Frequency of Chess Lessons?

What is the answer?

I have given private music lessons for many years, and the format has been 30 minute lessons, once a week.

Teaching someone new to chess, I guess it would make sense to use a similar format, since there are several basic things that need to be taught that could be spread out over several weeks, i.e., piece movement, captures, and checkmate.

What is the format for someone not new to the game?  If that person's biggest weakness is tactics, for example, do you tell her to practice tactics puzzles, and have a follow-up lesson in three months, kind of like a doctor's visit?

I think there are basically two ways to use chess coaching, if that's what you're thinking about :

1. You take one 'check-up' lesson 3-4 times a year, and use it to identify your main weaknesses and get some practical study&play advices. However, you need to provide your coach with some good material (ie. a bunch of annotated OTB tournament games) to take full benefits from it.
2. You take regular lessons (2-4 times a month) to analyze your games in some detail, and work between the sessions.

Of course, the second format is more efficient, if only because regular coaching sessions where your games are examined motivate you to play better and train much more regularly (at least it works for me !). It also helps to correct mistakes quicker. But as it requires more dedication and money, many people are satisfied with the 'check-up'.

I think you can relate to this in your field.

I suppose it also depends on how often you play (and for me, online games don't count, only long OTB games are serious). If you only manage to play OTB once a month, it doesn't help to see a coach more frequently, but right after a tournament in which you played six hard games you might have a few sessions to discuss them.

Well, I do analyze my Internet long games with my trainer. I agree it's not as good material as OTB games, but it's still quite instructive.

1. Check-up Chess Lessons

I had a Check-up Chess Lesson several months ago by the best Expert rated player at our local club, showing him one of my casual/long  OTB games, annotated by Fritz.  Oops!   As we played through the game, he noticed that neither player had a plan, and stated that the basic plan would have been for one player to attack kingside, while the other attacked queenside.  He also said this often, “That move doesn’t do anything.”  Ouch!  The time with him was free and he has a pleasant personality, so I have no complaints.  If I get this opportunity again, I will bring self annotated games!

2. Regular Chess Lessons ( 2-4 times a month)

Motivation!  An excellent word to associate with regular private chess lessons, stimulating better play and more consistent training. I like it.

Hmm…dedication and money.   Spending money is much easier than spending time making one’s brain work harder, especially after a long hard day at work!  Parents ask me, “How much should my child practice?”  I ask for daily practice of 15 to 30 minutes.  My students are all under 12.

If I may ask, how much time to you budget for practice and play to get the most out of your coaching sessions?   Spending 15 to 30 minutes daily is probably not enough when factoring in those long OTB games that take hours!

How would a coach teach this old beginner how to play chess?  I wonder.  Can an old dog learn new tricks?

Lesson One:  Coach  says,  “Stop hanging pieces, and you will one day hit 1600!”  I say,  “O.K. No problem. I will play slower and treat my pieces like my own children, with love. ”

Lesson Two: Coach says, “Didn’t  I tell you to stop hanging pieces?!” I say, “Yep. Sorry coach. I will play even slower.”

Lesson Three: Coach says,  “How am I going to teach you? You are still hanging pieces!”  I say, Well coach, how about you teach me some cool opening traps? That way, my opponent won’t have enough time to take any of my pieces, since he will be checkmated in under 20 moves. ”

I just finished giving a 30 minute private piano lesson to a 7 year old boy.  It definitely is good that he comes to see me once a week, and it’s even better when he practices!  This time, he was gone most of the week on a family vacation, and it showed. I had to re-teach a song.  The good thing, however, was that since the song was not new to him, I was able to go deeper and teach him a few of my tricks, techniques for shifting from one part of the keyboard to another, as there are many shift points in the song.

Perhaps that is how chess is taught on a weekly basis, a little trick here, a little fix there. Not too much information at once.  Just enough to put into practice immediately.

Thanks for your reply and positive thoughts.  Most refreshing. 

"But knowing the relations between chords and how to build melodies over them, is awesome."

You understand something about music that most people don’t find interesting, only wanting to hear the lyric, melody and beat. My wife is like that. She has gotten angry with me in the past when I would analyze chord progressions out loud in the car.  I had to stop that practice to stay married.

I have spent most of my life exploring the relationship between chords and melodies. It has fascinated me since a young child. So much so that I got quite good at it, and won a competitive music scholarship in jazz arranging from the University of North Texas, where there are many, many student jazz bands!

