Christoph von Puttkamer (né Kuberczyk) first discovered his coaching spark around the age of 14 or 15, when he stepped in to lead his high school chess club in Hamburg, Germany. Not long after, he obtained an official coaching license and started sharing his love for the game at club, regional and state levels.
His own journey accelerated in the years leading to the pandemic, during which he raised his rating from roughly 2150 to 2350, thus achieving the FIDE Master title.
As his reputation grew, so did his coaching clientele. He saw a surge of adult improvers eager to follow in his footsteps. And though Christoph works with a variety of students, he specializes in adult improvers, for whom he has deep respect as they juggle full-time careers, family commitments and personal aspirations. He himself is the happy father of a newborn.
“I’m proud of every student who managed to push past their plateau through hard work, despite the demands of a full-time job, a partner, or a family.”
Christoph spoke with us about his chess coaching experience. Remarkably, his answers to the questions in this interview have the same meticulousness and thoughtfulness with which he approaches the making of his Chessable courses.
What is your chess coaching philosophy?
I would describe myself as a “work on your weaknesses” type of guy. Of course, as long as your training routine is working, there’s usually no reason to change it. But for players who feel stuck on a plateau—which was often when I got involved—it’s important to evaluate their current play, identify what mistakes they’re making, understand WHY they’re making them (a step that’s often overlooked), and figure out how to avoid them in future games.
Before the first session with a new student, I typically ask for a few of their recent losses—ideally already analyzed by the student themselves. Especially at the amateur level, there are often clear patterns behind why players lose most of their games. These patterns are incredibly useful for identifying where the real issues lie and what areas to focus on in training.
Very often, the root causes aren’t purely based on their chess skills, by the way. Many players are also partly held back by issues that have more to do with their behaviour before and during the game (like time trouble, tilting, or poor energy management). If you are really ambitious about your own play, you should definitely look for easy adjustments in this area as well – they can make a big difference in performance.
Suppose a player has only 3 hours a week for chess training. How should they spend their time?
If you only have limited time, it’s even more important to use your time efficiently and wisely. Be honest with yourself, think about the biggest gaps in your chess knowledge and try to get rid of them one step at a time.
What is the biggest factor for improvement for players under 1200 (Chess.com)? Under 2000?
For players under 1200 on Chess.com, it’s often rightly pointed out that most games are decided by relatively simple tactical blunders. So yes—tactics training is typically the number one recommendation, and I fully agree with that.
But since the question specifically references Chess.com, I’d like to offer a tip I’ve given to many of my online-only students: play longer time controls—and here comes the hard part—commit BEFORE your session to play only one or two games and don’t change that, no matter what.
Over-the-board players know the pain of losing the one single rated game of the day due to a one-move blunder—like hanging a rook because you moved too fast once again. That kind of mistake can stick with you for days, even if you crush your opponent in the casual blitz games afterward. But that sting serves a purpose: it teaches you to double-check your moves in future important games.
In contrast, online players often don’t feel the same “blunder pain” because they can instantly jump into the next game. As a result, they tend to make major tactical mistakes more frequently—even if their tactical vision is actually quite decent.
By limiting yourself to just one or two games per session, you reintroduce that sense of accountability. Suddenly, a careless mistake hurts much more, and you’ll naturally become more disciplined in avoiding similar errors in the future.
For players under 2000, I can only refer to my previous answers: identify your weaknesses and work on them. That’s where real progress begins.
What is your preferred way to improve at openings? What’s the approach to chess openings that you try to teach your students?
I would say, there are two common mistakes when it comes to opening study:
1) either neglecting openings entirely or
2) investing way too much time into inefficient opening preparation.
Between those two extremes lies a wide spectrum of effective approaches, depending largely on your personality and training preferences.
Some players simply don’t enjoy studying openings—and that’s completely fine. But if you’ve been playing chess for years (or even decades) and still feel lost when someone opens with 1.c4, you’re definitely leaving a lot of points on the table. These days, opening preparation is easier than ever.
