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Chess forum by Grandmasters
Sicilian sidelines after 2.Nf3 Nc6
Is there a course where sidelines after 2. Nf3 Nc6 are covered? E.g: 3.c3, 3.b4, etc. Thanks
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2.Nf3/3.c3 transposes to 2.c3, hence see the Alapin course. 3.b4 was discussed here: https://chessmood.com/forum/pro-channel/delayed-wing-gambit
English opening vs Dutch attack
is it applicable to play with the dutch attack against english opening, c4 Nc3 g3 system?
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Yes, it is a good option too. It will transpose to the other Dutch lines in most cases. Please chech this post too>
Yeah I believe the Dutch is pretty resilient to 1. c4 move-order tricks
Scotch 4 Bc5 6 Qf6?
I had played the Scotch with 5. Nb3 in a tournament long before I knew about your courses and my opponent played 5 Bb6 6. Nc3 Qf6? I played 7. Qe2 and he played a combination of d6, Ne7, O-O, Bxe3 after my Be3 and Be6 followed by Bxb3 when I castled queenside, I understand maybe its not so good but I lost that game because Black was faster in his attack, maybe you could cover this interesting 6 Qf6 move a bit? Its also quite natural if Black doesnt know the theory because its also a move in other Scotch lines and Black can think Qe2 is bad for us
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These should help: https://chessmood.com/course/scotch-game/episode/1964 https://chessmood.com/course/rock-n-rolling-with-white/episode/4082
Think like a Grandmaster
Hey, champions!
We're going to have a webinar with one of the best coaches - GM Avrukh Boris, on the topic “How Grandmasters think.”
It's gonna be an interactive event.
You can post the questions here, and I'll try to ask him during the event.
For more info and for taking a seat, click the link below.
https://chessmood.com/event/think-like-gm-boris-avrukh
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Keeping it on the subject, the main question I have would be is how to train to be able to think that [whatever he's demonstrating]. Often when you look back on something you've mastered you think well if only I'd tried that and done that first, then I'd have got there a lot quicker and sometimes these insights are not always forthcoming in lectures unless you ask. The suggestion might need to be considered from different viewpoints: for those who have an hour a day, and those who are putting lots more time in.
1.What is the best training method to improve calculation for 2150+ elo players up to FM level? - solving random tactics, workbooks on deep calculation (Volokitin, Ramesh), where's the secret? 2.What's your favourite thing or course from chessmood that gives most benefit for an improving player? 3. Tips on breaking plateau (stuck on the same 2100 level for many years)? 4. Tips on winning against lower rated opponents? Thank you.
A couple of questions for Grandmaster Avrukh: 1) Do Grandmasters always consciously make a list of candidate moves before starting to analyse? 2) How much variation is there between grandmasters in terms of their thinking process? Thanks!
Friends, later we'll also invite him for a general Masterclass.
This one is about Grandmaster thinking. What're the differences? Etc…
Would be good if your questions are related to it.
Excellent discussion Avetik, it was really cool to listen to. Among other things it makes me realize how far I have yet to go with my chess progression...I am just grateful I have ChessMood to help me along the way!
Improving calculation / visualisation
Hi everybody, I believe I have found the perfect website for training calculation skills. Continue reading to find out more... I am rated ELO 2060 currently and preparing for my next tournament that starts on Monday. Before the tournament I have set up a goal to improve my calculation skills. I imagined one needs to practice a lot. But how to practice, that is not so easy to figure it out. There are many books, websites tools, etc. After some research I realized that solving tactics is the way to go, but they should be at the right level (just a bit above my level) so I can push myself to improve. If they are too easy I will not improve if they are too hard I will get discouraged. I tried the popular chess websites (lichess, chessdotcom and chessbase) but somehow the tactics there are a bit too random for me, even though I like chessbase tactics the most. I am also a chess teacher using the famous Dutch chess curriculum called "The Steps Method". I went to their website looking for updates on the programme and stumbled upon a free feature they call puzzles. Every week on Monday they upload 48 puzzles. (6x8 Mon-Sat). Each day starts with the puzzle at level 1 and ends with a puzzle at level 8. For those who do not know the Steps Method the levels correspond to: Level 1: ELO 0 - 800 Level 2: ELO 801 - 1400 Level 3: ELO 1401 - 1600 Level 4: ELO 1601 - 1750 Level 5: ELO 1751 - 1900 Level 6: ELO 1901 - 2100 Level 7: ELO 2100 - ???? Level 8: ELO ???? - ???? So everybody can participate. My experience so far: - It's good to start from level 1 not matter your strength as a warm up and get a good feeling to solve some tactics before it gets harder - There is a real difficulty increase from one level to another - Puzzles are well chosen and from real OTB games with instructive content - So far I have never solved all levels on the same day without an error. Today maybe will be the first time. I have solved 1-7 correctly and I am readying for level 8. - Levels 1-4 I solve on the screen, levels 5-8 I setup on the board - It usually starts to get difficult for me at level 6, sometimes at level 5, but for sure at level 7 and 8. - So you can see that it quite corresponds to my ELO strength. Give it a try: https://www.stappenmethode.nl/en/puzzle-monday.php Enjoy!
