Newbies Giving Advice:

I was reading some running blogs lately where they were laughing about people who have not been running for all that long dispensing tips, as if they thought of themselves as experts or something.

I personally don't have a problem with fairly new runners trying to give advice to beginners.

I look at it this way: If you have someone who has never thrown a bowling ball in their life, even a league bowler with a poor average ( Say a 120 ) has some basic knowledge about how to line up your feet for spares, move around on the approach, find problems with the way the beginner is releasing the ball, etc.

Likewise a beginning chess player does not need a Grandmaster for a coach, ( Although it certainly shouldn't hurt if the GM had the patience ) they can often keep improving by learning from the average chess-club member type of player for quite some time.