In Defense of Chess Coaching

[Scene: Courtroom hearing on Chess Coaching. Dan on witness stand, a few hundred inquisitive spectators watching the proceedings...]

Bard: You are aware of the accusation that chess coaches can't really help people play chess better - that they are all stealing money?

Dan: Yes.

Bard: I take it that you, as a full-time chess coach, disagree?

Dan: Yes.

Bard: Even though the great Botvinnik himself is famously quoted as saying "Chess cannot be taught. Chess can only be learned."

Dan: Yes, and I should note that Botvinnik was supposedly teaching a chess class when he said that!

[Audience chuckles]

Dan (continuing): Botvinnik meant that chess, like other complex mental activities such as reading, requires the brain to become familiar with both patterns and ideas, and that can only be done by repetitious exposure, as readers do. I discuss this in the first chapter of my Everyone's Second Chess Book, "Learning, Chunking, and Chess Mistakes." Yet there are many respectable reading teachers.

Bard: And even Bobby Fischer said that he did it all by himself.

Dan: Yes, and every day after school young Bobby would go over to my coach's coach John Collins' house, and analyze with players like Collins and his disciples Bill Lombardy, the Byrne brothers, etc. Later he did not have a Soviet crew analyzing his adjourned games but that doesn't mean his development was in a closet. Bobby was also a frequent player at the Manhattan Chess Club and a multitude of long time control tournaments up and down the East Coast. Almost all good players either had strong chess coaches for a while or were able to "hang out" in strong chess clubs and analyze with strong players for a couple of years. One IM called this "immersing yourself in the chess culture", a prerequisite for internationally titled play.

Bard: Everyone seems to learn from chess books, but only a few players have coaches.

Dan: Yes, getting information by book or computer or video is an important part of the learning process (see The Theory of Chess Improvement at http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman54.pdf ). However, to get the proper feedback you need a human to help. I never saw a book look at someone's game and say "Yes, you read me, but you made all your moves in 17 seconds or less despite having 60 minutes on your clock, so you hardly tried to use what you read. Slow down and we'll learn to analyze!"

[Another murmur of approval from audience]

Bard: You mention computers. The best are rated about 3200; they can find a player's missed tactics better than any human instructor.

Dan: Yes, absolutely. I use them after each one of my games for that purpose. But finding missing tactics is only a very small part of what an instructor does and, even there, an instructor can show you both when and how to look for tactics using cues like the Seeds of Tactical Destruction (http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman05.pdf and http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman24.pdf), much less all the other chess skills that need to be developed.

Bard: So you are claiming everyone needs an instructor to improve?

Dan: [stands in protest] No! That's patently absurd. Many players, especially in the early learning stages, can improve greatly just by playing many games, doing the standard "improvement" reading about basic tactics and strategy, and reading instructional game books like Chernev's Logical Chess Move by Move and McDonald's Chess: the art of logical thinking. They can augment the tactics with modern tools like Chess.com's Tactics Trainer or Chess Mentor.

Bard: So one can become a good player without ever hiring an instructor?

Dan: Yes, but much of the answer depends on your definition of "good". I am sure a few of the 2,000 or so GMs never hired an instructor but, as I noted earlier, they probably had someone who performed a similar "feedback" role (see The Improvement Feedback Loop at http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman98.pdf ).