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Interesting set of exercises thanks. Based on these eight, I agree they are the sort of positions that occur in games quite frequently. Nice range of difficulties too. I wish the board could be made larger, and I would prefer if the board was flipped when it is black to move, but neither issue was a huge deal. I managed to solve all eight, but I will freely admit that I got a little lucky on the last one. I saw the overall idea well enough, and calculated some sensible variations, but overlooked one defensive idea. Somehow I had chosen the correct square for the rook to defend against that idea. Could have been the magic of intuition, or more likely just dumb luck :-) For calculation training, I try to focus on: - Seeing the full solution right through to the end. - Seeing all the defensive tries. I think that was advice from RB Ramesh, and probably others too. I also find my level of confidence my solution is a useful thing to monitor. How to train this stuff, including the different types of training material and what they are good for, is an interesting topic.
Awesome recommendation! Thank you
king's Indian
How to win in for black strategies
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Hi, could you be more specific please?
I think you should try to break open whites center with pawn breaks.
Live with NM Robert Ramirez on his YouTube channel
GM Avetik, Thank you for the invitation to listen to your interview this morning. It was enjoyable to listen to but mostly it made me feel very grateful to have found Chessmood! For both the amazing content as well as the fantastic community to be a part of. I really hope your outreach efforts are able to be heard and felt across the chess world. More people need Chessmood! Thank you for putting together such a great resource. Leslie
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Thank you Leslie!!
You are always supporting us, not only with good words but with your presence in the streams too. It is very much appreciated.
By the way, Hovhannes said that you played very good against him last day. Very nice! Keep the good mood and the good work!!
Thanks a lot, Leslie brother!
Why some opening courses disappears
I have noticed some opening courses disappeared. For example, Alapin variation disappeared in "Sicilian' sidelines" courses although it is acceptable due to a new alapin course. Nevertheless, the new course deal with some different set-ups from the older course in some variation so that we cannot re-watch these older variation in the older course. In addition, in the accelerated dragon course, "craziest variation" section (I don't remember exact name) disappeared in the advanced section, which, I believe, deal with 7. Be2 d5. I think these disappearances are for some modification of the courses and it's very welcoming. But it's confusing for me because some of the variations I use disappears in the course without notice (as far as I know). Let us know which sections are changed or modified and why if your work does not become too much hard. I really appreciate your hard work on ChessMood!!
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Hello Enju-san,
Regarding the Dragon course, I believe that you are confused with the “Scotch course”, there we have the “craziest variation” section in the advanced course, but we never had any advanced section for the Be2 variation. It is a line that happens a lot in the streams but we never had an advanced section. The course was published in 2019 and remains unchanged.
As for the Alapin, yes, there are basically 3 lines that changed a bit and since Gabuzyan recorded the course on the Alapin again we did not want to confuse our members. If we keep 2 different repertoires it would be confusing. If you watch the Alapin course you will see very fast what is the minimal difference if you have the old lines. I know that it may be troublesome for you and we apologize for it, but it will be much easier to adapt to the new setup, you will not see much change, I promise. ?
By the way, are you going to Chennai too?
Course request: Color Complexes
Hey ChessMood Genius GMs, I remember watching a course on ChessMood about weak squares, and I think it touched on color complexes. Then the other day I noticed a 9-hour video course elsewhere that is entirely about color complexes. A sample video showed a position in which a pair of rooks shouldn't be traded because White loses the ability to control the light squares after that. I found it very instructional! Is there any chance such a course is on the horizon at ChessMood? This is a topic that players usually don't fully understand until they are at least class A players. Thanks! Richard
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Have you started going thru the Classical Masterpieces? There's a good amount of comments about this subject in there.
Appreciation
I have joined within 3 months and the massive improvement in my approach and the opportunity to have a fighting position out of the opening is a tremendous gift you have given us. Forever grateful chessmood family!
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This is indeed very nice to hear!! ?We are very happy for you!!☺️
Keep learning, keep growing!!!?
Classical Attacking/Endgame Courses
I have a question about how to approach these courses. Would you recommend that we view the courses one game per day? For the 100 classical masterpieces course, there's a note before the course recommending that we only watch one game per day, so I'm wondering if you would recommend the same approach for the other two classical courses.
