How to Beat a Grandmaster (with Will)

Elite Academy student Will Moorhouse did something really cool in October: he beat a grandmaster (GM) in a tournament! Will has been a Silver Knights student since he got started with chess as a first grader, so to honor this exciting victory, we spoke to Will, his first coach, and his current coach about his journey as a chess player.

One "secret" to beating the grandmaster: lots of practice!

• 550+ tournament games, including seven prior games against GMs
• 49,000+ online games
• 8000+ online puzzles

Down below, Will annotated his game against GM Sergey Erenburg–read on to find out what happened and how he won.

Coach Gina's Chess Club at Nativity

Will started with Silver Knights as an in-person student at Nativity Catholic School, where the fantastic Coach Gina (who taught with us for 14 years) worked with him from first to fourth grade. “Will was always sweet, respectful, super polite, and well-behaved,” said Gina. “He was a well-rounded kid and liked lots of other activities besides chess. One time he came to chess club and recited his lines for a performance he was going to do. I remember being really impressed with his recitation.”

Though he joined the club as a first grader, Will didn’t really get into chess until a few years later. “It took him all the way until fourth grade until he finally got to the top of the [club] ladder,” Gina recalled. “I remember being really happy for him since this had been difficult for him to achieve. I might have been more happy than he was.”

When the pandemic hit, Will began to play chess online and developed a deeper interest in the game. “I went back to sub after the pandemic, and he had become insanely good,” said Gina. “I remember showing a lesson of a famous draw, and he had the whole thing memorized, which was amazing since he had no idea I was going to show the game.”

Coach Gina is proud of how far Will has come as a player, especially after hearing of his win against a grandmaster. “I remember one day giving him the nickname William the Conqueror. I guess he lived up to that!”

When chess club resumed at Nativity post-pandemic, Will was in middle school and was too advanced to be a student, so he volunteered to help the younger kids. Coach Daniel remembers Will as an exemplary volunteer–he helped with everything from teaching kindergartners the rules of chess and the ladder checkmate to working with tournament players on their openings.

Will's deep reading and studying meant that if one of the younger students came in and said, "Can you teach me the Sicilian Dragon?" he could think for a few seconds and say, "Sure, no problem."

Early Online Academy

Will was one of our first students to transition to online chess classes when the pandemic started, and one of the most enthusiastic. About a year after the online Academy program started, Coach Daniel and Coach Luke realized that there was just one person who'd been to every Bonus Lesson: Will! They'd both gotten sick and missed a week.

After about 18 months, Will began to outgrow our coaches' ability. Daniel remembers a day where they were looking at one of Will's games and Will started blasting through lines of Scotch Gambit theory. He thought to himself, "We really need a grandmaster coach to work with Will and a few of his peers," so we found the amazing Grandmaster Chess Coach Johan Hellsten, who joined the team!

Over the last few years of classes with GM Hellsten, Will has continued to progress as a player, and he earned the National Master title in 2024.

How Will Beat a Grandmaster

Our Conversation With Will

Daniel Weissbarth: Do you remember learning chess with Gina a long, long time ago?

Will Moorhouse: Yeah, absolutely. [It was] with Silver Knights back at Nativity, starting in second grade I believe.

DW: Do you remember liking it right away? Did it make sense right away, or did it take a little while to click?

WM: Yeah, definitely. I think it clicked once the pandemic hit. It was kind of a side activity before then. I still enjoyed it, obviously, but it was a school club type of thing. My dad was the one who originally taught me chess when I was like 6-years-old.

DW: For what it’s worth, I asked Gina about it and she was like, “Will was a really nice kid. Wouldn’t have guessed he would get this good.”

WM: Yeah, I mean, at that time I was more interested in sports and soccer and so on. I would never have thought I would be so interested in chess at that age.

DW: Do you remember your first tournament?

WM: I remember the first time I played online in March of 2020, when Silver Knights started going on ChessKid. That’s when I really started to get hooked. My first in-person tournament was Virginia Scholastics 2021. I do remember that.

DW: Were you excited, scared…?

WM: I don’t know. At that point I was just excited to start playing chess and start playing in tournaments.

DW: What’s your favorite thing about chess?

WM: Boy, that’s a very difficult question. I don’t know, exactly. I love everything about chess. It’s helped me far beyond the game itself. It teaches you many things about life as well. I think to continue raising your rating you need dedication and perseverance. I’ve had to work through a lot of plateaus.

Elite Academy Experiences

DW: Can we talk a little about the classes with Johan?

WM: Oh, yeah. I think I’ve been doing them since maybe the fall of 2021, so I’ve been learning with Coach Johan for a really long time, I think.

