How to Find a Great Chess Coach

Many of us have wanted to hire a chess coach at some time, as it is one of the best steps you can take to improve your chess skills. But how should we go along this difficult endeavor? What distinguishes a great coach who can help you and a player with good intentions but no skill--or even malicious intentions?
While there are two very good articles on this subject that you can also read, I believe I have thoughts to add, especially as an amateur player who was looking for a coach a year or two ago. Here are the other articles if you want to read more on the subject:
Avetik Grigoryan's How to Find the Right Chess Coach: Ultimate Guide and
Noel Studer's How to Find your Perfect Chess Coach in Five Steps
Without further ado, let's dive right into how I found a great chess coach and how you can too! (Along with what to avoid.)

Finding a Coach

Finding a chess coach is probably the easiest part of the process. There are thousands of coaches both on chess.com coaches page and on the Lichess coaches' page. You might be wondering how to find a coach out of the thousands of people! I think it is important to start off with a baseline. Here was mine, and yours could look similar:

• Language barrier: the coach had to be able to speak English--if you speak different languages that also works.
• Price cap: while it is important to remember (as GM Avetik points out in his article) to prioritize cost per rating over cost per hour, there might be a price over which you are simply unable or unwilling to pay. This could be $10 an hour or $1,000 an hour, but think this over well, and then stick to that price cap.
• Strength of coach: if you are an 1800 FIDE player, can a CM teach you valuable lessons and help you? In most cases, of course! But a strong GM coach will often be much more able to immediately notice things you missed while analyzing your games or find ideas in positions that can be very helpful for you. When looking for a coach, you should set how strong a player you want to find.

Remember, if you want a coach over 2600 but have set your max price at $20 an hour, you probably won't be successful. So set these numbers thoughtfully but realistically.

Once you've assembled your requirements, just use the filters on the site you are using to the best of your ability and just scroll through the profiles and manually go through. I personally looked at over 100 different coach profiles even after my site filters and ended up left with about 35 after my baseline requirements. No, it is not easy to find a great chess coach, but if you are willing to put in effort than you can. You have ideally found at least 10-20 coaches that meet your baseline requirements. What next?
(Quick break: my friends at THINK have asked me to share with you the THINK Correspondence Championship. If you enjoy playing correspondence chess, you will enjoy this as much as I have! Find out more about it here. Thanks, now back to the article!)

Only the Best Shall Remain

At this point comes the most important part of your search. Out of all the profiles you have assembled keep only those that meet all of these requirements:

1. Teaching Experience: I cannot overstate how important this is!! 100% the most important characteristic at this point. You want at least a few years of teaching experience, but ideally strong/titled players who they have coached. If possible, you can even often reach out to these players online and ask them what their opinion of the coach is. If it's positive, that's a green flag. If your potential coach could help others improve, chances are they can help you too.
   
2. Teaching Methodology/Best Skills: Be looking for personalization, individual needs, and analyzing students' games. While these are of course not the only methods for coaching and the coaches could be BS-ing, if a coach grabs some nice game by Morphy and shows it to all 15 of their students, that might be exactly what a student needs--but for the overaggressive student, it might be a push in the wrong direction! That's why personalized training is very important.
3. Playing/Opening experience: While not as important, if a coach has tournament experience, especially at some higher-level tournaments, or specializes in a few openings that you could be interested in or are playing, that is a positive sign.

Once you have filtered out all these requirements, you will probably have at least one, but almost definitely less than five coaches left. How should you continue from there?

The Final Step

Once you have one or two coaches remaining, contact them! Here was my message:
"Hello! I am looking for a chess coach, and I would like to see how your lessons/classes are like before I'd make a decision. I am around 1350 USCF, and you can see my lichess rating. I would like to have a 1 hour lesson per week if I chose your coaching, and overall I can spend around 6 hours on chess a week. (Although it's hard to keep up) I would like you to be my coach because you have helped many students reach high levels, because your classes are personalized, and you adapt to the student, and also you try to find their weaknesses. Could we try to have a trial lesson or some trial lessons soon? (10 or 11 AM Saturday, MDT is the best for me but other times could also work). Thanks, looking to see you soon!"
Expect to pay before the lesson and always pay on time! One important thing to notice, although it is not a "deal killer," is whether the coach asks you either during the test lesson or before what your goals are, where you are trying to get to, how much time can you spend on chess, etc.
I had two trial lessons, and one was fine. The other however, looked at my games before the lesson, asked me my goals, gave me homework, and was quite a strong player.
Using this same method, you can find yourself a chess coach that is perfect for you. Almost two years later, I have improved hundreds of rating points both online and OTB. Was it only because of my coach? No. Did he help a lot? Yes! Can you do the same? You bet!

Things to Avoid

Here are a few things to avoid in coaches, whether it is your current coach or when looking for a coach.

• Only ever teaches openings. Openings can be useful and be taught well, but only openings forever are often not what the students need but burn a lot of time.
• Never does anything for you outside of the lesson. Good coaches will follow your tournaments and check on your games at least a little and are not just focused on the money.
• Camera is off during lessons. If you really trust your coach this is fine, but I have heard stories of coaches playing video games or doing other work during lessons. Make sure you are not being scammed!
• You don't understand them. Especially if your coach is too strong for your level or is used to stronger players, if you don't understand how they teach you can of course ask for elaboration. However, if you still don't find your coach easy to follow and understand, that's an issue.
• Is never harsh or strict in the slightest. While you want to avoid an abusive or always angry coach, if your coach never criticizes you when you don't study, play something ridiculous, or play ultra bullet, but is always just "too understanding and nice", that probably means they don't care about you enough to try to help you not to do stupid things.

Conclusion

Coaches can be a great help to your chess, and using the system I outlined you can find one for yourself. To find a better coach than other people, you'll have to search harder than other people. However, if you've found a good coach then that can last you for years and help improve your chess for a long time to come.
Thanks for reading, if you like or follow that would be appreciated!
If you prefer courses over books, you can check out Remote Chess Academy to find affordable but helpful courses! (Not the opening trap ones, those are complete trash!! The ones about calculation, planning, tactics, etc. are fine.)
See you soon!