What is a good rating for a teenager?

Do you mean reviews such as this one?

http://www.chessvibes.com/reviews/review-mastering-positional-chess/

The clear subtext is that the best bits of Naroditsky's book are lifted completely from other sources without proper attribution.

PG-13

I did read the reviews.

My point was mastering complex endgames oversells it.  It's not age or title discrimination.  A 13/14 year old IM has not mastered anything, period.  That's just being realistic.

But yes, it's hard for an adult not to be skeptical.  Right or wrong adults are going to question a kid's wisdom, there's no way around it I'm afraid.  The up side is at that age you have a lot to look forward to.  As much as your mind has developed from 10 to 13 it's going to happen many times over from 13 to 20.  So as great as you and Daniel are now (you're both very good chess players and intelligent human beings I'm sure) you're also going to look back on that age and be amazed how far you've come since then.

Sorry, I think I have to disagree. I'm on my third already, and most players who are serious about improvement have one. Most great coaches aren't even GMs (NM Dan Heisman springs to mind).

It was just my guess.  In my mind there are tons of tournament players who don't bother with coaches.  How many tourney players in the US vs how many coaches?  And also because of convenience, money, or seriousness. 

But yeah, I could be wrong.  Especially in the information age maybe it's even quite common to have a coach?!

I'm guessing too :-) Maybe we can round up all the coaches and all the players and have them stand in a line and count. :-)

There are many good reasons for a chess coach to tell his student that the student's playing strength is much higher than the rating. But a good coach will also tell you that you must perform at that level to prove it. 

Ratings do lag behind strength, especially for juniors. But they also catch up. It does little good to brag about a playing strength that hasn't been proven over the board.

Karjakin was a GM at age 12, why aren't you like him :P

I play at the school's OTB club, so it's not like I'm just playing online. There are no legitimate clubs in my area (by legitimate I mean beyond just the high school, where there is truly limited skill), so perhaps I'll start a club for the local area.The next question is, how do I go about this?

And at your guys' advice, I'm currently looking into tournements. Thank you for your help so far!

When I was your age, I dodn't havce a coach. So some friends and I put together a HS chess team, and recruited ourselves a coach who was fresh out of college.

Didn't cost us a dime. 4 months later, we won the state championship.

2500

Really? That's pretty cool. How did you go about this? We have a high school chess club, but not an official team. I'd love to make it competitive soon, though.

Well, wafflemaster, there is a difference between questioning a kid's wisdom and assuming it is wrong. It's in fact wise to be skeptical about a kid, but ultimately the fair thing to do is to nonetheless give concrete reasons that apply to the situation. If you want to say Daniel Naroditsky is mistaken in certain respects for example, no matter your suspicions, to make a stronger claim you ought to challenge a specific part of his logic. Again, it makes sense to suspiciously look over what he is saying, but ultimately a real claim has to come from something more concrete -- it can't just be made up. Any incorrect argument deserves an explanation of how that is the case -- that's how you grow.

Of course, no one has mastered anything in chess. It's strange -- I never interpreted the title literally -- just never had an effect on me for the years I've heard of this/these books. I just kind of thought of it as simply "knowing what you need to know about them," or "overcoming their difficulties with this part of the game." We, as Americans perhaps, tend to use the word "mastering" loosely, don't we? Don't we say all the time to "master the basics," which would imply mastering tactics and endgames as if that were possible? I think there has simply been a trend where master is not used in a pure way -- for example, a "master" at chess is someone who is good, yet with his 2200 rating still has a lot to learn.

MDCCLXIV

It's a chess site, so here's a chess analogy. If I were to, face-to-face, raise counter arguments about a grandmaster's move/idea, I would do so so that I could understand a concept in terms of real logic. If he were to answer why I am wrong with "Because you're a weak player," well, this is perhaps even a correct statement in the sense that it is my incompetence with chess that causes my incorrect concept to be thought of as correct. But it's not constructive, and it's not concrete either, as he is not pointing to the correct intrinsic chess logic, but rather making the likely assumption that he is correct because by being a stronger player it would be unlikely that a weaker player could see a valid hole that he wouldn't be able to see himself.

