Is Getting A Chess Coach Worth It?

Whether to get a chess coach is a pertinent question for you to ask, since it costs money and time. Even if you are already convinced of the effectiveness of working with a coach, an equally important question is whether it’s actually worth it, specifically for you.

The honest answer depends on three things: 

• Your current level.
• What you are actually trying to achieve.
• How much work are you willing to do between sessions. 

But spoiler, chess coaching is not a shortcut that does the improving for you.

This article was written with the help of Mindful Chess. And today we will look at what a chess coach does, who gets the most from it, and how it compares with learning on your own, so you can decide whether it is the right investment for you.

*This is a collaborative post. For more details, please see my Disclosure Policy.

What a сhess сoach actually does

The job is pretty straightforward. A coach looks at the games you have previously played, works out the mistakes you keep making, and sets you tasks to fix them between sessions. From there, it can extend to working on your openings, helping you identify opportunities and answering specific questions that come up as you play.

It helps to be clear about what this is not. Chess.com has a feature it calls a coach, and engines like Stockfish will tell you the best move in almost any position. Both are useful, but neither builds a plan around you. They assess moves; a coach assesses the player, then decides what you should work on and in what order.

Coaches work at every level. A beginner might spend sessions on basic tactics and how the pieces work together. Whilst a stronger club player might focus on a single phase of the game or prepare for a particular event. The activity changes with the player, but the main job stays the same: finding your weak points and giving you a way to work on them.

What You Get From Chess Coaching

A clear learning direction is probably one of the most valuable things you can get from a chess coach. When you are learning on your own, it is easy to spread your time across openings, tactics, endgames and master games without knowing which one is actually holding you back. A coach watches you play and works out where the real problem is, so the hours you put in go towards the thing that will move your results rather than the thing you happen to enjoy most.

You also get explanations that an engine cannot give you. In highly complex tactical positions, a computer is hard to beat: it shows the winning sequence and you can learn from it. The difficulty comes in quiet positions, where the engine might tell you one move is worth slightly more than another, but cannot explain this in terms you can then apply in a future game. A coach can. They might explain that although two moves look almost equal to the engine, one of them leaves your bishop stuck behind its own pawns for the rest of the game while the other frees it up. That is the sort of judgment a number on the screen will not give you. And it is exactly the kind of thing you can carry into your next game.

Then there is the simple matter of doing the work. Most people study more consistently when someone is expecting to see the results. Knowing your coach will ask about the tactics you were set, or look at the games you played that week, is often the difference between a plan that stays on paper and one you actually follow.

Coaching also gives you someone to make sense of results with. Chess is a beautiful game but can also be a frustrating game. Having someone who can look at a bad defeat calmly, explain what went wrong and turn it into an opportunity for growth, matters more than it sounds, particularly for competitive players and for children who take losses hard.

Who benefits most, and who should wait

Coaching pays off most clearly for players who have hit a wall. If your rating has sat in the same place for months or even a year or two despite regular play, that is usually a sign you are repeating the same mistakes without noticing them, and an outside eye is the quickest way to find them. The same goes for anyone with a specific target:

• Reaching a particular ECF or online rating.
• Doing well at a local tournament or league matches. 

Children are another group who tend to get a lot from it, though for a slightly different reason. Younger players often have the appetite to improve but not the discipline to structure their own study. And a coach supplies the structure they would not build for themselves. 

Two groups have less to gain. The first is adults who are complete beginners who are still learning how the pieces move. At that stage, a beginner book, free online lessons and some games will get you to a reasonable standard without spending anything. The second is the very casual player who enjoys the occasional online game but has no real drive to get better. With no goal for a coach to work towards, coaching becomes a cost without a clear return.

Alternatives to Hiring a Chess Coach

A coach is not the only way to get better. Indeed, for a lot of players, it is not the first thing to try. The free and low-cost tools available now are genuinely good. And it is worth knowing what each does well before you decide to pay for tuition.

Tactics trainers are the obvious starting point. The puzzle features on Chess.com and Lichess, or ChessKid for younger players, are free or nearly so, and a few minutes a day on them can significantly sharpen your game. What they cannot do is tell you which of your habits are costing you games, or work on the slower, strategic side of play. They drill a skill; they do not look at you.

Books and free video lessons go further. A good book on endgames or middlegame planning can give you knowledge a coach would otherwise charge you to explain, and there are years of solid teaching on YouTube for nothing. The problem is that you have to choose what to study yourself. Beginners often pick the wrong thing, like spending months on opening theory when their results are really being decided by simple mistakes. 

Running your own games through an engine is the closest free substitute for game analysis. Stockfish, built into both main sites, will show you exactly where you went wrong in any game. As covered earlier though, it tells you what the better move was without explaining why in quiet positions, and it will not turn a list of mistakes into a plan for what to work on next. It works well with finding mistakes, but only goes so far for teaching you.

So, Is a Chess Coach Worth It?

The answer that fits most people is that it depends, and you now have the terms to decide for yourself.

A coach is worth the money if you have a reason to improve and the desire to practice between sessions. If your rating has stalled, if you are aiming at a particular standard, or if you simply find that you study far more when there is a feeling of accountability, then the fee buys something the free tools cannot give you on their own: an honest read of your own games and a plan to act on. For a child with the appetite but not the discipline, the same holds.

It is not worth it, at least not yet, if you are still learning the rules. Or if you play only for the occasional game and have no real wish to climb. Free puzzles, books, engine analysis and a local club will take you a surprisingly long way. And there is no sense paying for guidance you are not ready to use.</span>

e=”font-weight: 400;”>If you are somewhere in the middle and unsure, the low-risk way to find out is to take a single trial lesson and see whether one session tells you something about your game that you had not worked out on your own. That is usually a fair test of whether paying for more is right for you.