Regarding private music lessons, 30 minutes has always been standard practice, especially for younger students. As a college student in the 70's, I would study my secondary instrument, the alto saxophone, with graduate students, and those lessons were 60 minutes long.

At least for this one 7 year old boy that I give piano lessons to, he starts to lose focus and get mentally tired after 30 minutes, and I do sometimes stretch it to 40 minutes, at no extra charge. I push him pretty hard, and he likes the challenge. To keep it friendly, there is some small talk, but very little. I do believe in developing a relationship with my students that goes beyond the clinical and cold student-teacher relationship.

I looked up the exchange rate and discovered that 20 euros is only 25 dollars. That is a very low price to pay someone for one hour of their time. I charge 20 dollars for 30 minutes, and my fee is on the low side because the parent is a friend.

NM Dan Heisman charges 85 dollars per hour for chess lessons!   I have several books by Heisman, subscribe to his video instruction over at ICC, and am a huge fan of his articles and teaching style.  He has an excellent page devoted to private lessons with a guide for adults, i.e., why lessons and when are you ready for lessons?

He can teach long distance using Skype, which would be fine with me. I’ve had a few free chess lessons in that way, one with someone all the way from England, and another from someone really far away, in Australia, where it wasn’t even the same day for both of us. I loved it!  Both men are really strong players  and excellent teachers.  Players of that strength can identify my weaknesses immediately!

Below is a very small sample  of what Heisman says about chess lessons. To learn more, here’s a link: http://danheisman.home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Lessons/chess_lesson.htm

We want to go over your games together "live" because...for many players their weaknesses are in how they evaluate and analyze positions. This is not as easy to see just from looking at the moves! For example, I have several exercises where the student either analyzes out-loud over the phone or evaluates positions for me. This helps identify weaknesses in a way just the raw game score cannot.

The only requirement for taking lessons with Dan...You are willing to play long time-control games against humans...

You don't have to take a lesson every week; once every 1-3 weeks is going to be much more effective than once every 3-4 months because of continuity.

GAMES ARE THE FUEL FOR MOST LESSONS - while I have many "canned" lessons on instructive problems, openings, endgames, etc. your games, more than anything else, will tell me what you understand and what you don't, and therefore what you need to learn to get better.

One of the main goals of a lesson is to concentrate on what YOU are doing that needs help. Therefore one of my goals is to not spend too much lesson time doing things you could be doing for homework, unless you ask.

Play ~55% of your chess time; Study 45%:

If I may ask, how much time to you budget for practice and play to get the most out of your coaching sessions?   Spending 15 to 30 minutes daily is probably not enough when factoring in those long OTB games that take hours!

I practice chess 10-20hrs/week (chess.com chat not included), and I take 2x2hrs lessons per month.

Lesson One:  Coach  says,  “Stop hanging pieces, and you will one day hit 1600!”  I say,  “O.K. No problem. I will play slower and treat my pieces like my own children, with love. ”

Lesson Two: Coach says, “Didn’t  I tell you to stop hanging pieces?!” I say, “Yep. Sorry coach. I will play even slower.”

Yes, but a good coach will provide relevant exercises, and some step-by-step methods if necessary to solve this kind of problem.

If one of my students had this problem, you can be sure he won't leave the session without having been asked "what's the threat here ?" at least a dozen times

NM Dan Heisman charges 85 dollars per hour for chess lessons!

You should try me : I understand his methods, I'm way cheaper and I don't use computers !

Only drawback : you must contend with my French accent (but so far all American people were okay with it).

I teach chess in two settings, one is the school system here in San Francisco (at six schools), where I have a class of 9 to 21 students, and privately. In both cases, I meet with my students once a week to start. The lessons last for one hour. In the classroom setting, I lecture for 30 minutes and watch the students play for the remaining 30 minutes. The lecture revolves around a "master" game. The game I choose for each lecture revolves around a specific topic such as a specific opening or tactical idea. When I teach privately, the structure and content of my lessons is based on the student's level of experience. With beginners, after the basics movement and rules have been learned, we go on to opening principles and tactical plays.

With more experienced players, I play through their last OTB game with them and do some analysis. I teach my students to teach themselves. What I mean is that I provide them books and software that allows them to study independently. We meet every two weeks and then once a month. I also analyze their games on my own so I know where they are having trouble.

All students get homework and it is mandatory. If you don't do the work, you have to find a new teacher. I do this because I don't want to waste some-one's time and money if they're not willing to put work into their game.