Reviews
Ashwin, Los Angeles
These lessons are great! She is an international woman chess master, but you also feel like you are learning from a very down to earth person, and she teaches the concepts in a way that it is very easy to grasp. I don’t feel intimidated anymore playing games against people better than me, because win or lose I know I will learn a lot, and it is fun to go over my games with Victoria and get insights and improve.
Arthur, Los Angeles
Victoria is personable, intelligent and highly competent. She analyzed three of my recent games from chess.com and explained how I could have avoided blundering pieces. I am still a beginner, but I do have some experience playing. Victoria found just the right difficulty level problems for me — challenging, but not impossible. Looking forward to learning chess from her!
Nafeh, Ohio
I have been working with and learning from Victoria for several lessons now and am very impressed. I want to highlight a few things in particular: First, she is an excellent, high-rated chess player internationally — and it is clear she continues to play and study seriously. She has been a chess champion, including rapid chess champion, at national and international levels both overseas and in the United States. However, she adapts very well to the level of her student — for example, I am pretty much a beginner, and it is working very well. She prepares for all of her lessons ahead of time, and has provided extra examples and homework, which are very well adapted to my needs. At the lesson, she has clearly looked at some of my weekly games on Lichess and chess.com, sometimes annotating ahead of time, and reviews the relevant strategies during our lessons. It’s really very impressive. Personality-wise, Victoria is patient, giving time to «see» and figure out solutions to any problems presented. When she is actively teaching, she gives lots of good ideas fairly rapidly and the lesson time is used very efficiently. Victoria has a very direct teaching style (which I appreciate), while still having a gentle/kind approach, with a sense of humour. Not only does this work well for me, but I could also see her teaching style working very well for children and for adolescents of any level and ability. I feel fortunate to work with Victoria.
Michael, Boston
My entire perspective of chess changed within 30 minutes. I learned a couple of techniques that significantly improved my thought process in how to move my chess pieces. I cannot wait until the next session.
Joshua, Los Angeles
I think she was absolutely fantastic. Can’t wait to work with her again!
Andrew, Los Angeles
Thoughtful, intelligent, patient and clear, Victoria is a top teacher whose approach to coaching is much appreciated. She prepares for her lessons and follows up as well. I considerate person who is genuinely passionate about teaching chess.
Heather, New Orleans
Viktoria is a very engaging and positive instructor. I love how she challenged my son to reason through the various play options and explain why one would be better than the others. I also appreciate that she took the time to look up his previous online chess play. Excellent, and just what we were looking for!
Abigail, Nashville
Terrific first lesson. The teaching tools suited my daughter’s skill level perfectly. My daughter is looking forward to next week’s lesson!
Kelly, New York
Viktoria reviewed my previous chess matches before the class started and she seemed to know exactly where I keep going wrong and showed me how to play better and gave me ideas and suggestions and taught me some great attack areas that I couldn’t see before and she explained the WHY and then HOW, it was the best teaching experience I’ve had with Chess and all in 60 minutes. I can’t wait for the next class.
Severin, Seattle
I felt overwhelmed and lost trying to study chess on my own as an adult beginner. Working with Viktoria has been so helpful. It is far better than just solving puzzles or watching videos on my own. She can show you the habits and mistakes in your thinking that you don’t even realize you are doing.
She plays correspondence games with me and encourages me to email when I’m lost or stuck even outside of lessons. She sends me studies of the lines we discussed during the lesson so I can remember them better. How I think about and understand chess has grown so much from my lessons. And even when I make silly mistakes and get a draw when I should have won or I blunder my queen, she is kind and helpful.
Alex, New York
Viktoria’s an incredible teacher! Her personalized feedback, individual attention, and tailored insights make her invaluable to anyone serious about growing as a chess player.
Sam, Boston
She did a great job explaining some topics that I had not considered before and provided some materials that I can study at home. Great lesson!
Zachary, Chicago
Amazing instructor. Explained everything she did and how it helps and helped me learn what openings compliment my playing style. Also added some recommendations on how to play against certain openings. Definitely continuing classes with her.
Devin, New York
Victoria is awesome. My son really resonated with her and after each lesson learned so much.
Andrew, Seattle
Learning from Viktoria has improved my calculation and board vision. I have gained 2-3 hundred points on both Lichess and Chess.com since starting lessons with her. She knows what she’s doing. If you listen to her, you will, too.
