Success As Coach
Furman may have been the most successful coach in the history of chess, although some would give that title to Mark Dvoretsky. Chess culture has traditionally and typically credited the player for chess success, with the coach recognized in a much lesser fashion, or not at all. Chess coaches were not commonly seen for top players until the post-WWII period, when competition became much stiffer. They were first developed in the Soviet Union and in other Eastern European countries; it is no coincidence that top players from these nations have dominated chess for the past sixty years. Furman, with a very significant role in Karpov's development from his late teens, building upon earlier roles with World Champion Botvinnik and world-class players such as Bronstein, Korchnoi, and Geller, may have done more than any other coach, from the early 1950s until the late 1970s, to help ensure Soviet dominance.
Read more about this topic: Semyon Furman
Famous quotes containing the word coach:
“There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits the evidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)