5 Tips Taken From The Best Chess Course On The Internet

his article contains 5 important tips that will facilitate your chess learning and advancing. The material is prepared by a student of our Remote Chess Academy. He summarized the ideas that worked well for him. There’s a great chance that these tips will be helpful for you just as well.

Without further ado let me present an article of Louis Holtzhausen.

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The tips are from the chess courses of GM Igor Smirnov

Chess Course Tip 1: The main idea of a chess game is activity

Isn’t it strange that even after studying a chess course – many chess players still can’t tell you what the main idea of a chess game is?

This is bad because how are you supposed to make good moves if you are not even sure what the main goals are? Once you know that you need to maximize the activity of your pieces, everything else will start to make a lot more sense.

Chess Course Tip 2: Study the middle game plans that relate to your opening

It is a common training mistake that many chess players make – they memorize many opening moves. To play the opening moves from memory can hardly give you any advantage over your opponent. But if you know the typical plans that arise from the opening you play, you can be much better prepared for the game!

When you train your opening moves – focus to understand the middle game plans that are typical to your opening. Training your opening moves in this way makes more sense and is also a lot more enjoyable than simply trying to memorize a lot of moves.

Chess Course Tip 3: Focus to improve your thinking process

Your knowledge about chess is not the factor that will give you the edge in your games! Instead, knowing how to apply every bit of knowledge you have is the skill that will give you the edge.

In fact, too much knowledge will only confuse you if you don’t have a clear thinking system to help you apply all the things you have learnt.

Chess Course Tip 4: A master outplays his opponent with better positional understanding

Chess masters often avoid complications! Yes sure they are good even in complicated positions, but they also know that their main advantage is their deep understanding of chess positions.

A master will outplay their opponent. It will look as if the master wins easily without even doing anything special. This is simply because they have a deep understanding of the game and outplay their weaker opponent slowly but surely.

Chess Course Tip 5: Focus on the quality of your training instead of the quantity

I have been guilty of this training mistake myself too. Often chess players feel that they will improve by spending a lot of time training a whole lot of chess information. They will even spend hours solving tactical puzzle without seeing any real improvement in their results.

You will benefit more from studying one topic well (QUALITY) than to study many topics superficially (QUANTITY).

You can find more tips and information on his high quality chess courses by clicking this link: GM Smirnov’s chess courses (I only recommend chess courses that I have worked with myself and can highly recommend).

5 Steps for Calculating Like a Grandmaster

All chess players know that grandmasters can calculate many moves ahead, evaluate the position, and deliver the final blow. How do they do that? Is there a way an ordinary chess player can learn to calculate many moves ahead like masters do? In this article, we will answer those questions and show you a simple schematic that will tremendously help at calculating moves.

 

Step 1. Knowing when and what to calculate

The most important step in move calculation is actually to know when you need to calculate the variation and when you don’t.Chess players, even very strong Grandmasters, are not machines. They cannot simply calculate all lines and come up with the best continuation.

That’s why it is very important to realize when you need to calculate the line. The primary difference between a strong and a weak player is not how much each player calculates. The main difference between the two is in the ability of each player to find the right moves to calculate in the first place.

There are no general guidelines as of when and what you need to calculate. But I will try to give you some basic suggestions that will help you at deciding when you should calculate the variation:

1. When your own king or your opponent’s king is under attack, you should calculate the possibilities to end or continue the attack.

2. When there are many pieces/pawns under attack you should calculate the possibilities to win/save the pieces/pawns.

3. When the position is unstable (possible exchanges, pawns structure changes, simplifications etc.) you should calculate how you can benefit the most from it.

Step 2. Finding the candidate moves

After figuring out what and when to calculate you should find the so-called candidate moves. These are the moves that will most likely lead to the most favorable outcome. They generally make sense based on the current positional evaluation. After identifying3-4 candidate moves you should start calculating the lines, starting with what you think is the strongest candidate move.

The ability to calculate these lines solely depends on your calculation and visualization skills that can be enhanced by special exercises.

Ready to start systematic training that actually works? 

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Step 3. Evaluating the position

After you have finished calculating the line based on selected candidate moves, you have arrived to a certain final position. In order to judge if the move was a good one or not, it is necessary to evaluate this position and to understand if you’ve achieved some improvement on the board.

