Announcing CoachChamps, Chess.com's First Tournament For Coaches And Chess Improvers
We're excited to announce CoachChamps, an event that will bring together the best chess coaches and most dedicated students in our community! This is the first event of its kind, created to find out who the best chess coach is and to celebrate our passionate community of improvers.
The event starts on September 9 at 11 a.m. ET / 17:00 CEST / 9:30 p.m. IST and features a $25,000 prize fund for coaches and exclusive coaching sessions and other prizes for students.
CoachChamps will pair eight top-tier coaches with 32 motivated students in a unique improvement-based competition. Any member of our community has the chance to be selected as one of the students playing in the event. To be eligible to be selected, you must join our Improvers Club and actively participate in the 2025 Chess Improvement Challenge. Yes, you can still sign up for the challenge and reach your improvement goals for 2025!
The eight selected coaches will draft four students each from different rating brackets on September 9. They'll have one month to help their students improve as much as possible to face their final challenge: Starting October 7, the improvers will compete against each other in round-robins to showcase their newfound skills.
Fans will see many familiar faces among the participating coaches. Star content creator WGM Dina Belenkaya has already confirmed her participation in the event. A well-known chess educator, Dina is also the author of the most popular improvement guide from our 2025 Chess Improvement Challenge.
Another well-known coach is content creator, author, and chess commentator GM Arturs Neiksans. Neiksans is a four-time Latvian champion and is currently coaching IM Levy Rozman to help him reach the grandmaster title. He's also the author of our Advanced Study Guide for players rated 1800 and above.
Content creator and Chessable author NM Robert Ramirez and 2024 Chessable Author of the Year CM Can Kabadayi, who both also authored different parts of our study guide for improvers, are confirmed to participate as coaches. We'll announce the four remaining spots soon, so stay tuned!
Any Chess.com member can be selected to participate as a student. You must join our Improvers Club and participate in the 2025 Improvement Challenge to be eligible. We'll choose students based on several criteria, including how supportive they are of other improvers, the content they create, their playing activity, and more.
All participating students will earn various prizes to help in their improvement journey. Aside from the exclusive coaching sessions, every participant will win a one-year Diamond membership and a $100 Chessable voucher. Students who finish in first place within their original rating bracket round-robin will also receive exclusive signed merch.
Who do you think is the best active chess coach in the world? Let us know in the comments below.
