I have been working with Adriana for over six months now. She is great, takes lessons very seriously and wants you to be successful. I have had new highs in puzzles, bullet, blitz and rapid in that time. Her stream is entertaining and she really engages with her subs and followers. She is tough but fair. She helped me choose solid openings, and showed me how to use various tools to study. I finally broke the 2000 barrier in blitz! She is teaching me more about calculation. I have pretty good tactical skills, but don’t calculate well. It’s hard to hear criticism, but if you want to improve it’s essential to get honest feedback. We are now focusing on positional play, which has always been a problem for me. Also been helpful in recognizing my lack of endgame technique as well. If you need a coach, I would give her very high marks.
I am so grateful to take coaching from WGM Adriana!
she is the best coach so far, very kind and helpful!
Thank you so much Ma’am for great lessons!!
I’ve been training with Adriana for a while and she helped me a lot in every aspect of the game, in particular in preparing an opening repertoire, in my calculation and position evaluation skills and in endgames. She is able to understand your weaknesses and to show you the way to go beyond them with an appropriate training. Moreover, she puts a lot of effort and time (way beyond the lesson time frame) in teaching and provides you with all the material you need. I’m very satisfied with the time spent training with her.
Adriana has helped me significantly improved and become a much stronger chess player from every aspect; from opening theory, tactics, positional understanding, middle game planning, endgames and etc. I was a 1500 USCF when I started taking lessons from her. I was losing to 2000 USCF nonstop before she was my coach. In a short amount of time (couple months) I reach 1800 USCF and 1845 FIDE and I have some wins and many draws with 2000s and can play good games against 2300 now. I have high expectations for hiring a coach. In my experience hiring other coaches, Adrianna is the best I worked with, most organized, and over all an amazing teacher. I look forward to what more progress we will make this upcoming year.
Adriana is an impressive chess coach. She doesn’t just go over moves. She tries to understand her students, so that she can learn to better guide them. I’ve tried other coaches and felt she is the one that really cares, or at least cares the most, about the chess growth of her students.
Adriana stands out as the best chess coach on Chess.com for me ( I have had many); it not about the tactics or even the lessons, what stands out for me is her compassion and commitment. She is truly a wonderful person, and stays committed to anyone that she coaches, that’s more than I can say about other chess coaches here.
I knew little about chess and after 2 years of self-taught “tactics” I had managed to bring my game to 1350 and I was stuck there for a long time. Looking for ways to improve I came across Adriana’s coaching and I’m glad I did, as she had a read for my play style immediately, she suggested I learned some openings and strategies, along with tactics exercises. It was interesting what I could learn along her right from the first minute together.
After 10-12 lessons I saw a big improvement in my understanding of the game and my rating got to a 1450 average peaking to 1500+ sometimes. There is definitely more ground for improvement of course and it’s for sure that I will keep covering that ground with her, as she is not just an inspiring coach but an inspiring player too.
As a professional she is also very flexible with hours, and in Xmas she also accepts my payments in sweets!
Recommended A++++
Adriana is the best chess coach I have ever had. I have had 5 or 6 previous coaches before, but training with Adriana has helped me improve the most. My calculating abilities improved immensely as her lessons made me realize how lazy I had been in my calculations before. I feel I understand the game of chess 10 times better than before I started her lessons. She goes beyond the time frame of her lessons and gives materials and efforts to make sure the student is learning. She is also very easy to work with and always helped schedule other days and times when I could not make the usual time. If you are looking to improve your game and have fun and interactive lessons with a chess teacher who cares and is devoted to your progress, Adriana Nikolova is your best move.
There is so much to say about training with Adriana Nikolova, but I will let my comments be brief.
I feel it is easy for players at the club level to dismiss the need for a coach and keep the same approach over and over with little change in results. That was me for over a decade. However, after working with Adriana, I would argue that you owe it to your potential to seriously consider studying with one of the best.
Learn chess from a proven fighter! One with a killer instinct and many international tournament victories. Let her drive, discipline, and enthusiasm for the game, show you a completely different side. Observe the way a seasoned and successful chess professional approaches problems over the board. Discover how to form a battle plan, how to carry out the grand strategy, and finally, how to close an opponent for the full point.
I’ve been training with Nikolova for the past several months and can tell you the level of improvement has been remarkable. With a busy lifestyle and growing business, it is sometimes difficult to find time for chess. However, her on-going encouragement has made me prioritize how my time is best spent. I have also learned how to defend difficult positions. As it turns out, I miss so many opportunities to equalize or even win!
She is tough, but fair. She will speak her mind. I admire those qualities in a coach. I also admire that she will not sugar-coat her thoughts for the sake of your feelings, at the expense of your improvement. She will focus on bringing out your best. To that end, she will give her best.
When I started working with Adriana, I was rated 1798 for US chess and had no FIDE rating. I hadn’t played tournaments in a few years, and I hoped to get to 2000 US eventually. But now I’m over 2100 US! National Master starts at 2200 US, and I hope to get there in the next year or so. Adriana’s lessons have helped me so much, I have never had any idea what to do in the opening, and really only relied on tactics. Now while my tactics still need work, I feel like a more ‘complete’ player!
Over the past three months, I have the opportunity to hire Adriana like a coach for my son Daniel. During this period, Daniel’s chess skill has improved significantly. His tactics rating on Chess.com has improved over 700 points from 1400 to 2112, which is a remarkable achievement for a third grade kid like Daniel in such a short time period. Adriana is an excellent chess coach. I highly recommend her for coaching your kids learning chess or advancing his/her chess skills.
