To me a coach is 1000 times better... you learn a lot faster and cleaner, and with a coach you can do with what you can't do with a book and that is 'SPAR'...
Why have a coach when you can have a book ?
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Jul 29, 2012
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I'd say a coach would be better. 1.Books may not be exactly "easy" to understand. 2.With a coach, you would be able to ask questions. 3.The coach could check your games to see where u blundered and things like that. 4.He would be able to give you good tips and openings. All this is from personal experience. I have a Coach Who is VERY Good. he helped me improve by about 800 points in less than half a year.
Shaolin_Warrior wrote:
I'd say a coach would be better. 1.Books may not be exactly "easy" to understand. 2.With a coach, you would be able to ask questions. 3.The coach could check your games to see where u blundered and things like that. 4.He would be able to give you good tips and openings. All this is from personal experience. I have a Coach Who is VERY Good. he helped me improve by about 800 points in less than half a year.
If the books are too difficult than the person is reading the wrong books; wrong becsause they are either not written well to begin with, or that person hasn't developed enough of a foundation yet to be ready to digest that material.
Your other points are valid, but a big thing I've noticed in some of the newest books is for the author to try and anticipate questions the reader might ask, and print the questions and answers in the book.
hicetnunc wrote:I thought intermediate player as 1500-1700 USCF.1300 is still 'improving player'. With improving players the 'chess thought process' is usually lacking, so it's good to discuss the games with your coach and answer his questions.
you must play really weak players in that range to think that cause 1500-1700 is considered average to advanced
with all this debate ive come to the conclusion that its simply a matter of taste and neither option is better than the other. someone pointed out the 2 ways of improving and from past experiance I can conclude this
coaches subtract negatives from ones play usually
books add positives to ones play usually
KINGDASHER wrote:
A book cannot speak. The spoken word comes across much better
Not necessarily. It depends on your brain's preferred method of learning (which is hardwired). There are three "preferences:"
1. Visual learners who attain the best results from visual cues (diagrams, text, etc.).
2. Audio learners who get the best results from explanations that are spoken to them (or at lectures, etc.).
3. Kinesthetic learners whose natural method of learning is by doing.
The key word there is "preferred." You get the best results when you combine 2 or 3 methods, but where the emphasis is on your preferred learning style.
I'm a visual learner, so books and videos work well for me. With a book, though, I still combine 2 methods to get the most out of it:
I play through the moves in the book using Chessbase (which combines the visual method with kinesthetic learning) , and include key variations and annotations. That means it takes longer to work through the book than if I took a simpler approach, but the extra time invested means I get more out of it.
Videos on this site work well for me, as they are combining my preferred visual method with audio.
well you can ask questions to a coach