What's a Chess coach going to teach me? At my level, is it a waste of time?

He'd most likely want to analyse a few of your serious games.  You would have tactic and endgame exercises / homework.  He would go over how to evaluate a position and find moves that make sense in a given position.  Give you history and theory behind the openings you play.  Probably not play games with you, although analysis games can be a good learning tool -- more likely play out key positions with you like a themed middle game or endgame.

I agree with some others that you'd probably want to find a club and go to some tournaments.

I'm not a chess coach but I am a professional musician and teacher.  I can tell you that I've often had private students who could play fine.  To me it's a similar situation.  As a coach/teacher in that situation my job is try to identify the "holes" in their mental approach to their music as well as figure out what their strengths are.  It isn't really possible to make a "syllabus" until I figure out what needs to be addressed.  My guess is that as a decent player a good coach would need a few sessions with you to really get inside your head to figure out how to plan for your progress.  If you're looking for some sort of "boiler plate" approach then you don't understand the nature of true teaching.

Well said. Further, if you already knew what a coach would teach you, then you really wouldn't need a coach.

This is not that hard. With a little effort everybody can do it.

HAHAHAAHHAHA!!! bro. relax so tht U cum out of wrong assumption dat U play gud chess...

once U hv a chess coach u'll start realizing how poorly U play. Sorry, bt it happens whn U have a coach

Magnus Carlsen isnt a "rookie" anymore either, maybe Kasparov is just wasting his time trying to coach/teach him anything ?! 

Well said Reb

You compare Magnus Carlsen to the all knowing and great Eo___?

My coach, an IM once said: there are things, especially in the endgame, that you wouldn't know how to do unless someone shows you. A basic example is a "bridge". If noone shows you how to "bridge" and promote your pawn, you will never figure out by yourself. 

Lucena figured out bridging all by himself 500 years ago

 From a simple perspective => There are two things he does for you:

1.Remove Bad Behaviors:

You lose because of your mistakes. You are ONLY as good as the mistakes you make in each game.  A good coach will prioritize the order of mistakes you need to clean up(based on a statistical analysis of your played games) and write you a good prescription for work you can do on your own to fix things.  This also includes nerves, tournament conditioning and time management.

In other words => you stop making certain types of mistakes and you evidently become a stronger player...No opening books, no endgame studies, no positional primers about building trees ... just stop doing the stupid @#$@# you are doing right now => it's the easiest way to fix up your game! :)

I visited local clubs and got better purely by people yelling at me to NOT do stuff, as opposed to them teaching me new stuff.

2.Add Good Behaviors:

This basically translates as : Stuff you didn't KNOW that could make you play better. Adding chess knowledge is something you may be diligent enough to do on your own, but a coach makes this process easier.  He won't teach a Lucena position to a 1000 rated player, but he'll make sure that you definitely know how to play it if you are a lot stronger.   He may also critique/recommend changes to your repertoire and quiz you on a lot of "gotta know" positions to expose holes in your chess knowledge.

I would say you don't need a coach. At this point, it does not seem that you would be receptive to what a coach has to offer. The only thing I can equate it to is sports. We many time here stories or read articles about athletes that are naturally gifted, bigger, taller and faster than most athletes in their given sport. However, these gifted athletes never seem to realize their full athletic potential in there given sport or are beaten by someone smaller, slower, and less gifted. That's mostly because of coaching. Sometimes a gifted athlete thinks he or she knows all until they run into a well coached buzz saw. Suddenly all of their gifts become neutralized because a good coach taught their opponent how to overcome those gifts and the supposed inferior athlete listened while the gifted athlete decided he/she didn't need to listen to a coach. Sometimes the examples are glaringly obvious. Michael Vick is one glaring example. He has even admitted that he wasn't trying to hear anything about coaching or a game plan. He thought he could just use his natural gifted physical ability to power his ways to football wins. It works for a while, but once you reach a higher level of performance, you'll need to know how to overcome your weaknesses and take advantage of your opponents. Ultimately his not listening cost him a lot more in life than just not winning a game. Then you look at a a player like Michael Jordan who was naturally gifted and talented and came into the NBA as an offensive juggernaut. A couple of coaches told him that scoring 40, 50 and 60 points in a game was good but he would never be a champion until he became a better defender and got his team mates involved in the games more. He listened, won 6 championships with teams with mostly non memorable players and retired as one of, if not the greatest basketball player in history. Those are the clearest examples I can give. Can a coach make you the Michael Jordan of chess; I doubt it. But a good coach in anything can help you progress from your current ability much easier by helping you focus on areas where you need to improve most.

Again, I would suggest you not get a coach unless you're really ready to listen and follow a plan for improvement. My $.02

I agree with your analysis here...the bummer of it is that the well coached gifted player will always beat the well coached not-so-gifted player....

Unless we're going to starting talking about "heart".  Take a guy like Pete Rose or Rod Carew.  These guys had tons of heart and obviously not the raw gift.  Ooops, hello can of worms.   

To those not in on it, Eo_____ is an attention craving chess loon.

Maybe you could try to find a chess playing psychiatrist? Stone + 2 birds.

"give me a go, first lessons free!"

Oo-er! Missus!

"Poly"- A well coached, gifted player will win 9/10 times, no doubt. There will always be exceptions to the rule.

"Stein" - I didn't know.

"Rainbow and Prawns" - I would definitely take coaching from either of you before It was the other way around. I am currently finding enjoyment in teaching K, 1st and 2nd grade students for an hour after school. Just rules and how pieces move. Hopefully, by the end of the year, some students will be able to complete an unsupervised game. We'll see  

People who expect themselves and their coaches to fail do fail. Others believe they can make it, and succeed. Everyone has a choice.

P.S. I have never coached people who did not have a proper motivation for training and trust in their coach. Why waste my time and their money if, given the attitude, they will still achieve nothing just to support their "theory"?

A book is the best coach because it's cheap and you can throw it out the window, which is hard to do with a human coach.  Go to the library if you have one with chess books.  This is even cheaper.  A human coach is a good task master, to give you shame if you don't work hard, but basically he's doing it for the money.  At your club you can probably find a friendly player who is rated more than you to show you a few things.  since you probably don't want to become world champion, you don't need an expensive human coach or trainer.  You can learn a lot from this site by having post game discussions with your partner.  Good Luck!

I'll coach you. I charge $25 per hour, and in your case I will insist that you begin no further threads in the chess forum. If you follow my curriculum, you will improve, and you will enjoy chess more.

Ziryab, take a look at some of my games, especially the ones where there was plenty of time and plenty of moves (don't focus on the bullet games or the games where things went horribly wrong from the get go). Get an idea of what I know and don't know about chess.

I believe that my current rating, which oscillates between 1550 and 1600, accurately reflects my strength as a chess player. If I pay you $25/hour, if I follow your curriculum, if I stop making threads, by how many points do you think my rating will increase and how long will it take for that to happen?