Looking for Chess Coach

Unless you have plenty of money to pay a coach/teacher/trainer I think you should just work on your own until you find that you have reached a point that you no longer make progress working on your own. I never worked with a trainer/coach until after I was over 2200, which I did on my own. I simply couldnt afford to pay for chess lessons/training so had no choice.

Coach vs no coach -
     Coaches are great for giving you that sense of direction, and it's true you'll tend to make more progress with a coach then without.  However, the greener the student, the less difference you'll see between coach and no-coach.  Online coaches in particular are limited to how much they can do.  Often they have multiple students and hand out common enough advice.

     Having made it (nearly) through a masters program you know how to budget your time and study.  If your only goal is to be competent enough to not lose all your games at a tourney then 1 year of self study would do that, i.e. minus the cost of a coach.  If you're looking for someone to annotate your games, I'd be more than willing to go over one every now and then (you can message me) or simply post one over at the game analysis forum 

Cost and effectiveness of a coach -
     One of the most important methods to improvement as a beginner/lower class player is playing lots of games.  At that level something like the Chessmaster program can point out your basic errors as well as a coach could.  e.g. principals of opening a chess game, basic tactics, and the like.

     A GM coach would run $75-100 an hour or more.  A lesser title and you might get down to $25 an hour.  Lets say you meet with a coach for an hour, once a week for a year ($1300), subtract a few holidays and it'll still be $1000+.  If you wanted to make master by a certain date, this may be worth it.  It's not so much the cost, but that if you're looking for minimum competency, coach vs no coach will be little difference to the end result.  The homework and guidance the coach will give is standard and easy enough to find.

Self taught -
     Playing games, reviewing them with Chessmaster, and a few books.  For less than half the cost (>$1000) you can get Chessmaster and a few good books.  Chessmaster 10K is $15 on amazon.  I would recommend a few books out of Seriwan's Winning Chess series.  Winning Chess Strategies, Winning Chess Tactics, and Winning Chess Endings The combined cost is $75-85, and it will take you less than 6 months to work through them.  Remember at least 50% of your study time should be devoted to playing actual games and reviewing them.  Next order of importance is solving tactical puzzles.  Last is getting through those 3 books, which I'm guessing would seem like light reading anyway.

     6 months later, now you can split your time between drilling tactics, playing games, and one or two more books.  I would recommend something like Chess Master vs Chess Amateur and then tackle the classic Modern Chess Strategy (by Pachman).  Combined cost of $25.  Do this and review your games in Chessmaster for the next 6 months and you would definitely be competent.  Of course depending on your natural ability, seriousness of study, etc etc you could be anywhere from crappy to master level so I wouldn't promise any ability, but I'd guess 80% of adult beginner players who did this at 10hrs/week would end up in the 1300-1400 USCF** range, certainly better than 99% of 8 year olds

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Of course a membership on this site has many benefits as well.  You can check them out vs the different costs here.  I would be interested in videos / chess mentor / and the computer workout (note, not the play vs computer, "little chess partner")

You may also find Heisman's page interesting.  "NM Dan Heisman authors the award-winning Novice Nook columnist, aimed at improving adults ." (Wiki)  What I linked simply has a lot of guidelines, principals, and tidbits.  At the top you'll see a few good points under the "Improving/Learning" category.

** While other's will correctly note there is no conversion between types of ratings, as a rough estimate I would put the average 1300-1400 USCF player at 1600-1700 turn-based chess.com.

I'm backing orangehonda on the Chessmaster advice.

I've been playing on Chessmaster for years but only recently have I truly gotten deadly serious about chess. I study 3-5 hours a day with several different books but I have switched from CM to Fritz 12 for my play. But Chessmaster was a huge help to me and I find myself improving every day. The more you play, the better you'll get, and both programs annotate and analyze pretty well. All it takes is steady devotion, a strong will, and a lot of patience, which you have from almost finishing a Master's degree. Good luck. 

I would largely agree with Orangehonda's advice in post #2, if you want game analysis just post them, thats the entire point of a chess community: everyone helps everyone out. That said, most of my topics go rather unloved :( 

Also there are plenty of free resources about the place if you look for it: http://www.chessvideos.tv/ has plenty of chess lectures, youtube also has its fair share of decent chess videos, the user "Kingcrusher" comes to mind. 

if you dont want to gat checkmated by some 8 year old, spend a few hours on http://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics.html.

I have no advice on whether you should get coaching or not, and I certainly agree that it is expensive. Also, a local coach would be far better than an online coach.

However, if you want to find a good online coach, follow these links:

http://www.chess.com/members/view/TigerLilov

www.tigerlilov.com

I like NM Reb's point, chess progress tends to go in stages and at some point you are going to get stuck. At those points a teacher can be very handy in making a breakthrough.

If you have a year and 10 hours a week to devote to it. Simple. Play and study your games. Can you travel and play otb once a month for 4-6 games? If so that is ideal. If not arrange to play someone about 200 rating points better than you regularly. If you play g/45 2-4x a week and study your games you will get stronger. When you are even strength with your opponent- find a new one. If you have to pay em 5-10 bucks to play you. The key is your facing someone just strong enough to challenge you for the full 45min.

Chess improvement isn't nearly so much about knowledge as about gaining skill at handling positions you are not familiar with.

And of course you can always post your games here for discussion.

In Math, advanced ideas are built up on fundanmental ideas, often times when we have trouble with the big ideas, it is not because we are stupid- or even that the advanced idea is particularly hard- often it is simply a matter of having missed a fundamental idea which is the real key.

This is very valuable advice.

I just realized the need to be specific with your original post: Do you need a chess tutor, a chess coach or just self-study?

1. The benefits of studying by yourself has been mentioned enough times already, and you've decided to do that already.

2. When will you need a chess coach? I normally hear about them when someone is preparing for chess tournaments and matches. Players who have made competitive chess as a career or profession need their guidance, advice and manpower for match preparation. 

3. When do you go to a chess tutor? Probably when casual players get stumped with games against humans and computers, and cannot seem to find the answer from slightly stronger players, books, computers or the internet. You may  eventually find it yourself, but paying a tutor for a one-time session to focus on your particular weaknesses can save you a lot of time and avoid frustration.

In short, study by yourself but do not be afraid to pay a chess tutor when you need it.

So in short, my motivations were a linear combination of both #2 and #3 (bad math joke).

I wanted to recommend this book for people who choose self-study first:

Studying Chess Made Easy by Andrew Soltis

Consider it as the most up-to-date manual or guidebook to learn how to become stronger in chess and is backed by the experience of a reputable chess writer.

If you read the few Amazon reviews, you will notice the general feeling of "I wish that I had something like this when I was starting out with chess years ago." I share their sentiments.

There will always be lists and forum threads on what books and materials to read, study and master, but this is one of those books that explains to you HOW to study any of the materials.

EDIT: In your world, think of it as a Math course curriculum outline that has personal notes from each of the professors on WHAT they expect you should learn and the HOW you could best way to learn it. Of course, one can argue that everyone has a different way of learning, but this book is just a guide and NOT a law.

For me, this is not spoonfeeding; rather, this is being EFFICIENT for a self-taught casual player.

I don't see how it's a joke - to me this is a normal way of talking.

I don't see how it's a joke - to me this is a normal way of talking.

Linear combination of Y and Z. The context is a system of linear equations with variables X, Y, Z.

I was just playing with the words, so I could be wrong.