The Truth About Chess Coaching

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."

- Ward, William Arthur.

Are you stuck in your chess progress? I mean, that is a lot of material available, but you don´t know where to go?

Well, maybe it´s time to hire a chess coach. Or isn´t it? 

I got coaching when I started in chess from different professors for some years, and, at the moment, I´m coaching few students also.

With this experience, I got the conclusion that chess coaching provides you three major benefits. Let´s see them together, with some insights too:

1) Where you really make improvements

You don´t make drastic improvement just watching the lessons, the improvements you make during them are small. Your drastic improvement comes from what you do between lessons, studying alone.

The coaching work is to put you on the right path. He does that by analyzing your games and seeing how you think. But you need to understand that your chess understanding and, by consequence, your rating, is just going to increase after you sit down and study hard the material he recommends to you. Better, if you have time, go even beyond this! 

2) You start to get little by little your coaching thinking process

It´s said we are a small part of the 5 people we coexist with more. 

In chess, is actually almost the same. More and more lessons you and your professor have together, the more you see how he thinks, understands this, and, with time, you are going to incorporate it into your game as well.

You don´t need to have the same style as your coach, but it´s a good weapon to know how to use it.

3) Psychological Support

When you are working, you give your employer your energy and time. In exchange, he pays you money. With money, we buy food, pay rent, etc - the essential to living.

Do you see the connection with chess? 

In chess, we also spent a lot of energy and time. It´s normal to be upset after a hard defeat.

Some options to seek comfort after this hard game may be watching a funny movie or eating a lot of ice cream.

However, if you have a coach, you can also rely on them. It´s good to have the support of someone you know and trust to help you with something so important you dedicated yourself so much. He can go with you into your mistakes and together you can find a way to not repeat them again. 

I don´t have a coach. Can I still improve?

Yes, you can! There are a lot of material and training sites. They are more generic, and a coach can help you in a more specific way. 

But everything is possible. Read articles and see videos of masters giving lessons or recommending books. Then, select your own material and get to work!