Adriana is a person of high integrity and she is very caring. Her knowledge of chess openings, middle games , strategy and end games is amazing. She helped me improve my performance in chess immensely. She helped me learn strategies, analyze my games and make decision in difficult positions. I would recommend her for anyone looking for professional and caring trainer.
Thanks a world Adriana for all your excellent lessons!
Getting coached by Adriana has immensely helped me improve my tactics, positional assessment and endgame. Apart from regular lessons and homework, she also helped me in analyzing my own games thoroughly.
Teacher Adriana is just simply amazing and an impressive coach, she has coached me from a little kid around the rating of 1000+ to a Woman Fide Master just within 2 years! Her incredible opening preparations, puzzles, calculations, middlegames and endgames training benefits me a lot. Without her guidance, I will not have my achievements today. Thank you so much for all the valuable lessons!! Therefore, I recommend coach Adriana Nikolova to u guys from the bottom of my heart.
Insightful, instructive and fun is how I would recommend Adriana as a coach. As an adult returning to chess, who got to ~1600 by intuition and self-study, I recognized that to go further I needed a coach to understand the game more thoroughly. After some research, I contacted Adriana as she was so obviously having fun while streaming and definitely enjoyed attacking. I made a great choice.
Adriana is patient with the right level of challenge and genuinely cares that she is helping to improve your chess. What’s more the chess community Adriana has created around her is fun with nice people too. I have learned a lot from Adriana’s coaching, and I hope you will do so too.
I have worked with Adriana since 2016, she has tremendously helped me in my chess to grow and understand the game better than any other chess coach I worked with. I started in 2016 working with her as a 1500-1600 USCF rating and in 2019, I reached my peak rating of 2059 USCF. I’m currently working with her to become a National Master and one day hopefully become a FIDE Master. She has help me overcome a plethora of challenges in my chess career and help me with really strong preparation even to stand up against GMs and world level players. She is really experienced and knowledgeable about the game beyond what her rating says. She is a supremely amazing chess coach and I would highly recommend to anyone wanting to take their chess to the next level, whether just a new rating goal, or becoming a title player.
I have played chess on and off most of my life. I have taken lessons from a few chess masters. I was unable to take my chess to the next level until I met WGM Adriana. Within just a few months of lessons, my chess has greatly improved. She is by far the best instructor that I have ever had. She has vast chess knowledge and has the skills to explain chess in such a way that I can easily understand. My chess has greatly improved. Now I appreciate, and enjoy chess much better than ever.
I did not know what to expect being coached by WGM Adriana but she is changing the way I think about the game and I am enjoying it much more now than ever. She is very gifted at explaining positions and ideas, she does not waste time pointing out all possibilities but instead helps me focus on important things I need to pay attention to. If anyone is lucky enough to get some time with her, it is time well spent.
very very good teacher
Adriana is a very talented (and patient) coach. She is not afraid to point out your mistakes but when she does she suggests also ways to improve that particular weaknesses. Even if you have questions outside the lesson hours she will try to answer them as good as she can.
In short, Adriana wants her students to get results, to improve and to enjoy chess. Highly recommended if you are looking for a coach.
Adriana is a very detail oriented, sincere, and very dedicated coach. She provides very detail feedback after each class, that helps parents to understand where their kids stand. Regular homework provided helps kids to be engaged in chess throughout the week. Her game reviews are very detail and that helps continuous improvement. Adriana continues to support even outside the class time if there are any questions, that’s helps students to be in touch with the coach always. After trying few other coaches in the past, we can finally say we found an amazing Coach!!!
I find Adriana as someone who is genuinely wanting her students to improve. Her passion and love of the game of chess comes across in her lessons as well as her Twitch streams making the learning experience fun as well as instructive.
Having worked with Adriana for 10 lessons now I have seen a marked improvement in my play. For example, my Rapid rating increased from 1400 to 1650 in 3 months.
Adriana quickly identified my strengths and weaknesses, and we began work on improving in areas that I was struggling in. I now have some openings to play against e4 and d4 that I both remember and also understand what the basic plan is rather than just playing moves for example.
Adriana gives plenty of work to do between lessons also which helps to further improve and challenge you and also gives you something to work on throughout the week rather than just learning for 1 hour.
Needless to say, I have signed up for another 10 lessons!
I can vouch for WGM Adriana’s Coaching; as well as these other reviews. I was getting nowhere with my old coach; after a few lessons with Adriana, I saw immediate results. +400 ELO in Bullet in less than 45 days. As a WGM, she has competed at the highest levels and will prepare you to climb to the top. Thank again. Best Coach ever.
3 years ago I moved my pieces around without knowing what I am doing and did not even know the names of the so called openings I was playing.
Now – after 3 years of practicing , sweating, fighting and laughing with Adriana, I am about to reach a FIDE-Rating of 2000 – and found in Adriana a friend for lifetime!
Instead of playing B or C groups of tournaments and loosing there to little children I now play in A groups and even Masters take me seriously!
A local International Master who saw me playing some years ago and also recently said to me: “I dont know who is your coach, but he must be a genius!”
(oh, and did I mention, that I am 50+ years?)
Lots of lessons from Adriana, and finally new highs in blitz (after two years), bullet, rapid, and puzzles 2700+. Broke 2000 on lichess bullet, blitz and rapid. She knows her stuff, but does push you. If you don’t do your work, you will be in trouble. Best kind of teacher, she is hard but you will see progress.