A slightly provocative statement but one I truly believe in: basically, you can crash-learn a new opening in a single evening. Sure, if you want to retain it long-term, you’ll need to revisit the material now and then, but building a rough repertoire really doesn’t take much effort. Adding new branches as you go is also quite manageable.
Chessable’s “Quickstarter” chapters, for example, serve exactly this purpose. But even if you prefer to build your repertoire from scratch, engines and databases make it relatively easy to build a repertoire with playable lines and their most important variations.
To players who genuinely enjoy studying openings: great! You are not doing anything wrong.
Just make sure that your time is used wisely. Don’t just drill the same material over and over. Explore new ideas and mix things up.
I’ve known players who’ve worked through half a dozen courses on the London System and know every move-order nuance in the first 15 moves – but completely fall apart when an IQP appears on the board. Strong players are typically those who feel comfortable in a wide variety of positions and pawn structures.
So if you enjoy opening study, use that enthusiasm to build a diverse repertoire—or at the very least, expose yourself to different types of openings and structures, even if not all of them end up in your permanent repertoire. Doing so will massively improve your overall chess understanding.
Lastly, thanks to strong engines and the access to a lot of potential model games, studying openings in depth can also be seen as middlegame and even endgame training. Especially with openings that lead to characteristic pawn structures, you can look at them with different pieces on the board. That turns opening work into pretty targeted strategy training that will improve your game overall.
What is your preferred way to improve at the endgame?
There are a lot of good sources out there. I used 100 Endgames You Must Know and Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual for my own play. I also heard a lot of good things about other books as well.
What I find important: I wouldn’t recommend reading endgame books cover to cover. Many players find them too dry—and understandably so. If you look at 50 rook endgames in a row where only a single pawn is placed differently compared to the example before, it’s easy to get bored out of your mind.
For my own endgame training, I’ve always preferred to think about a topic I found interesting before the session, then I opened the book in the middle and studied a few examples related to it. This keeps the material much more engaging.
Of course, in an ideal world, you have an encyclopedic memory of all the key endgame positions and nuances. But at the amateur level, just developing a solid general understanding of typical endgames, key winning and defensive techniques, and knowing whether an endgame is simple or complex in nature already leads to real improvement.
One very important piece of advice: play out your endgames.
Especially in over-the-board play, many players agree to a draw simply because they’re not confident in their endgame skills. But there’s no better form of endgame training than battling through one in a serious, practical setting. It’s no coincidence that the strongest endgame players are often the ones who fight the hardest in every position. Practice makes perfect!
What would you like to share with ambitious chess improvers?
If you have a coach, don’t be shy to express your wishes and expectations before each session! A good coach will tailor the lesson accordingly—and honestly, it makes things easier for the coach as well.
Here’s a story to illustrate that:
One of my students once asked for an introduction on the Rossolimo Variation. When I offered to focus on a particular angle or question, he said no and told me to go ahead with whatever I thought would be useful. So I went all-in: I created what I still believe was one of my best-prepared lessons ever. I gave an overview of the different pawn structures that can arise in the Rossolimo – such as when White takes on c6 and we respond with …bxc6 or …dxc6, and also cases where White avoids the exchange altogether. I found some really nice model games that illustrated key strategic ideas in those structures and I thought it was a really instructive file.
But throughout the session, the student didn’t seem particularly engaged.
Near the end of the lesson, I finally asked what was wrong. That’s when he told me he had really hoped we’d look at one specific gambit line that had recently become trendy – and now he still didn’t know whether it was actually playable or not.
I reassured him that the line was certainly playable if it’s still debated even at the top level. Still, we both left the session a bit underwhelmed: he hadn’t learned what he was hoping for, and I could have saved myself a lot of prep time if I’d known his specific interest from the beginning. (Though part of me still hopes he’ll come to appreciate that deeply structured Rossolimo lesson someday!)
Chessable courses by FM Christoph von Puttkamer
A publishing manager at Chessable, Christoph knows what makes courses stellar and has published highly-acclaimed courses in both English and German. These include:
Christoph has recently published The Deferred Schliemann Gambit, which will be on introductory sale until September 14, 2025. Check out his Chessable author page!