Blog Two

As the founder of Chessability, Fabio Botarelli seeks to educate each student individually according to their strengths and preferences. When Fabio teaches his students his main emphasis is on teaching strategy, philosophy, theory, tactics, general principles and critical thinking skills. The goal of his lessons are to create a chess player who can feel comfortable playing in any type of chess position. As someone who has competed in tournaments for over 20 years, Fabio knows from personal experience that getting better at chess is not about memorizing the latest opening theory or relying heavily on short term or long term memory but rather in learning how to calculate and how to think critically in every given chess position and game situation. As a former special needs student during his K-12 educational years, Fabio understands and appreciates the learning differences of special needs students and goes out of his way to design a chess curriculum that accommodates the learning needs of each special needs student that he works with. He is even able to inspire them to reach a mastery of the game far beyond what they normally would have expected of themselves to the extent that some of them would go on to score in the top 10 in both local and national chess tournaments among their mainstream schooled peers.