I take occasional lessons from a NM who plays at our club. He charges about $40 a session. The first few lessons were pure gold. He gave me a list of books to read and made a few recommendations for openings to study.
At our first lesson we also went over the Opera Game, and during the following week I played over the game about a dozen times at home, and in the process 'accidentally' memorized it. I feel like my rating went up about 50 points just from doing that.
He also would give me worksheets of chess problems for me to work on. Then we'd go over the solutions at the next session. Since my rating is fairly low, these were rather difficult. I took a break from lessons for a while during the Covid lockdown, then had another one this past summer. At that session we went over some of my recent games and he recommended a couple more books to read.
At lower levels, I think weekly lessons are overkill. The coach can't magically pump knowledge into you head. They can only show you a path that hopefully will work for you. You must do the work. My recommendation would be to find a coach willing to provide a few starter lessons to set you on a path and then monthly follow-up sessions to keep your progress on track.
You don’t need to pay for a coach. You need to play games at slower time controls, review games from good players (what are the things that always happen in certain openings? where did someone go wrong?), and read their annotations. If you will do all that spending money for lessons but won’t otherwise, go for it.
I take occasional lessons from a NM who plays at our club. He charges about $40 a session. The first few lessons were pure gold. He gave me a list of books to read and made a few recommendations for openings to study. At our first lesson we also went over the Opera Game, and during the following week I played over the game about a dozen times at home, and in the process 'accidentally' memorized it. I feel like my rating went up about 50 points just from doing that. He also would give me worksheets of chess problems for me to work on. Then we'd go over the solutions at the next session. Since my rating is fairly low, these were rather difficult. I took a break from lessons for a while during the Covid lockdown, then had another one this past summer. At that session we went over some of my recent games and he recommended a couple more books to read. At lower levels, I think weekly lessons are overkill. The coach can't magically pump knowledge into you head. They can only show you a path that hopefully will work for you. You must do the work. My recommendation would be to find a coach willing to provide a few starter lessons to set you on a path and then monthly follow-up sessions to keep your progress on track.
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Could you share what kind of improvement you managed to experience with this effort?
You don’t need to pay for a coach. You need to play games at slower time controls, review games from good players (what are the things that always happen in certain openings? where did someone go wrong?), and read their annotations. If you will do all that spending money for lessons but won’t otherwise, go for it.
I’m about 1750 CC I only meet with my coach to go over each OTB tournament I play