Daniel, Tucson
This is my first chess instructor and I have liked the experience. Victoria is helping and my game is improving after just a few lessons.
Guilherme, New York
I always thought I’d feel embarrassed in chess classes as I started playing at adult age. Having classes with Victoria made me realize that a great teacher will recognize the student’s skill level, adjust lessons accordingly with the right amount of challenge and push. Classes are practical and realistic and a lot of what I learn I am able apply immediately to games.
Patrick, Houston
Victoria has really helped my game. She has a holistic and systematic approach. She analyzed my games and helped me identify and understand my style. Worked with my openings to find systems that would be good with my style of playing. Then we worked to close weakness in the opening and moved on to calculation and combination exercises. Examination of my games , good and bad, help me to understand errors and blunders. She has given me the tools to help with the journey and to keep growing in knowledge and skill while keeping the game fresh and fun.
David, New York
I‘m a late-comer to chess, and reached out to Viktoria intending to take two or three lessons to lay a solid foundation I could build from on my own. A year later, I’m still meeting with her weekly. We analyze my games, review tactical and strategic concepts, and make a self-study plan for the week that covers all phases of the game. Though we have a lot of fun in our sessions, she clearly takes her job very seriously, following my games through the week and checking in with me outside our scheduled times. Her investment in my development as a player has inspired me to push past the goals I initially set for myself to see how good I can get. I can’t recommend her highly enough.
Jeff, Los Angeles
I highly recommend Viktoria Ni for chess instruction. Obviously, she is expert in all types of chess instruction and has been teaching me tactics, endgames, time management, etc. Regarding whether you should get a chess coach, my experience is that I progressed much faster, maybe twice as much, because a teacher pushes you to do the things you need to do, so you spend much more time practicing and playing games and much less time noodling.
Miganoush, Los Angeles
She is teaching my 6 year old, teaching a 6 year old anything is very hard much less chess which requires focus she does amazingly well with her. She is patient, kind and friendly. Her knowledge of the game is unparalleled and I like to watch during the lessons because it’s fun! We give Ms. Victoria our highest recommendation!!
Camilla, Los Angeles
With Victoria, my experience was the best it could be! As a beginner, I was initially worried, but Victoria made me feel welcomed throughout my whole experience.
I highly recommend her as a tutor!
Priya, New York
Viktoria is very knowledgeable, punctual and accommodating/flexible on the teaching schedule. The chess learning that my son had was done on his own, but for some reason, I wanted him to think deeper and evaluate his chess positions better. Though it’s been only 2 sessions that he had with Viktoria, he is enjoying it & finding it challenging; Viktoria has given him smart suggestions on different moves. What I liked most about her is that she is very good at guiding the student through the thinking/analyzing process step by step by asking good questions instead of just telling the student what to do. My son feels more confident about his thinking and looks forward to the next lesson.
Aaron, Texas
Was absolutely fantastic in her explanations. Made learning chess fun and easy. Will certainly be getting more lessons from her.
John, Fort Worth
Viktoria is a fabulous instructor. As a fairly novice player I worried my poor play would be painful for a more experience player to witness. My fears were misplaced with Viktoria. She is both kind and patient, but she also pushed me to advance my game. She gave me homework to help improve my game (e.g., end-game puzzles and instruction to play more real (living) opponents and not just the computer). During some lessons we’d perform a post mortem on one of the game I played during the previous week. During others we would “play” a game against each other where we would discuss various lines of play and my thinking process (and how to improve my thinking process). Both types of lessons were extremely helpful. Viktoria is great. I cannot recommend her highly enough.
Ahmed, Washington DC
In my opinion Victoria is one of the best (if not the best) Chess coach I have ever met. She assesed my chess level according to my previous games and started to help me develop my chess skills and to convert my weaknesses to be my stregth. Her class was very instructive, insightful and very friendly. Victoria is a very strong player and she is a very talented coach as well. I really encourage anyone wants to develop his/her chess skills and get to the next level to book a lesson with Victoria. I’m sorry for my long review but she really deserved it. I am looking forward to meeting her again 🙂
Nathan, New York
Clear spoken and helpful teacher, highly recommend.
Colin, New York
Victoria is an outstanding chess tutor. I noticed immediate improvement in my chess game. Highly recommended!
