Gifts for chess players: ideas for every level

To get a chess gift right you only need to know one thing: how the other person plays. A beginner needs a good board and someone to teach them; a club player will appreciate a clock, a book or lessons with a master; and someone who already has everything is best served by something they use every week, like a course or months of an online membership.

Below are the ideas sorted by level, with what to look for in each and what to avoid. None of them requires you to know anything about chess.

First, find out how they play

Three questions are enough, and you can ask them without spoiling the surprise:

• Do they play on their phone or over a board? People who only play online rarely own a decent set, and people who play over the board almost always do.
• Do they play at a club or in tournaments? That answer separates someone who plays for fun from someone who wants to improve, and it changes everything else.
• Do they read chess books or watch chess videos? A reader will welcome a book; someone who learns from videos, a course.

If they play online there's a shortcut: their profile shows their rating and the openings they play most. That's enough to choose a course or a book on something they care about.

If they're just starting

Someone who is still learning how the pieces move needs two things: something to play with and someone to show them the way forward.

A proper set. Staunton-style pieces —the ones used in tournaments, with a knight that looks like a horse— and a board whose squares suit the size of the pieces. Designer pieces look lovely on a shelf but are hard to tell apart in a game, and a small board with big pieces means everything keeps falling over.

Lessons with a coach. It's the quickest way to go from moving pieces to playing with a plan, and it's the gift that pays off most at this level: a good coach fixes in an hour what would otherwise take months to discover. There are coaches who teach all levels and ages in online lessons, and how to choose a chess coach explains what to look for before deciding.

A first book. Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals is still one of the best introductions ever written: short, clear and free of endless variations.

If they're an adult wondering whether they've left it too late, the answer is no: you're never too old to learn chess, and a gift may be exactly the nudge they were waiting for. For the whole path, how to learn chess from scratch sets out the first few months.

If it's for a child

With children, the gift should make chess a game before it becomes study. A set with large, weighted pieces that don't topple at the first clumsy move, and an illustrated book if they're still learning the rules.

If they already play and want to learn properly, what pays off most is lessons with a coach who teaches children: they need a different pace and a different kind of patience from an adult, and a good coach turns every lesson into something the child looks forward to all week.

As for age, which is the question everyone asks: there's no right one. Being able to concentrate for a while, and wanting to, matters more. What age should a child start chess covers what to look for.

If they play at a club or in tournaments

Here the gift should help them play better, because that's what they want.

A digital clock. If they play at a club and don't own one, it's the safest gift of all. 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 their games, find the mistakes they keep repeating and prepare their openings. Nothing makes more difference to a club player, which is why it's worth giving several lessons rather than one: is a chess coach worth it explains why.

A course on what they find hardest. If they always complain about openings, a course on the one they play; if they play 1.e4 e5, for instance, the Italian Game in depth. If what weighs on them is nerves or fatigue in tournaments, High Performance: Tools to Compete Better works on preparation, decision-making and handling emotions. 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 for a tournament player, although it asks for patience.

A tournament entry. If they've never played one, or haven't for a while, paying the entry fee for a tournament in their town is a gift they'll remember.

If they already have a board, a clock and books

This is the hardest case, and the answer is almost never another object: it's something they'll use.

Months of membership to a course platform. It gives them the whole catalogue so they can study whatever interests them at the time, without you having to guess the topic. It's a gift that takes up no space and gets used every week, and some plans also include live group classes.

A course on their favourite player. Fans of attacking chess will enjoy Mikhail Tal's Legacy, on Tal's ideas for sacrificing and stirring up complications without losing control; history lovers, a journey through the great tacticians, from Morphy to the present day.

A classic they haven't read yet. Nimzowitsch's My System, or Kasparov's My Great Predecessors series, which goes through the world champions game by game. Before buying, take a discreet look at their bookshelf.

An experience. Going together to watch a strong tournament, signing them up for a simul against a master, or giving them a lesson with a grandmaster: what they'll remember is the experience, not the object.

Gifts to avoid

• Decorative sets for someone who plays seriously. Glass, metal or oddly shaped pieces look good on a table and bad in a game.
• Old opening books. Lines change over the years, and a twenty-year-old book may recommend variations that are now considered bad.
• Software or apps without asking. Anyone who plays already uses one, and is usually happy with the one they chose.
• Anything that demands a level they don't have. An opening treatise for a beginner will never be opened, and it leaves them feeling that chess is harder than it really is.

A gift that needs no delivery

If they live far away, if you remembered late or if you'd rather not gamble on the size of a board, an online gift solves all three. 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. If you'd rather hand it over yourself, you get the code to print or send on WhatsApp.

Three details that tend to worry people giving one:

• They don't need an account beforehand. It's created when they open the gift.
• They have a year to open it, and what it includes only starts counting that day: three months of membership means three months from when they open it.
• The recipient books the lessons. You choose the coach, the length and how many; they pick the times, whenever suits them.

How to get it right without knowing chess

If you're still unsure after all this, there's a rule that rarely fails: the less you know about how they play, the broader the gift should be. A course on a specific opening is perfect if they play it and a mistake if they don't; a pack of lessons or months of membership work at any level, because the choice of topic stays with the person receiving it.

And don't forget the message. A chess gift with a note saying why you chose it —"so you finally beat Grandad", "for your next tournament"— is worth more than the gift alone.