ICA Team

ALAN SALNIKOV

Alan is a third year Quantitative Finance student and Computer Science Minor at Stevens Institute of Technology and a recent alumnus of Bergen County Academies. He is able to utilize skills such as intense focus and analytic thinking to solve problems and make well informed decisions related to his field of study. Alan owes the practice and mastery of those skills to the amount of time he invested in studying chess as a child at the International Chess Academy.

As a coach, Alan is committed to teaching his students not just the core concepts of chess, but he is also committed to teaching the essence of hard work, focus, and deep analytical thinking. Alan’s greatest joy as a teacher is seeing his students truly "get" and apply lessons in a game, and use those lessons as part of their own deep analysis.

In addition, Alan is a tournament director at the ICA Quads and a writer for the ICA blog. Alan always looks forward to directing the quads because he is able to see the weekly improvement of many of the kids who consistently play. He is able to translate the successes on the board into his weekly reports via interviews which also improves the confidence and communication skills of those kids.

In his spare time, Alan loves playing a variety of sports. Alan has been doing Judo for 11 years, and has achieved the rank of black belt. In addition, Alan loves to play football (soccer), and his favorite club team is Chelsea. Alan successfully ran the "beast" Spartan Race: a 13 mile obstacle course heavy race through the mountains!

But what Alan is most known for is his "never say die" attitude. He is very self critical and obsessed with growth. Therefore, Alan took it upon himself to improve the overall experience of everyone involved at the school. From helping modernize the website to making organizational changes for classes, tournaments, and our online regsitration software to training young TDs and coaches, Alan wants to ensure the ICA will thrive for decades to come!

This all culminated in The ICA Show: a weekly Youtube Livestream series focused on interviews, game analysis, and debate between players and coaches. Click HERE to see previous episodes, or EMAIL to request to feature in an episode!