How To Improve Your Skills in Chess - Advices from a Coach

Dear Chessfriends,

I can see a lot of forum topics with a question like 'How could I be better at chess?'. I usually write a comment to these forums separately but I thought I would create an own forum where everyone can see my recommendations. I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Please, read my post carefully and if you have any further questions, you can write a comment or you can ask me in private, too. I know that a lot of people like trolling and writing rude comments, it would be great if this forum was an educational one instead of full of trolling. Thank you!

Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analysing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem that it can't explain you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why is it so good or bad.

You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.

In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.

I hope this is helpful for you.   Good luck for your games!

Gabor is a great coach, he helped me finally break through 2000 UCSF rating!

Thank you for your comment, Olex! But this is just the beginning! The target is the NM title!

Dear Chess Friends,

I'm happy to announce that I started my new, chess educational Patreon channel. I'm planning to upload 3-4 videos per week about openings, strategies, tactics, endgames and game analysis.

If you are interested in it or you just would like to support my work, please visit my Patreon channel (patreon.com/Bgabor91) and choose a membership which is the most suitable for you and subsribe.

There are more than 20 videos already uploaded! I hope you'll find a lot of useful information there.

Kind regards,

Gabor

Improving 4 aspects at the same time. The result will be fatigue. Focusing on weakness, the result your stronger areas will get weaker. Focusing on strong areas the weak areas just get weaker. I do not know what to do. I do not want to get a coach it feels like coach will no use since I know my chess better than anyone else. Kind regards.

No need to get a coach. I have some collection of chess books. What fallacy I commented regarding OP of training all aspects at the same time. If you do that the result you get stressed and fatigue. If I had brought myself, taught myself, from beginner to this level. I can get myself further. Am just looking for the right amount of training routine technique that would fit for me. Kind regards.

In my opinion, until you had a personal coach, you shouldn't say 'no need to get a coach'. Please, don't misunderstand me, that's an amazing achievement that you reached your chess.com level without a coach (I don't know your over the board rating), but you can never know where you would be with the help of a coach.

E.g. I have three students who won National Championships at their age group with the method how I teach them. One of them is a 11 year old kid, who already reached 2000 rating points over the board (and 2100 on chess.com).

If you take a look at my students' feedback on chess.com, you can see their improvement, so in my opinion, my method works.

But thank you for your comment, I don't want to argue with you about this topic and I wish you the best with your chess career.

I am not discouraging people to not get a coach. For my chess personal journey at least. I am used to study on my own. Maybe soon if I really cannot improve anymore. That's the time getting a coach is a good idea. Kind regards.

Maybe in the near future. Thanks for the advice. At the moment I am still improving. Fide and online rating may go down, but you know within you that you are improving. Of course, through constant study and practice.