What's a Chess coach going to teach me? At my level, is it a waste of time?

Nicely stated

Everything you can learn yourself without a coach. If you are someone who thinks, 'well, no, you can't learn some of the things' -- as someone mentioned 'bridges' (not sure what he means). However, then how would someone like Paul Morphy, world champion be able to learn everything in the 1800s when there were few coaches and rarely many books (he was just genius, but also worked hard). How do you think he became so good?

Yes, you can learn everything yourself. It's just a matter of dedication and time spent. In addition, the adding of change to your games. In other words, if you continue to play the same style and the same openings/philosophies/strategies--you will be STUCK.

I know people who have been 1200 for years. I know those who have been 1300-1400 for years (including me :P). Yet, I have been able to improve myself, and now feel I am passing the 1400 barrier, by changing all my habits. Completely revamping my own thinking.

Watching more videos on chess (not on chess.com, mainly youtube), analyzing every single one of my games, even ones where I win (advice Kasparov once gave) for inaccuracies.

I have also learned NEW openings and tried them out.

Using tools at chess.com helps as well.

A coach would be very useful, but unfortunately, all coaches desire time, attention, and money---in addition, they make no guarantees of helping you---if you pay him and he turns out to be a horrible coach (you're screwed).

I use to have a friend ~1800, who use to play all the time with me, and try to coach me, but because of his immaturity he didn't know much about teaching. All he did was play me most of the time, beat me, and say I played bad. Or he would point out one mistake, but nothing to help me improve. He couldn't articulate his STRATEGY or TACTICS, or explain openings (so becareful, interview your coach first, let him give you one free lesson first).

I cannot say I have had a real coach myself. What I can say is, 99% of them suck. Even ones who are IM or GM. Have you seen videos by GMs, who cannot even begin to articulate their ideas (I know some people have, but I won't mention names of GMs)? Chess coaches are hard to find, and most of the time, they won't help you too much, because they don't have a strategy to improve your game.

Grammar*

 nee-naw, nee-naw :)

execute-"I cannot say I have had a real coach myself. What I can say is, 99% of them suck"  how do you know they suck and you haven't even met them ?

Because every single self-proclaimed "coach" turned out to not be a coach really--therefore, I haven't really had any coach in my own definition of one who teaches and improves my game.

In other words, if that was difficult to comprehend--I've had many bad players try to coach me who call themselves coaches, but they don't fit my definition of a coach because they didn't do their job right.

Hey, in my defense I said said Grammar (okay grammer) not spelling or syntax.

I looked it up online and learned it in 5 minutes. I don't need to pay someone $25 an hour to teach me that. Besides, how often does the Lucena position occur?

I want to be taught how to evaluate positions, how to tell which move is the best move, etc. I don't want to be taught tricks; I can look those up online.

Understanding common endings is vital to formulating late middlegame plans imo.  How else would you know when to exchange down to an ending if you don't know a winning ending from a losing ending?  Lucena position plays into a lot of decisions, especially in QGD type games, where rook activity can be so important

LUCENA OCCERS 1/14 TIMES.

Get your facts right

There are at least 100 endgame positions you must know

Ok, so you have Luncea down, but there are tons of basic rook+pawn vs rook positions.  Anyway knowing these basic endgames is exactly how you're able to evaluate many different middle game positions.

Not wanting to spend money to learn "tricks" is of course a legitimate concern.  Just saying endgames are vital to middlegames.  It would be like learning an opening and then at move 10 saying, it doesn't matter what happens next, I already know it works because I got all my pieces out, on to the next one   So a coach wouldn't be wrong to at least mention the Luncea position for "homework."

I know most of the fundamental rook + pawn vs rook endings, but I haven't had to use any of them in actual play ever, not even the lucena or philidor. It's strange.

Grammar police? Did I miss something??

see my games, starting from the last to the first - if you have patience to do that.  Evaluate then if I can teach you anything.

 Do you mean they arent coming up in your otb games ? 

I've won games otb due to the lucena position, and I've drawn game due to understanding the philidor position. Now the position wasn't exactly the same as text book examples, but the ideas could still be applied.

I've also had the knight + bishop and king vs king endgame come up, only once though, and in a correspondance game on chess.com.

I'm surprised that players stronger than me, elubas, rainbowraising etc, has never encounted the philidor position in one of their games, almost all (okey, I'm exaggerating) king and rook vs king rook and pawn endgames can be translated to a philidor position if the defender just keeps his king close enough to home.

Strangely in the 33 rated OTB games I've ever played the Lucena Position has only come up once and never in any other setting. The Philidor Position has never come up.