GM online lessons or training games with GM?

Hi.

I'm eager to improve my chess skills. I'm around 2200 blitz here on chess.com and 2300 on lichess. I started chess late at 27. So I've been playing for around 10 years now. I had 2 years of online chess lessons with strong GM already. But I wasn't satisfied cause of long, quite boring lectures on openings, which were 70% of all our lesson. Not once we analyse my own game.

I saw on lichess that some strong GMs offers 1h of training game. For ex. GM Aleksandr Rakhmanov (2674 peak elo) who offers 1h/training games for 50$. I know it's a little bit on pricey side...

But my main question is: Is better to do training games with such a great player or any GM or rather taking online GM lesonns (both once a week)?

Thanks for help in advance.

Thanks for your reply. I agree that chess above 2200 is a lot about opening, though I think I'd benefited better if we did more analysis of my own games together. But that's not the point of my discussion.

My main question is if it's better to do online training games or online lessons. I doubt I'll have money to do both, so I'm searching for better option.

#1

"Not once we analyse my own game."
++ You can analyse your own lost games with the help of an engine for free.

"For ex. GM Aleksandr Rakhmanov (2674 peak elo) who offers 1h/training games for 50$. I know it's a little bit on pricey side..."
++ 50 $/h is cheap for a GM. 100 $/h is normal and a top GM: 200 $/h.

"Is better to do training games with such a great player or any GM"
++ You can play training games with a 3000 rated engine for free.

"or rather taking online GM lesonns"
A 20 $ book by a top grandmaster gives you 200 h of top tuition.

Appriciate the help man. I also do book studying. I read whole fischer 60 memorable games, whole Caruana book, but yeah I should be doing that regulary.

Agree. Studying is most important that's for sure. But I think you need someone who can guide you every now and then. Also reading book, or thousands of books doesn't give you experiences facing strong opposition. It's one thing to do the let's say training in soccer and another thing to play in front of 70.000 people. In my opinion experiences are utterly important.

#7
That is right: playing games against strong players, losing, and then learning from your mistakes is the best way. You can pay a GM to play training games with you, but you can also play training games against a strong engine for free. You can pay a GM to analyse your games, but you can also let an engine help you analysing your games for free.
About books: less is more. Many people buy books and read them as if these were novels, but that is not the way. You have to study the annotated grandmaster games. A GM may help, but it will seem easy and maybe it is better to do that on your own.
Playing real games over the board in tournaments is a valuable experience indeed.

Depends what you want. If you want to analyze your games, you should find a coach who offers you that.

A good coach will ask you to analyze your own games without an engine and note the thoughts you had during the game and then analyze the games with you and tell you what to work on.

Thanks guys. That was what I needed. Now I can decide better. Also I think playing against computer is great idea. I never considered that.

Personally I think if you've done enough preparation on all your openings, then training games are really useful to see how your preparation can be implemented and how to play the resulting middle game positions...

But if you want overall chess improvement in your ways of thinking, technique. etc, reading books is a must and then you can ask questions to the strong GM you're having lessons with. Basically don't just passively take in the information, build up a foundation first by yourself i'd say 

Again thanks for help everyone. At the end I decided to contact GM Aleksandr and we decided to do 3 training games + one lesson per month. I'll post my experiences in my blog every month (hope it's not wrong to advertise)

https://www.chess.com/blog/Viennaconcert

That's good, but what is your real rating?

I don't have elo rating yet. My lichess blitz peak was 2374. I started to play chess very late, at 27.