How to get personalized Chess Coaching
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[00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm Grandmaster Nullstuder and today I want to talk about a super important topic, which is why so many chess improvers are unhappy with their chess coaching. Okay. If you've ever considered getting one on one coaching, or actually if you have a coach right now, but you're not super happy.

This episode might be for you. I get a lot of emails. I get a lot of new, potential coaching clients that say, Hey, I wasn't that happy with my previous coaching solution. And I think that has less to do with, trying to shame the coaches that they are doing a bad job, but more to do that.

What. currently adult improvers need is not what many chess coaches are offering. And I think [00:01:00] this mismatch is causing quite some frustration, quite some stagnation, and many people feeling, well, I'm spending money on this one on one coach, but it doesn't really help me. Now, what is this mismatch that I'm talking about?

I think the mismatch that I'm talking about is that many people offering chess lessons are just trying to transfer their knowledge, okay? So, they are, higher rated than their students, and what they're trying to do is they're looking at a game maybe together and they're saying this move is not good, you should play this instead.

Here go for this plan, don't go for that plan, here that was a tactical mistake or they, prepare some kind of standardized lesson, which might be a classical game that they go through, or it might be some tactics exercises, it might be a strategical idea, how to play a certain pawn structure.

And then they teach it to many different students. They have 10 students. [00:02:00] They are all roughly the same rated. So what they are doing, they're preparing material. They're saying, okay, here is how to play against an isolated pawn. And then they giving 10 times the same lesson. That's very, nice for the coach because it's less preparation, more time where they could actually play.

Now, why can this be frustrating for chess improvers? I feel like many chess improvers, they understand that nowadays, especially you have so many options to get someone that is higher rated than you and teach you something. about chess. You can watch YouTube videos, you can read blog articles, you can read all the, these kind of tournament sum ups, the game analysis, you can watch live streams, you get it.

There's so many things you can do. And these were only the The free things that I just now mentioned you can get courses, books, and so on. What many chess improvers are struggling right now is like, there is this [00:03:00] overwhelm of information actually, and they need to know what should I actually do? What should I spend my time on?

What are my weaknesses? And how do I, as a person, personalized coaching, how do I need to improve myself to, break through? And that requires a different skill set than what is mostly on the market. So we have the people offering chess lessons, which is more, Hey, I just, show you what would be a better move in this position.

And then we have the people trying to. Get chess lessons. But what they would like is somebody to tell them, Hey, between our lesson, here's which book you read. Here's actually how you read that book. And by the way, this is your weakness. So when you work on tactics, just work on hanging pieces because you always, hang your pieces, don't work on forks.

You're, you're happy with those. You, you are pretty good with those. And your openings as well. They are pretty good, like this kind of teaching. And I feel like [00:04:00] this is very, very rarely offered. So many people that seek these lessons get this person that is just transferring chest knowledge and they feel like, Hey, I'm wasting my time.

They don't give me anything as a homework and so on. So this is the basic problem. And how I personally try to solve that is that I'm doing personalized coaching. Okay. I'm charging more than most other people, but I'm doing personalized lessons. One lesson is never the same with one student or another.

I try to look at their games, look at their weaknesses. I write training plans for my students. So I would say that we can Maybe form different terms and I would form the term giving chess lessons as one thing. So these are the people just trying to transfer their knowledge. Hey, here, this move is better.

I give it to you. Now you try to do it in your own games. And then we have chess coaches, which I [00:05:00] would put myself in this category that we think about the student. What does the student need? What is the student's, situation at home? How can they focus better? Which books should they read? Which courses should they get?

And this is not just a standardized thing, but it's like, what is specifically good for the student? And I think it's very, very important that you guys, if you seek chess coaching, you need to be very, very clear and aware of what exactly you're looking for. Are you looking for a coach or are you looking for someone giving you a lesson and transferring their chess knowledge?

Now, in my personal opinion, There is not much need for getting lessons except for, someone that looks at you at your games. Okay. With you at your games, because anything else is in courses in books and so on. You can do it way cheaper. Right. You can just get a book, you [00:06:00] can, have a book on tactics and somebody explains you the tactics in that book costs 29 bucks.

Why should you pay maybe hundreds of dollars sitting down with a GM telling you the exact same thing, just in a lesson format. So you don't need that in my opinion. So if you feel like you need one on one coaching, I think for many, many people, it is just that you need the personalized way of coaching and then you need to try to find someone that is not only, seeing you once a week, giving you this one hour, transferring some knowledge and then goodbye, see you next week, but somebody that really cares about your chess improvement journey.

And to be frank, If you want somebody good that is doing that, that will probably cost some money because it requires a lot of time to actually think about your students and, make plans and see, maybe research a book and say, Oh no, this book, I don't like too [00:07:00] much. This might be the kind of, style of this student.

For example, I have students, they love books and they tell me everything basically should be in books. And then they have other students which say, no, I don't want to read any book, give me anything I have to study in course format. So even if these were the exact same two students from the strength and everything, weaknesses, same rating.

Same openings, everything, I would still have to research two completely different kind of education way of teaching them. So yeah, it's, it's taking a lot of time. It's difficult. So when you set out to go for a one on one coaching and you want this personalized way, please be aware. This will cost quite some money and also be aware that you need to Be very clear when you reach out to someone that this is what you're wanting.

You don't want, just another lesson or another teaching on how to play a hanging [00:08:00] pawns, how to play isolated pawns, but you want the personalized way. Working with you. So to finish off this episode, let me give you three potential solutions. If you feel like, yes, that's what I'm talking about is your problem.