This evaluation possesses additional challenges because you cannot see the position on the board, and need to evaluate it only based on your visualization ability.

Step  4. Using method of elimination

In order to make your life simpler, it is crucial to decrease the number of moves and variations that you need to calculate and analyze. If you start calculation of the line and notice that there are already many problems after move 3, there is no need to continue the calculation. Save some time and use it where it needed the most.

Chess is not a game for a perfectionist, by rather for a player who knows how to spend his resources wisely. You goal is to eliminate all bad possibilities and to calculate/play only the good moves.

Step  5. Making the final decision

The final step is probably the easiest of all five. You need to critically look at your analysis and select a single best move to play in the game. If you encounter two or more moves which are about the same quality, you can go ahead and play any of the two. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but it should be a good move.

After you have selected the move you will play, it makes sense to double check the line and to make sure that you are not making a mistake. When that is done, you can go ahead and play the move. If you did everything correctly, your position should slightly improve.

Top 5 Types of Forks that Every Chess Player Must Know

Today we will talk in detail about one of the most important elements of chess tactics, a fork. A fork is a type of tactics when one piece attacks two or more of the opponent's pieces at the same time. As a result, usually, one of these pieces is won.  It is one of the most common tactical elements in chess, and many games are lost by those who have missed one little fork. After studying this article you won't be one of them 

1. Knight Fork

Knight is a truly unique piece due to its ability to jump over other pieces. It is impossible to stop the knight's check, without capturing the knight or moving the king itself. That feature makes the knight a perfect forking piece. Take a look on the example below, where the black knight forks white's king and bishop. This type of fork is especially forcing due to the check by a knight. The king has to move and the knight is lost.

You may feel that knight forks are easy to find, but it's not always the case. Take a look at the example below. There is no immediate fork, but it can be constructed. Let me show you how to think in cases like that.

Notice how white knight attacks the f6-pawn which can be captured with a check. Also notice that it is being defended by the black's knight, which in turn is protected by the bishop and threatened by the white's rook. Now imaging that instead of the knight there is a bishop on e7.

Then you can capture the f6-pawn with a knight, forking the king and bishop and winning it. Do you see a way to achieve that? Exactly, you need to play 1.Rxd7 and after Bxd7 2. Nxf6+ and 3. Nxd7 winning the bishop.

White to move and win

2. Rook Fork

Rook is not only can be used to control the ranks and files but also to fork opponent's pieces. In the example below black's rook is forking white's king and knight resulting in capturing of the minor piece and winning the game. 

3. Queen Fork

Queen is the most powerful piece, since it combines powers of both the rook and the bishop. That makes it a very good attacker. In the example below black's queen forks three of the white's pieces at the same time ultimately winning the game. 

In order to be proficient at finding tactics such as forks, smothered mates, checkmates, pins, and skewers you need to solve problems on daily bases. If you are aiming for a serious progress, consistency is the key. Sure you may skip a day or two here and there, but the point is to work on tactics at least for 20 minutes a day everyday.

Once you're doing that, you should throw positional training, endgames training, and attacking training into the equation and the success is almost guaranteed for you! Things can be a little confusing though, but don't worry we tried to make learning chess as easy as possible, by creating a step-by-step, day-by-day training program that will help to take your chess to the next level.

4. Pawn Fork

Even though the pawn is the least valuable unit, it can surely deliver a fork. In the example below, the pawn is forking white's bishop and knight, drawing the game. 

5. Bishop Fork

Bishop is a great long range piece, and it can fork pieces located on the same diagonal. In the example below the bishop forks white's king and rook. 

Let's take a look at the example from real game. We notice that the black's bishop is interposing the attack on the rook and king via d5 square. It is protected by both the queen and the knight. Is there way to get rid of both defender in one move? Here it is: 1. Qxe7! Qex7 2. Bxd5+ Kf8 3. Bxa8 and white is winning after he exchanges his queen for 2 minor pieces and a rook. 

White to move and win

Extra: King Fork

Yes, the king is also an attacking piece and can deliver a fork winning a piece, if someone does not know how to checkmate with a knight and bishop correctly.