FM Quang Thai Ngo

Hello there ;)

My name is Thái, I'm from Vietnam and have been living in Germany since 2018. I started playing chess at 7, but it was not until the Corona period that I put in the effort to train seriously and since then I've been very active in tournament play. I got the FM title in early 2025 and my long-term goal is to achieve the IM title - or more, depending on my future development.

I offer training in English or German or, if you speak Dutch on native speaker level and are willing to converse with me in Dutch, I would be happy to give you a discount ;)

You can contact me at ngoquangthai.chess@aol.com for a free trial lesson and more information on package deals.

During my junior years, I took part in the Vietnamese U9 Championship and got 3rd place in the rapid section, as well as team medals in all three time controls. After that, I took a long break from tournament chess until 2021.

Since the end of 2022, I played in a lot of small and medium-sized tournaments to rack up playing experience as well as rating points. In 2023, I won the local city championships in Aachen, Eschweiler and Herzogenrath.

My best tournament so far was in Untergrombach in early 2025, where I won clear 1st with a score of 6,5/7 against a 2140 field and broke the 2300 mark.

Other successes in open tournaments include
- 2nd place Krefelder Sommeropen 2023
- 2nd place Solinger Karnevalsopen 2024
- 2nd place Magdeburger Open 2024

I've always found teaching to be an attractive career path; if I hadn't studied computer science, I would probably have become a teacher. During my university years, I was the teaching assistant on several occasions and for the last 2 years I've held the chess courses at RWTH Aachen.

I've given training at some chess clubs and helped students with their preparation. I have experience in creating compact files for strategically complex openings and my students were able not only to use them successfully for the intended game, but some also adopt these new openings as part of their repertoire.

My main strengths are positional play, technical endgames and I have an extensive opening repertoire with both colors. By playing different openings, I have good understanding of many pawn structures and the plans connected with them.

My favorite teaching topics are position evaluation, schematic thinking (where-to-put-which-piece), prophylaxis and play against static weaknesses. I regularly use ideas from these topics in my games and put a clear emphasis on them in my own training.

The training is conducted online on Teams, Discord or whichever platform that suits you. Before the first lesson, I would want to see some of your recent classical games so that I can form a rough impression on your play style, strengths and weaknesses. Through this, I can form a training plan focused on aspects that can use some improvements. Of course, you always can and I would encourage you to suggest a topic you would like to work on - know what you need ;)