Christmas gifts for chess players: ideas for the whole year

At Christmas, the best gift for someone who plays chess is the one they'll still be using in March: a good board or a clock if they're missing one, lessons with a master if they want to improve, and months of membership to a course platform if they already have everything. What lasts is what gets used, and chess is studied all year round.

Below are ideas based on how they play, what to give for Secret Santa, how to sort it out at the last minute and how to make sure it arrives just in time for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or Three Kings' Day.

For someone who's just starting

The holidays are when more people than ever decide to learn: there's time, there's family around and there's always someone up for a game after lunch.

A proper set. Staunton-style pieces —the ones used in tournaments— and a board whose squares suit the pieces. It's the gift that gets played with that very evening, and a good one lasts for decades.

Lessons with a coach. For someone still learning how the pieces move, it's the quickest way to start playing with a plan. A pack of lessons for January turns holiday enthusiasm into a habit, which is the hard part. How to learn chess from scratch maps out the first few months.

For a child, a set with large, weighted pieces, an illustrated book and, if they get hooked, lessons with a coach who teaches children. As for age, which is what everyone asks, what age should a child start chess covers what to look for.

And it isn't only for children: plenty of adults use the holidays —summer or winter, depending on the hemisphere— to learn what they've always put off, and a Christmas present is the perfect excuse to start.

For someone who plays at a club or in tournaments

A digital clock. If they don't have one, it's the safest gift. Make sure it supports increments —seconds added after every move—, since that's how almost every tournament is played today.

Private lessons with a master. To go over the year's games, find the mistakes that keep coming back and start the next season with a plan. Nothing makes more difference to a club player.

A course on their opening. If they play the Sicilian with Black, for instance, Sicilian Najdorf in Depth covers the six main systems White uses against it. Before choosing, find out what they play: a course on an opening they don't use is the only real mistake in this group. The courses are taught in Spanish, with English subtitles.

An endgame book. Endgames never go out of date, unlike openings. Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual is one of the most complete, although it asks for patience.

A January tournament entry. Many clubs start the year with open tournaments, and an entry is a gift that gets used straight away.

For someone who already has everything

It's the usual problem, with the usual answer: something they'll use, not something they'll put away.

Months of membership to a course platform. It gives them the whole catalogue to study whatever they like, without you having to guess the topic, and some plans include live group classes every week. It's the gift that keeps paying off once the tree has come down.

A course with a great player. In Creativity and Calculation with Alexei Shirov, Shirov himself analyses two of his best games and his famous endgame against Topalov: elite chess explained by the man who played it.

A classic they haven't read yet. Nimzowitsch's My System, or Kasparov's My Great Predecessors series. Before buying, take a discreet look at their bookshelf.

An experience. A simul against a master, a strong tournament to watch together or a lesson with a grandmaster. Experiences don't end up gathering dust on a shelf.

For Secret Santa

With Secret Santa you don't always know how the other person plays, so the rule is to choose something that works at any level:

• A magnetic travel set, which fits in a bag and can be played anywhere.
• A puzzle book, the kind with one position per page, to be solved one at a time in a spare moment.
• A course for all levels, such as Openings, Tactics and Strategy, a collection of six courses by GM Andrés Rodríguez covering openings, combinations and pawn structures.

On a fixed budget, a small, well-chosen gift beats a big one they'll never use.

What to avoid

• Decorative sets for someone who plays seriously. Glass or metal pieces look lovely on a table and are useless for playing.
• Old opening books. Lines change, and a twenty-year-old book may recommend variations that are now considered bad.
• Apps or software without asking. Anyone who plays already has their own, and is usually happy with it.
• Anything meant for another level. An endgame treatise for a beginner stays on the shelf, and so does a plastic set for someone who plays tournaments.

When in doubt, the broadest choice is the safest: a pack of lessons or months of membership leave the choice of topic to the person receiving it.

A resolution for the new year

January is the month when most people resolve to get better at chess, and a Christmas present can be the nudge that makes it happen. What works isn't the gift on its own, but the gift with a plan: lessons with dates in the diary, or months of membership with a concrete goal, such as finishing one course a month.

If you'd like to add some reading to the gift, how to improve at chess sets out what to study and in what order, and how many hours a day to study chess helps keep the resolution realistic.

Last-minute gifts

If you reach the 23rd with no present, or the person lives far away, an online gift solves everything: no delivery, nothing to run out of and no worrying about the post arriving before the holidays. You can give a course, lessons with a master or months of membership: you pick the day, it arrives by email with your message and they open it whenever they like.

And if you're organised —buying on Black Friday, say—, you can get it early and schedule it for the 24th or the 25th: it's sorted and it arrives on its own.

If they live in another country

The holidays are also the season of long-distance presents: the brother who moved abroad, the niece studying far away, the grandparent who stayed behind. Sending a chess set to another country in December is expensive, slow and rarely arrives on time.

An online gift arrives by email on the day you choose, wherever they are, and they can open it from any country. The courses are taught in Spanish, with English and Portuguese subtitles, so they also work for someone living where another language is spoken.

How to make it arrive on the day

Every family opens presents at a different time, and the gift can fit any of them:

• Christmas Eve. In much of South America presents are opened at midnight on the 24th. Schedule it for the 24th, or print the code on a card and put it under the tree.
• Christmas Day. To open it on the morning of the 25th, schedule it for the 25th.
• Three Kings' Day. In Spain and much of Latin America, presents also come on 6 January.

Three more details: they don't need an account beforehand, because it's created when they open the gift; they have a year to open it, and what it includes only starts counting that day, so nobody loses days of membership in the middle of the festivities; and the recipient books the lessons, whenever suits them. You choose the coach, the length and how many.