CM Richard Persson

My name is Richard Persson im 45 years old and i am from Sweden.
I am a Candidate Master (CM).
I qualified for my title by achieving an Elo rating of 2200.
Since 2016 i work for a Swedish software consultancy company as a tech recruiter.
My favourite chess vacation destination is Serbia , they have a nice chess festival in a small town called Paracin, if i have a few days extra i try to visit the capital Belgrade which is a great city to explore.I try to play at least 1 or 2 big open chess tournaments every year.
Future chess goals for me is to become a FM which will take a lot of work and i also have a few easier goals:
to play Reykjavik Open because of the beautiful playing venue.
Another great tournament is Gibraltar international chess festival, and perhaps The European blitz championship.
After highschool i sent an application to a gymnasium which was unique in Sweden because it also had a chess academy and i studied there for 3 years under the guidance of IM Nils-Gustaf Renman. He was a Swedish champion in 1978 and also 1980.
It gave me a solid foundation and changed my thought process over the board. In the final year i qualified for our schools representative team, we won the national school championship and also the Nordic finals in Iceland.

Favourite quotes from my stydy section:
"A pawn sacrifice is a small price to pay to open the royal palace gates."

gold medal in Nordic chess school-team championship 1993
Silver medal in Swedish individual junior chess championship 1994
Swedish Club team champion in third highest league 2014/15
Swedish Club team champion in second highest league 2015/16
Swedish Club team champion in premier league 2015/16 however i was a reserve and didnt get to play any games that season, our team coach had plenty of strong players to choose from such as GM Baadur Jobava, GM Georg Meier and GM Ulf Andersson.
Gold medal in a rapid tournament in Kristianstad "Påsksnabben" 2017, 8,5/10 and Elo performance 2409
Gold medal in a rapid tournament in Lund "Frans G Bengtssons minne" 2014, 6,5 / 8 Elo performance 2366
Bronze medal in a rapid tournament in Skromberga "Skromberga Mellandagsturnering" 2017, 6,5 / 8
Silver medal in a rapid tournament "Kristianstad Chess Cup" 2016, 6/8 Elo performance 2212
Bronze in a rapid tournament in Lund "Frans G Bengtssons minne" 2016, 6 / 8
Best win in blitz on that other chess site :) against GM Daniel Sadzikowski
My highest rating on that other site was 2327.

Highest rating here on Lichess: 2368
6 jan. 2020
Best rated victories here on Lichess:

IM Funo09 (2705) 31 okt. 2019 12:20
IM Green_Arrow1 (2579) 25 juni 2019 21:50
BozKurd (2566) 26 dec. 2019 16:47
DominicW (2539) 15 dec. 2019 16:26
stammargg (2537) 10 okt. 2019 13:20

My highest rated opponent that i won against in a online blitz game was probably Varushan Akobian in 2015 on Icc i think he was top 5 in the US and around 2660 Elo then however i won material early on because of a hidden tactic :) so that one i got a bit lucky.

i just got started working with a student currently who has a clear goal (qualifying to his national olympic chess team) and we have defined what areas to focus on. I put in lots of time in preparation and building a portfolio of useful cases to study both in calculation, tactics and how to play in different structures. I try to vary lessons so we work on different things all the time.
At my local Chess club Malmö AS i also helped out with kids during school breaks when we had a open house, we teached the basics and organized small tournaments.
I also occasionally made some lectures with a demo board for our local Thursday study group. Finding a theme and showing different examples such as profylactic moves, domination of pieces or showing games from our team matches leading up to our victory in the club team championship 2015/16
The group was from beginner to approximately Elo 1800.

Organizing a rapid tournament in 2017 called "The Pirate chess tournament" or in Swedish "Piraten schacket" named after a swedish author
and organized in his original home town vollsjö in south Sweden.
Since the town was really small we also offered a food menu and my wife made sandwiches and coffee for an affordable price.
We bought digital clocks and everything we needed including a laserprinter, and luckily i had help that day from a friend who was used to the pairings software.
It was a bit nerv wrecking since it was the first time but we managed to carry through the event without any incidents.

Playing chess for 30+ years, accumulating chess knowledge by reading a ton of books and still following the big events online.
During my clubs rise from the third league to premier leauge i took the opportunity to get some insights from top level Grandmasters.
Talking to Ulf Andersson during team dinners about technical endgames and his approach.
Traveling by car to a distant away team game sitting next to Baadur Jobava for 2 hours and talking about opening lines.
We also had a lot of sessions with GM Tiger hillarp persson coaching the local non GM team members that season.
Tiger is author of a famous book called "The modern Tiger"

First we discuss what needs to be improved on and what goals we are working towards, then we decide on a schedule that works for the student.
I will prepare lessons using study function in lichess and we will have sessions using Skype and i will share screen.
I will adapt The teaching methodology depending on feedback from the student to make lessons useful and also get feedback to check if we need to change the content or make other improvements. I will also keep a individual student diary to check our progress and keep everything organized.