Meet Roman Vidonyak: The hidden coach behind top grandmasters

Silent force behind grandmasters

It was a regular morning at the breakfast room of my hotel in Wijk aan Zee. I was having my breakfast. Suddenly, Vladimir Fedoseev turned up. I have known him for years. I have even played against him. It was wonderful to see him at the event. He greeted me warmly and introduced me to someone standing behind him. He said, “He is my trainer.”

I was surprised looking at him because I hadn’t seen him before. My surprise grew even more when this person said that he had trained players like Anish Giri, Javokhir Sindarov, and Jorden van Foreest. I was very keen to know about him. His name was Roman Vidonyak. 

Over the next few days, I saw him almost every single day in Wijk aan Zee as well as in Weissenhaus training Fedoseev and Sindarov. Both of them delivered fantastic performances, with Fedoseev in Wijk aan Zee and Sindarov in Weissenhaus.

I was very keen to know about him. I asked him if he would be up for a video interview. But Roman said that he would prefer a written one instead. He requested me to send him my questions. Below is the transcript of the interview with Roman Vidonyak: 

Sagar Shah (SS): Can you tell us about your chess-playing career? Some of your best performances.

Roman Vidonyak (RV): I was born in the absolute chess city of Lviv, which has given the world more than 30 grandmasters. We had and still have a great chess tradition and good chess clubs. I went to the chess club at the age of seven. During my youth years, I was one of the promising young chess players of the city, and it helped me to get into the school of such great grandmasters and coaches as Josif Dorfman and Adrian Mikhalchyshyn. Their work impressed me so much that I decided to become a coach. The profession of a coach is radically different from the actions of a strong grandmaster who helps his colleagues. As a player, I reached the title of International Master. Without this level, it is impossible to understand the mechanics of chess and the subtleties of thinking of the strongest chess players. In particular, many years of communication with such a great coach as Joseph Dorfman helped me to delve into the very subtleties of the art of chess.

SS: You mentioned that you began training at the age of 16. How did it begin? Who were your first students?

RV: At the age of 17, still being one of the best young players in Ukraine, I went to the training camps of famous Ukrainian coaches and studied their training methods. I learned especially much from Grandmaster Igor Platonov, whose method formed the basis for the development of my training system. Then I entered a higher sports school at the chess faculty, after which I moved from Ukraine to Germany. In Germany, I brought up five grandmasters, some names should be known to you. These are, for example, Georg Meier, Leonid Kritz, Sebastian Bogner, and Dennis Wagner. In 2014, I started gaining experience working with top grandmasters. Many of them wanted to keep this work a secret, so I won't name them. Today, my students are more open. I can say that I work with Vladimir Fedoseev, Anish Giri, Javokhir Sindarov, Jorden van Foreest, and some other leading chess players of the world. 

SS: What attracted you to training so muchthat you didn't even complete your GM title?

RV: I just spent all my time studying all the processes of chess training, as well as the accompanying processes. I was very attracted by the fact that even the strongest chess player must have an understanding person who sees him from the outside and can tell him important things and teach him to work on them. And it's not just purely chess nuances, of which there are an infinite number, but also questions of psychology, brain physiology, and the processes of sports physiology for developing and consolidating the necessary skills.

SS: Who influenced your training methods?

RV: As I said, it was Igor Platonov, to a great extent, and Josif Dorfman, as well as some leading neuroscientists who helped me to better understand the mechanics of the processes occurring during training in the grandmaster's brain.

SS: Vladimir Fedoseev has seen a huge growth in his chess journey recently. He credits a lot of his chess improvement to you. Can you tell us a bit about your work with him?

RV: Working with Vladimir is something extraordinary. Different circumstances led to the fact that we were lucky to work very intensively and a lot. In 2.5 years, we spent more than 100 days at training camps, 8-10 hours of training a day. In addition, endless phone calls discussing a mass of chess issues. We counted more than 1000 hours of phone conversations during this time. And that's not an exaggeration. For me, as a trainer, it is a golden fund of information and material for even more understanding of all the important points. I can say that Vladimir has taught me as much as I have taught him!

SS: You have developed your own training method where you focus on 17 factors of a player. Can you tell us about them?

RV: Figure 17 is approximate; it is necessary to show the order of skills on which a top chess player should work. To name a few of them:

1) Endurance of concentration throughout the entire game, as well as the entire tournament or even several tournaments in a row. 

2) Strategic or endgame intuition. The ability to make the right decision in seconds with the "hand". 

3) Proper time management. The ability to distinguish real critical moments during a game from relatively neutral ones and act accordingly.

4) Ability to switch attention from one situation on and around the board to a completely different one clearly and without unnecessary emotions. 

However, the general principles of training processes that are common to all sports are paramount. Just like muscles in athletes, synapses and neurons require the right load, a well-defined regularity of exercise, and a critical mass of exercises to develop each of the skills. And here we are talking not only about training methods but also about hundreds and, in many cases, thousands of precisely selected exercises. If you pump your biceps once a week with three-kilogram dumbbells, you won't get Arnold Schwarzenegger out of you...

SS: Can you share with some of the most instructive positions that the viewers can see and learn from?

RV: There is no room for exercises in such a short interview; you would have to write a separate article about that.

SS: What are your future plans, and what is your dream as a trainer in the world of chess?

RV: I continue to learn the art of coaching, working with great chess players. My recent dream is that among the top 5 chess players in the world, there would be three of my students, and one of them would be number 1!

After coaching chess players for decades, IM Roman Vidonyak earned the Coach of the Year diploma from the German Chess Federation in 2023. His first job as a chess coach was at the Miesbach-Tegernsee School, where he trained young players for seven years. His student list includes Sebastian Bogner, Georg Meier, Dennis Wagner, and many others. In 2014, he began working with super grandmasters, and since then, he has been training some of the world’s top chess players.

I couldn’t believe it when I learned about his journey. Here is a man who has shaped some of the world’s best chess players, yet so few know his story. It makes you wonder how many other unsung heroes are out there, quietly shaping the future of chess. 

Important links

Roman Vidonyak – Chess Trainer of the Year 2023

Roman Vidonyak's Training Camp