This week I lost a student, a beginner, who had taken two lessons.

In my first lesson I usually do an assessment and then go into topics like square of the pawn, checkmate with a queen and king versus king, rook and king versus king, two bishops versus king, fortresses, breakthrough, opposition, square of the pawn, Philidor and Lucena rook endings, opposition, shouldering the king and usually a very quick exposition on the need to get all your pieces to get into the game.

In lesson two I usually go through the mating patterns and things like the Greek Gift Sacrifice, Lasker's two bishop sacrifice and some of the ideas that I learned from grandmaster Victor Gavrikov which help players to evaluate tactical possibilities in the position using some famous examples.

Lesson three is tactical patterns and is also a bit information heavy.

Lesson four is when we start doing examples of games and positions with a mix of endgames and tactics.

I get the feeling that I lost this student because keeping track of what was presented was too much work. I have another new student who is up around lesson five or so who seems quite happy with the overload.