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Hi Alex,
Well, that depends a bit on the time available for chess study that you have, but yes, as a general rule Avetik always recommends one per day. It is the same for the other 2 courses. Chessmood started in 2018 and the most seasoned members have already watched the first courses and continue with the other ones.
White plays 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 is it covered
Hi have given a cursory look at the summary of the opening courses. I have always wished to play the Benko but never did so because my knowledge was that White can avoid it by playing 2.Nf3. Is this line covered in the course? By looking at the summary it doesn't seem so.
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I don't think it is covered in the opening courses, but you can see in the streams that g6 is the move that fits with the repertoire there. See some games in the "Rock 'n' Rolling with Black" course where 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 is played: https://chessmood.com/course/rock-n-rolling-with-black/episode/4349 https://chessmood.com/course/rock-n-rolling-with-black/episode/4350 https://chessmood.com/course/rock-n-rolling-with-black/episode/4353 This last one transposed back to a Benko: https://chessmood.com/course/rock-n-rolling-with-black/episode/4313
Hi Luca, you can also look at this thread where I replied showing the transpositions to the openings offered by us. After 2.Nf3 g6 and then White has many possibilities that will take us to different openings but they are all commented individually. Check it out:
https://chessmood.com/forum/threads/question-regarding-the-black-repertoire?reply_id=15553&page=1
Grand Prix Anish Giri's Chessable course
Against our Grand Prix Repertoire Anish Giri recommends 8... a6. 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 d6 3. f4 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Bc4 Nc6 6.O-O e6 7.d4 cxd4 8.Nb5 a6. This move is not in the course and from my own research i've found: 9.Nbxd4 Nxd4 10.Nxd4 Nf6. Here you can either go e5 or f5. What are the plans for white or are there any other moves you can play that i've missed?
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Game Continuation
Hello All, I was playing White against a FIDE Master in an Exchange Caro-Kann in a recent OTB tournament. I played the opening well, but after exchanging the queens on move 21, I was unable to find a plan and messed up. I am not sure if trading the queens was right either. Any suggestions for how to continue the game and areas of improvement?
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Playing through the game, I thought 28.h4 would be a natural move. The idea is just to play h5 activating your rook and potentially gaining entry into the black position. That's the optimistic outlook. From a pessimistic viewpoint h4 also has merit as it makes the g5 break harder for black, and playing h5 could allow you to liquidate your weak h-pawn. Also, if black responds to h4 with h5 then they have a weakness on g6 that needs constant defending. (I'm just thinking out loud here. I'm sure you realise all this stuff.) Stockfish likes 28.h4 with a score of 1.6 at depth 43.
Looked at it without engine and agree with Peter M that h4 had to be played at move 28 or 29. Also I felt 14 Ne5 premature. I would have played 14 Qc2 as not doing anything on the queenside making Ne5 more of a threat and meeting Rac8 with the calm 15 Qb1 and maybe aiming to play 16 Re3 as this is flexible and in the esteemed words of our coach , Avetik is not revealing our hand. Only thoughts.
Concern in the Dutch
Hello All, This was yet another game against a strong player in the same OTB tournament as my previous post, "Game Continuation". Here I was playing Black and lost without a fight after my opponent played the strange move d5 against the b6 setup. Attached is the position. What is the correct way to counter this move?
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I'm interested in this, too. According to Stockfish 15, Black should go ahead and fiachetto the Bishop, and then in the next couple of moves Black should exchange pawns in the center. This makes sense since Bishops thrive in open positions. But that's just the engine's perspective.
Minor Success Story
For a long time (2 years?), I had been stuck on the Chess.com tactics trainer at about 1920 or so. Going through more puzzles didn't seem to help, as I had already solved or attempted to solve thousands of them (yes, seriously). I put that tactics quizzer on the back burner and decided to go through some courses at ChessMood. I went all the way through the tactics course, partially through the mating patterns course, and I completed some middlegame courses, too. A few days ago, I decided to go back to Chess.com and try a tactics puzzle. Not sure why I did this, but I guess I was just hoping that something had changed. Well, now my tactics rating has shot up to 2101, and I'm occasionally solving puzzles rated at master level. The only significant change to my chess study has been ChessMood, so I just wanted to thank all the GMs who work here! Hope my fellow adult improvers are seeing similar success.
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Richard, with ChessMood instruction the progress and growth is real! Congratulations on your success!
awesome!!! congrats! keep up the good work!
Nice one! It's always nice to have measurable progress. For learning/enforcing tactical patterns I think it's fairly well accepted that doing puzzles grouped by theme is the way to go. So if you want to supplement your ChessMood tactics study with say a puzzle book, then make sure it is organised that way. It also helps to have human curated puzzles where the theme is clear and, well, thematic :-). Doing Chess.com puzzles is still useful, but more for exercising your calculation and visualisation skills as well as benchmarking your progress.
