How To Find A Good Chess Coach?
06/05/2023 - Actualizado: 21/06/2023
As we have talked about before in our articles, having a chess coach to show us the path we want to follow will save us a lot of time, we will have the certainty of how to improve our level, we will know what we have to do to achieve our goals either to improve our level or even get to have a title such as FM-IM-GM.
Today we are going to look at what we need to look for in order to find a good chess coach.
Where to find a chess coach?
First of all, we need to know where to find chess coaches. For this there are many pages where we can find dedicated categories for chess coaches to be published and potential students can find them.
Let's take a look at some of them:
Chess.com
It is the most famous online chess platform, where it is possible to play against anyone online, it has a page where you can train tactics, a large community thanks to its YouTube channel, Twitch and events that they themselves transmit.
In chess.com there is a coaches section where chess coaches have the possibility to put their profiles to be contacted.
Lichess.org
It is another of the most famous online chess platforms, in it we can do the same as in chess.com, among its differences we have that in lichess has a section for the simultaneas more polished and that its area for chess coaches is better for my taste.
In the lichess coach area you can find a section where you can filter by language, countries and other filters such as lichess rating, students' comments and recent activity.
Once we click on the coach we want to choose we will find a description about him, his teaching experience, his best skills as a coach and the teaching methodology he uses.
In addition, students have the opportunity to leave a comment about the coach. These comments will help us to decide which coach to choose.
Being lichess from my point of view the best platform to find a chess coach.
Chessclub.com (ICC)
Chessclub.com is another online chess platform that is relatively well known especially by players who have been playing chess for a long time. This platform has a lot of chess content such as videos, books, software, etc.
In this website we can find in the chess coach section all the masters who advertise their services with the price of this, as well as a description where they are presented along with an email to contact them more directly.
Social networks
Another means by which we can find chess coaches are the social networks where they create their own pages and profiles to publicize their services.
You can search on Facebook groups related to chess, search on Instagram for "chess coach" or any other social network.
You will undoubtedly find some options to choose from.
Choosing a good chess coach
Now let's see what we have to look for in order to find the coach that will help us to achieve our goals. Goals like improving our level for a particular tournament, improving our tactical level, improving our calculation, finals, getting a title (FM-IM-GM) or any other goal.
It is very important that we are very clear about our objective since, as we have seen above, our objective dictates the steps to follow and whether we are on the right track.
Well, once we are clear about what our goal is, now we have to look for a coach to guide us on our way.
Being to teach
The first thing we have to look at is that he has already traveled the road we want to travel, for example, if my goal is to be MF (Fide Master) the most logical thing is that our coach already is or has a higher degree, or at least one of his students has achieved it. If what we want is to improve our tactics or any particular subject, it is only necessary that he is a stronger player than us and that should be enough (ELO points higher than ours).
Coach's experience
Something extremely important is the experience that the coach has, since the more experience he has, the more he will know how to adapt to our needs and our way of learning.
Let us remember that we all learn best in different ways, some in practice, others in a more theoretical way, a mix between the two, in different ways, there are as many ways as there are people.
For this reason I recommend lichess.org to find a chess coach. On their site they give coaches the possibility to put their teaching experience and their working methodology where we can make a decision if we like the way our possible coach works.
An extra feature of lichess is that students can comment on their experience with the coach, which is very important when choosing a coach.
Style of play
Something that can make a difference is that the coach has a chess philosophy similar to ours, by philosophy I mean a style similar to ours.
The question is, why is it important that their way of playing is similar to ours, the answer is that they may have the same strong points as us, for example, if our strong point is calculus and we train with someone whose best skill is also calculus, undoubtedly our level in that skill will be much more enhanced.
In addition, he will understand much better how to guide us, as it resembles his own way of playing would be like training himself.
To see how he plays we can investigate in the games he plays online or in the databases, there we can see if he plays in a positional or more dynamic way, or if he plays variants with positions similar to what we play.
This may not seem very important but as many have happened, over time the student unconsciously ends up absorbing the coach's way of playing, as Magnus Carlsen himself did when he trained with Garry Kasparov (this was the reason why he stopped training with him).
Do not take our education lightly
You might think it is a lot of work to find a chess coach, but as in all aspects of our life we cannot take our education lightly, especially when we are responsible for it ourselves.
If we make a quick decision without much research we can have a bad experience and many times it is not because of the coach but because we did not know how to make the right choice.
Many coaches are very good teachers, but not all of them can meet the needs of everyone, some are better with students who are just starting out, others with highly competent students. That is why we have to find out if the coach we are choosing can help us achieve our goal.
Know of any other ways to find a good trainer?
⭐️ If you want to know more about other articles similar to How To Find A Good Chess Coach? you can visit our category Chess Training. We are waiting for you inside 👍
Leave a Reply