GM Joseph Girel

Hello everyone ! I am Joseph Girel, a 20 years old grandmaster who enjoys playing chess and travelling around the world.

I started playing chess quite late for our generation (10yo) in a city where chess was barely developped, but quickly knew that my initial excitement for the game wasn't going to stop. After working and my own for a while, I achieved FM title at 15, IM title at 17 and GM title at 19, since then i started to treat chess as a full time job ! I've also been 3 times French Junior champion in classical, University French Champion (rapid) and Junior blitz champion in 2023. If i must talk about my proudest moments as a chess player, i would quote winning La Plagne International Open in 2023 as a tournament and my win against the absolute legend Vasyl Ivanchuk in 2024 as an individual game .

If I enjoy playing chess, i frankly believe I enjoy coaching even more. As a self improver,I've created my own reflexion process during the game as well as my proper routine training . My principal tool is diving into my own games to find analytical positions, tasks and tips that i can provide to my students . This way, I try to make the training sessions as practical as possible by putting my students in real game conditions during exercises .
Experience wise, most of my work in the past years has been to bring 2150-2300 FIDE rated players closer (or over !) IM title.

Ive been a law student back in the time !

As a chess player, my main skill is opening preparation as i'm addicted to opening research (maybe i overspent time on it , I must admit )
This has been a clear boost for my own play as being ready for games has a positive impact on confidence. For quite a while now, I'm glad to help very strong grandmasters with the theoretical aspect of the game and it is now clearly a big part of my work when I'm at home not playing tournaments !

As explained above , i will introduce you to my thinking process/ method during the first session and make sure that you understand it by showing tons of application examples. Then we dive into your own games and seek for critical positions where the method could have been used. In the following sessions, I will try to boost your practical skills during the game as much as I can because I believe this is now by far the key weapon for any strong player. For that purpose, I saved on my computer hundreds of training positions with tasks, real situation informations and time limits to keep you aware of the intensity of the game !