Proving the idea correct regardless of suspicions allows me to actually learn something about the game, other than the fact that grandmasters' ideas are correct, and mine are not, something I am already aware of. In the end, I will, most likely, be in the same boat as I would be if I followed the GM's advice without questioning it: either way, I would use his idea in that situation. The key difference is how it was reached; the questioning method involves a lot more understanding because it sees the intrinsic strength more clearly compared to the former method which in fact hardly requires understanding of its intrinsic chess strength at all!

And of course there is that .01% chance or something that I am actually right, which would be a fun moment. Maybe the chance is even less than that. But this isn't really the point -- what's important is the points above.

Recently I played against a national master -- had a reasonably balanced game going in a closed position but my opponent pretended to blunder a pawn. Sure I was surprised that an NM would blunder a pawn, and questioned it, but when I didn't find anything, yeah, I didn't make up a tactic for him, and I took it and waited for his response. Turns out he had a queen trap prepared all along, and he was able to win my queen for a bishop and the pawn I took. After the game he told me that I have to trust the master that he would never blunder like that. In general principle though I disagree with him: although here it got me into trouble, I think getting my old concepts refuted is the only efficient way to improve them. It allows me not only to actually pounce on a blunder if it actually exists (instead of just assuming it only based on the strength of my opponent), but I'm participating in a true battle of ideas, his ideas against mine, and I think that's the only way I can put pressure on better players in the long run: challenge their concepts; otherwise whether they are right or wrong, you will always do what they want you to do out of "respect." Sometimes it'll get your queen trapped, but I got a worst case scenario that time -- usually I won't miss something like that and most of the time it keeps me from losing the initiative.

The fact that, until I get to master level, this idea of disrespecting the master will probably result in blunders 75-80% of the time -- I don't really care! Maybe if a lot of money is on the line I might temporarily change this up, but I think this way of moving up is the most efficient and the most satisfying anyway, because again, it's your honest chess. Essentially I am playing devil's advocate with the master -- I may believe that even though my logic tells me one thing, there is probably something going on beyond my grasp; but I nonetheless demand the master to tell me what that something, if it exists, is.

Yes, I will look harder for a trap against a master than I would a beginner (again there is a difference between skepticism and a pure assumption that something is incorrect), but that does not mean I will create an idea for my opponent if, even after excessive searching, I don't find a convincing one.

@ elubas

You're saying withhold judgement until I've read his books.  Ok.  But I said several times the books probably have good information.

I read the reviews and they didn't change my mind from what I initially thought.  Partly because the point SmyslovFan brought up.  I still tend to think either the books are poor or he had a lot of help writing them.  It seems he had help and the books are good.

I'm a pretty cynical person.  I'm don't extend much faith in anything if I find it a bit questionable.  In this case it's a kid + IM writing on a subject known to require experience to play well.  Plus it's his first book.  An instructional book requires not only that you know the subject (and he might be a little karpov) but also have the skills to teach it in book form which requires a lot of work for anyone no matter the age or instructional book writing experience they have.

I am thinking....PG-13.

Anything higher than that, bring your parents along.

Totally agree with Smyslov on that point. Obviously, you can be underrated. But you shouldn't use that possibility to make a strong claim about it. The problem is subjectivity: when we assess our play, we may be unconsciously trying to emphasize the good points of our play, for example, a game where we beat a player much higher rated, conveniently forgetting about our difficulties in avoiding draws and losses against lower rated and equal players. It's just so natural that a person will look at the good aspects of their play, and their good moments where they performed "better than their rating" that can keep them from getting the full picture. If you say you are underrated yet after, say, three tournaments, you don't move much, whatever you may think of your play, something is keeping you from getting results.

As for me, I think my 1950 USCF is pretty accurate at the moment (that's right, I am not claiming to be underrated), but as I acquire new ideas and improve my consistency (one of the most important areas for me to work on IMO), I think getting to 2000 within a year or so is fairly feasible -- we'll see.

I think I am overrated. I just played in a tournament where I won one, drew one, and lost three, and my rating change was only -2 despite such an abysmal performance. 

You must have played a bunch of masters or something!