Why are Chess Coaches So Expensive

Yea some cost like 30 dollar a hour which is expensive?! You are not elon musk right?

1.Biz should not comment in this post coz hes rich

30? Whut I thought It was like 20 dollars and hour which makes sense... uz 15 dollars is what you get at mcdonalds nowadays

There is a $0.99 cheeseburger in the US, lol

You know that they're wasting time teaching you. And some of 'em don't even have a job, so they make income from teaching instead.

$30 an hour for a job that is not generally full time and doesn't have benefits isn't very much. A good coach can charge even more than that and for a coach that does it as their primary job, probably should to cover costs of self-employment.

ikr, some GMs charge $100+/hour

Honestly, $30 ~ $50 dollars an hour for one on one coaching is pretty standard for most activities. A coach needs to eat too!   

Unless you're one of the very best in the world, there's not much money to be made in playing chess.  Coaching and writing are really the only options if one is dedicated to pursuing chess as a career.  Wesley So got $50,000 for winning the US championships.  It's peanuts compared to something like a champion tennis player.

Musk’s income works out to $16 million per hour.

What does a musik-teacher cost? what does a craftsman cost? Do you think somebody who learned chess over many years is worth less?

It also depends on what country they live in. If someone lives in US where everything is expensive compared to most other countries, and that is their only job, it is completely normal for them to ask for such and more expensive rates.

When Covid outbreak started, there were a lot of coaches in other countries that charged far less - for instance I saw that an IM from Serbia charged around 10 euros per hour or even less, because in Serbia there are a lot of titled players compared to how many people live here, so supply and demand is a bit different.

Rates might have changed now due to Covid outbreak as well, as because of online chess boom coaches have many more opportunities nowadays, and it is even easier to have international students (sure, it was possible before, but today it is probably even more common because 1 on 1 in person coaching is not that common today), so I would think that those cheaper rates should have changed by now.

No I’m not why do you think I am

Why do you say it’s a rich man’s game? 

Lol.  Chess is in no way like tennis/golf.  

You can play Chess for a lifetime with a $20 investment of a vinyl board and some plastic pieces..  I'm sure all the homeless people playing chess in the park will be surprised to hear they are playing a rich man's game...

As with many things in life, you get what you pay for. Do you expect a person who has spent their whole life devoted to chess (or anything else) to sell their time, knowledge and experience for the same pay as McDonald's pays someone who knows nothing, has no knowledge and no experience. Not likely, why would they do that?

But on the other hand if you are a beginner why do you need a Grandmaster teaching you? At your level you can get the same value learning from a solid much lower ranked teacher and move up the ladder of teachers as your knowledge grows.

You need to get out more.

I might make the point from my limited experience coaching juniors and a few adults just a bit more than twenty years that a one hour chess lesson might be preceded by several hours analyzing a student’s games. Of course, this is not a requirement, nor does it apply to every lesson. I use a lot of lessons that I developed for other students many years ago. But for any teaching gig—chess or some other subject—there are unpaid hours. Also, teachers are notorious for spending hard-earned money on teaching materials. Look at the library of any decent chess coach and you’ll see the evidence.

When you go to the dentist, find the cheapest one you can. When you need a plumber find one that charges only $10 per hour.