more advanced material later on.
With more advanced students, we analyse a lot of their games to understand where the weaknesses are. With this new information, a personalised training plan is created and the student is taught the correct thinking techniques to avoid such mistakes in the future, thus getting rid of the weakness. This training plan is also used by the student away from lessons, individually at home. Students can always message me with any questions or thought they might have, I'm always happy to discuss. Of course, there is always flexibility and the method of training can be changed, after all, we all learn chess differently.