How to ask a chess grandmaster a good question

Yes, you can ask a chess grandmaster questions without being their full-time student. There are three routes —private lessons, group activities and written questions— and all three reward the same thing: arriving with a specific question about a specific position. This guide covers each route and, above all, how to write a question that deserves the answer.

Why ask a grandmaster and not the engine

Grandmaster is the highest title FIDE awards, and it is held for life. But what makes a question worth asking is not the title: it is that the person answering has spent thousands of hours turning positions into ideas, and knows how to explain them.

The engine answers a different question. It tells you the best move and what the position is worth, and it does that better than any human. What it doesn't tell you is why. A +1.8 on the screen doesn't explain what to do next, which piece is misplaced or which plan holds that advantage together. And a fifteen-move line that nobody would play in a real game doesn't teach you much either.

A grandmaster does the opposite: they choose what matters. They look at the position, understand what you were trying to do and answer with the idea you were missing, often in two or three sentences. That is the difference between knowing you went wrong and understanding why, which is exactly what separates analysing your own games from running an engine over them.

Three ways to reach a grandmaster

Private lessons

The most personal option: an hour with a master who looks at your games, understands how you play and builds a plan for you. It has two costs: you need to coordinate schedules, and it is the most expensive choice. It makes sense when you already know what you want to work on and can keep up a steady rhythm of lessons; if you are weighing it up, read whether a chess coach is worth it. At AcademiaTal, private lessons are booked through online lessons, with each teacher's calendar in plain view.

Group classes and simuls

A group class with a master, a masterclass or a simul puts you in front of a grandmaster for much less. The catch is that the master chooses the topic and the time is shared: you can ask, but not always about your own games. They are ideal for learning new topics and for hearing a strong player think out loud. You will find them under group classes.

Written questions

The newest route and the most practical for everyday study: you send a position with your question and a grandmaster answers in writing, within hours or days. There is nothing to schedule, and the doubt gets resolved when it appears, which is when you learn the most.

At AcademiaTal that is Ask the GM: from the board of any lesson you stop on the move you don't understand, try your own line by moving the pieces and ask. The answer arrives within 48 business hours, with a line to play through on the board.

What is worth asking (and what isn't)

Not every question makes the same use of a grandmaster. The best ones are those the engine cannot answer.

Worth asking:

• A move you considered. “Why not this other move?” is the most useful question there is, because it shows exactly where your reasoning went.
• The plan in a quiet position. When there is nothing concrete to calculate, the engine gives you a list of similar moves; a master tells you which structure to aim for and why.
• Where one of your games went wrong. The decisive mistake is often not the move the engine marks in red, but a decision several moves earlier.
• An evaluation you don't understand. “The engine says White is better — why?” is answered with an idea, not a variation.

Less useful:

• “Analyse my whole game.” It is too much for one question and the answer gets diluted. Pick the moment that matters most to you.
• What the engine already knows. If the doubt is whether a move loses a piece, the engine knows in a second.
• “Which opening should I play?” with no context. It depends on your style, your level and how much you want to study; without that, any answer is generic.

How to write a good chess question

A good question has five parts, and hardly any of them takes more than a line:

1. The exact position. Which game and which move. If it is a course game, the question already starts there; if it is yours, send the whole PGN.
2. What you wanted to play. The move you had in mind, even if it looks bad to you.
3. The line you calculated. Two or three moves are enough: they show how far you got.
4. One doubt. If you have three questions, that is three questions. Bundled together, the answer covers the easiest one.
5. What the engine said, if you looked. And what you didn't understand about it.

Compare these two:

“Is this OK?”

“On move 14 I wanted to play 14...Bf5 to swap off my bad bishop, but the game went 14...Bg4. I calculated 15.Qb3 and saw nothing concrete. What's wrong with Bf5?”

The first forces the master to guess what you wanted to know. The second can be answered in a paragraph, and the answer will help you in every similar position.

What to expect from the answer

A good answer from a grandmaster usually starts with the idea and ends with a line that proves it. Sometimes it says something you didn't expect: that your move was playable too, that the problem was a move earlier, or that the real question is a different one. That isn't dodging the question: it is what a good coach does.

To get the most out of it:

• Play the line through on the board, move by move, instead of just reading it.
• Explain it in your own words. If you can't sum up the idea in a sentence, you don't have it yet.
• Write it down. The answers that surprised you are the ones worth revisiting: they are exactly the gaps in your game, and they often explain more than one of the reasons why you are not improving at chess.

How Ask the GM works at AcademiaTal

“Ask the GM” comes with La Iniciativa and La Magia, and it is designed so that asking never pulls you out of your study:

• From the lesson. In the games tab of any lesson, you stop on the move and press “Ask the GM”. If you like, you first try your idea by moving the pieces: the game doesn't change and the line you tried travels with the question.
• Within 48 business hours. A grandmaster answers with an explanation and a line to play through on the board, and we let you know by email.
• For the whole course. The answer stays on that move for the other students, without your name, so every course fills up with the doubts that really come up while studying it.
• Your own games too. From “Ask the GM”, in your account menu, you upload the PGN of one of your games and ask about any move; only you and the masters see that game.
• In your language. You can ask in Spanish, English or Portuguese: the question and the answer are translated automatically.

For now there is no limit on questions. If you don't have a plan yet, the ones that include it are on the subscriptions page. And if you want a course to start asking about, Think Better: Strategy, Calculation and Dynamics works on exactly what happens behind the moves, which is where the best questions come from.