DW: You were part of the reason we started those classes.  You guys were just like… too good for me and Luke to teach, so we found Johan.

DW: What’s your favorite thing you’ve learned from Johan?

WM: I think my favorite part of the lesson is always the warmup because it’s always like… he’ll either make a position or find a position where there are so many tactical nuances. He’ll be like, “We’ll do a short warmup and then we’ll start the lesson,” but we end up analyzing this position for over 30 minutes because of how complex it is. It happens almost every time. It’s taught me a lot about defense as well because there’s always some hidden resource. You find the main tactic, but then the opponent has this resource, and then you have to see the whole story. We go step by step. They’re always very complicated, so it’s a lot of fun, and he explains it really well.

Will's Chess Favorites

DW: What’s your favorite chess book?

WM: I think my first chess book was “Chess: 5,334 Problems, Combinations and Games” by Laszlo Polgar. It’s a tactics book. After that, I read Judit Polgar’s “How I Beat Fischer’s Record”. I really liked that. Recently, I read “Amateur to IM” by GM Jonathan Hawkins. I liked that as well. It’s very nice.

DW: What’s your favorite opening?

WM: All Sicilians with Black. I play the Taimanov, Dragon, and Sveshnikov.

Going Up Against GMs

DW: Let’s talk a little bit about the game you played. Your dad told me your plan was to hang around and hope Erenburg got into time trouble, and when [he] told me that, I was assuming it had been a long game. Then you shared it with me and I was like, “This is like… a miniature! Unsound sacrifices, this is chaos!”

WM: I noticed this pattern. I’ve seen a lot of his games before. He still plays in a good number of tournaments in Virginia even though he’s not as active as he used to be. Every game it’s like this, where he’s getting under a minute it seems like, no matter who he’s playing–a fellow GM or some random passer by like me.

DW: He gets into time trouble?

WM: Yeah, he’s always thinking too much. Some people are dependent on time trouble. They live for the thrill of having to make moves with no time. But for him, I felt like he wasn’t playing very well in the games I saw where he got under time pressure, so it seemed like it was more of a weakness.

DW: It seemed like against you, he got under two minutes and blundered, which is gonna happen sometimes if you have a really messy position with nine seconds left or something.

WM: Yeah, exactly.

DW: This wasn’t the first time you’ve played a grandmaster, right?

WM: No. I’ve played several others in over-the-board classical. I played Karen Grigoryan this year, Alexander Fishbein, Tuan Minh Le, a couple of others.

DW: And it didn’t go as well?

WM: No. I think in all those games, I kind of just got blown off the board. I didn’t really have any chances whatsoever. 

DW: From the opening to the end?

WM: Yeah. The only game that was semi-competitive was my game against Grigoryan, but he handled the complications much better than I did.

DW: Let’s talk about this game [against Erenburg]. It seemed like you were super well-prepared in the opening.

WM: Yeah, I’ve done some work on this line with White in the Caro-Kann, so I kind of knew the opening relatively ok, and I was looking at some of his games and seeing which line I should play. I saw he has the same move order in most of his games, so I found this interesting idea with Ne1 and he had to find some way to play on.

DW: So it was mostly something you sort of knew anyways and a little that you specifically prepared for him, knowing it was coming?

WM: I looked at it on the analysis board [with the computer] in the car for like thirty minutes beforehand. [laughter]

DW: Is this, like, you found the games and went to the analysis board and turned on Stockfish and played around?

WM: Yeah, exactly. That’s pretty much what I always do. It would be nice if I had the time to use ChessBase on the computer, but mostly I’m just doing that in between tournaments.

DW: You left good annotations on the game. Pretty fun game! Really gets messy fast. How did you feel after the game?

WM: I was pretty thrilled. I think beating my first GM was a huge milestone, so it’s a very big boost of confidence going forward. I mean, it’s just a moment, right? But it was pretty good.

DW: I think that’s a healthy way to think about it. Also saying it’s your first GM–more to come!

Hobbies Away From the Board

DW: What else do you like to do besides chess?

WM: In school, I’m part of the theatre club. I do acting. I like trivia, and I guess I like math. I don’t know. I’m kind of a nerd. [laughs]

DW: Have you thought at all about what you’ll do after high school or after college?

WM: Yeah, I’ve started to think about it. I really have no idea what direction I’ll go in. The only thing I’m sure of is that on the side, I’ll certainly be doing something with chess, probably be doing some sort of coaching. I’m never gonna stop playing in tournaments as long as they’re available.

DW: You know, I think that’s a good attitude.