"From Nepo to Sindarov…" — Roman Vidonyak on His Coaching Journey

Roman Vidonyak

FIDE Senior Trainer

“Among my first students were Leonid Kritz, Rainer Buhmann, Georg Meier and Sebastian Bogner. A little later Dennis Wagner joined them. It was with them that I gained my first important experience of coaching at a high level.

My first points of contact with the absolute world elite came through cooperation with Grandmasters Evgeny Tomashevsky, Sergey Karjakin and Ian Nepomniachtchi. For the last two, I assisted remotely through their then-coach Vladimir Potkin. This cooperation allowed me to gain valuable experience and understand how world-class chess players work.

Truly intensive work with a top grandmaster began only in 2022, when I started cooperating with Vladimir Fedoseev. Then gradually other leading chess players joined him, including Jorden van Foreest and Anish Giri. Ultimately this also led to the start of cooperation with Javokhir Sindarov.

Looking back, I understand that this was not some sudden breakthrough, but a continuous process. Each new cooperation brought new experience, new challenges and an ever deeper understanding of what is required to work at the highest level.

This is how, step by step, I managed to enter the circle of coaches working with the strongest chess players in the world.”