Tactic ninja quizz#27
Hi all, At the end of this puzzle, what if black goes Kg6 forking Rh5 and Bf6
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Well, nice question, ?this is exactly the move that Lasker played in the game against Mexican GM Carlos Torre… This is maybe the most famous example of windmill.. Check out the game and see for yourself what happened… I also added a video of the game explained that may help you too to remember this pattern…
?
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1100063
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1DTrrrf6Cs
Closed positions vs open positions
Hello everyone, I have a question about chess styles in the opening and I would be interested in your opinions (and the opinions of GM Gabuzyan and/or GM Avetik ; also Kevin D if you are still active here :) ) I'm rated around 2300 online (my rating varies from 2250 to 2400 sometimes) and I have a preference for closed positions because I think it's easier to plan in the middle game. Until now, I almost never play open positions (at least not vs much stronger opopnents because I don't feel comfortable), and for this reason, I'm weak in this kind of positions. So my question is: Should I continue to work on my strength (reaching closed positions in the openings and continue to work mainly on middlegame & endgame) or should I voluntarily adopt openings leading to open positions to improve different skills from there (calculation, seizing the initiative, attacking, etc). Thank you :)
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Hello! Can you be a boxing fighter, but never use one of your hands in the battle? Let's say you have a strong left hook but the right side is your weakness? Probably not... Opponents will identify and exploit your weakness and as well sometimes you can't avoid situations when you need to use the right hand! Same in chess. You can have strengths and try to build the games over them, but completely not being able to play open positions will have a lot of downsides. You can watch some games in our commented games section, watch the streams and improve your understanding of open-style positions. Good luck!
Hi Akiba, Imo in modern chess, it's very important to have more universal approach, as positions tend to change couple of times during the game from closed to open, from calm to tactical, so specializing only on closed positions/opening might be weakness as GM Gabuzyan mentioned. Anyway, concrete calculation/tactics beat any kind of strategic/positional concept so that's what I'm trying to improve in my play. Best of luck!
where I can download pGn files?
where I can download pGn files?
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Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
To download the pgns of the courses, you just need to go to the end of the section of the video course. There you will find that the last section is the pgn for downloading.
Check out the picture attached for easy reference. Every course is the same, at the end you find the pgn and sometimes even pdfs.
(Look at the bottom of the picture).
Blindfold Chess
Hi ChessMood Family,
Interesting topic that I would like to discuss is Blindfold Chess. Do you find it interesting? May it be useful for chess in general? How many moves will you be able to make in a blindfold game?
Please also mention your elo , and if you already have experience in blindfold chess.
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Hi
This is a very interesting subject! I have tried blindfold and am so bad at it! It is a fine chess skill to hold a game only in your head (mind) and play well! I have much admiration for those players that can do this and would like to do it myself, but first I feel I must fix my normal bad chess, with normal sight/vision first!
Many top players can do this (eg IM L Rozman, GM Timur Gareyev, GM Magnus Carlsen & GM Nakamura and almost all top 50 GM's I would think, could make a decent try at it!). There are even famous blindfold tournamets (eg the Amber rapid blindfold blitz). Chess.com & lichess have the facility to choose blindfold play mode, so you can play it yourself (& there are YouTube videos showing games played blindfold or you can observe these games on the chess servers or at Twitch chess channels etc).
Have you ever tried it?
I replied to a different thread about Blindfold chess, but then I realised it wasn't a Pro Members thread so I deleted that post and am replying to this one instead. Hopefully it's OK to re-start a 2 year old thread. I think it's an interesting topic. I recently started playing blindfold on lichess. I played some blindfold many years ago, then gave up chess for 25+ years, so was curious if I could still manage. I was also inspired to try it when I heard Avinash Ramesh talk about playing blindfold simuls as part of his training (https://chessmood.com/blog/avinash-ramesh-story). No simuls for me yet though! I'm playing blindfold at 15+10 so I have plenty of time. Started with a few games vs the computer on easy levels, and then vs a few 1500 players. Doing OK so far and will be curious to see where my blindfold rating ends up. The lichess blindfold interface feels a tiny little bit like cheating, because having the empty board there helps as does having the move list. Got to start somewhere though, and when time starts to run down you don't have time to go back through the move list anyway. I do think it has some positive training value. To use a weight training analogy, it feels like it is isolating particular chess muscles. It also requires sustained concentration. Surprisingly it is also quite calming. Edit: I forgot to mention my Elo (2265 but from long ago) as requested in the original post.