When you work with coaches that it's a misalignment. So solution number one is well. Just get a great one on one coach, tell them specifically what you need, tell them that you need, kind of an idea what you do in between lessons, tell them that you're expecting them to look at your games, to understand your weaknesses and be ready to pay for it.

Now, before I'm getting loads of applications, I'm Full at the moment, I'm very fortunate that I always have more applications than time. So don't get your hopes up. You can put yourself on the wait list by filling out the form below. But I would recommend if [00:09:00] it's, time, time bound and important to get a coaching soon search for a different coach.

If you don't have the. you don't want to get a one on one coach, then the second solution would be to train yourself to become your own coach. And that's basically what I did for most of my career. Most of my coaches were amazing coaches. But we're good at transferring knowledge and we weren't talking as much about the way I should study and what exactly I should study when I was studying on my own.

And as a chess professional, you're studying 33. So, I might have the money for two, three, four hours a week with a coach, but not more. So a lot, 90%, 80 percent of the work I did was on my, so in order to understand how to be your own coach, you [00:10:00] need to get better at it. Analyzing your games, you need to get better at understanding what matters on your specific rating.

And you need just a general feeling of how you personally study the best. And this is really very personalized and it can be an advantage if you are your own coach. Because you know yourself the best. And there are basically two ways to do that. One way is a little bit the longer way, but it's the free way, right?

You just try to gather as much information on what you should study, how you should study off the internet. You have a lot of my podcasts, you have even way more, articles that I wrote. You have my newsletters. Those are all aimed also at helping you understand what you need. And what you don't need when you study chess, and I hope this will be useful.

You can also, search for different YouTubers, different authors, [00:11:00] you can, have a cheaper way of maybe buying a few books and trying to understand what you exactly need. And then once you have that knowledge. You can actually approach a coach and this might be just somebody that is giving lessons, right?

Is not doing the personalized way of, of teaching, but you might just say, Hey, I need these two hours with you. And I need to understand exactly this pawn structure. And I need to understand exactly why in this game. Where I could have played differently and what you would recommend me to do next time in that exact specific position, or you might have an opening question, you just approach somebody one hour, give me, exactly what I need in this one hour.

So the more you know about yourself, the more you will be able to approach people specifically. And those could be even people that are just transferring knowledge, but because you know exactly what you need, that is super helpful. You can, pay probably a lower price than [00:12:00] you would pay to people that have personalized training and you get your solution as well.

It will just take quite some time to learn that. But it's a good journey to go on. And in general, my dream would be that at some point I don't have to be here anymore. Everybody knows how to train chess. I don't need to teach you anymore. You just go ahead, train chess. Don't need to listen to me. You just do your stuff.

You do it well, you improve, you're happy. So that would be ideal. The second way of doing it is actually, I have a course about it. This will cost quite some money, right? It's not a cheap course. And It will accelerate this process. The whole idea of that course is that you're learning how to study chess on your own.

It's called next level training. And I'm talking about it because I realize I'm super bad at marketing. When I did my last few, coaching signup calls, There were so many people that are following my things, loving [00:13:00] podcast, everything. And I was saying, Hey, do you know that I have a course on that?

And they were like, no, I don't. And so, yeah, I need to talk more about it. So the course is next level training. You'll learn what matters in chess improvement and you'll learn how to do it. So you learn how to solve tactics the right way. You'll learn how to study strategy. You'll learn how to do end games.

Actually with end games, for example. You probably only need one book. That's very important to know. Then you will learn how to analyze your own games and how to write your own training plans. That's all in that course. And that's basically the knowledge you need to be your own coach. And then, as I said already before, it's the same with the free route.

The goal of that is that you're knowing so much about what you need in your chess training, in your chess coaching that you need Way less hours with people and you're way more specific. So you're not approaching somebody and you're saying, Hey, can you please help me? I have no idea, but [00:14:00] you're approaching somebody and saying, okay, these are the three weak points I want to work on.

And I already know, how to train tactics and so on. So you don't need to, give me tactical exercises. Just tell me. In this opening position, what should I play? In this middle game, when I get an isolated pawn, how should I play this? And in this position, what should I do? Or this kind of very specific approaching of somebody will save you a lot of money later on.

So the three options for you to get more personalized way of improving yourself would be one to just get a very good one on one coach that really cares about you, that you've really personalized the training. And just be aware if they are really good, they will also charge quite a lot of money because what you don't see is usually we charge hourly, but then we spend way more than other people preparing that hour.

So actually, or hourly is not that high as you, as [00:15:00] it seems to be because there is more preparation inside. Bye. Point number two would be if you go the completely free route, you're just saying, okay, I'm, investing every day and hour. And I just try to scratch the internet. I try to read Noel's blog.

I maybe, try to ask ChatGPT. I try to put put articles into ChatGPT, try to listen to YouTubers, what they did to improve their chess. And I try to bring my own training plan together like this. And to get better like that and to understand more and more how to be your own coach. And way number three would be checking out next level training.

I have linked the course below, which is the course about how to study your own, your chess on your own, how to do personalized training for yourself, what really matters and how you need to train the, areas of chess that really matter. matter to get better. No matter which way you decide to go for, I [00:16:00] hope you will be able to get a personalized way of working on your chess, to work on your mistakes, to work on your specific weaknesses, and to just see how much is possible when you do the right training, the right way, and you stick to it.

And I'm looking forward to hear your success stories. See you next week.