Chess forum by Grandmasters

Classical Endgames - Amazing course

I just started with the Classical Endgames course, and I'm just completely blown away. After watching 3 games I feel this is the absolutely most instructive chess material I've ever encountered. It's simply outstanding! Thank you, CM team! Guys - if anyone of you like me have postponed watching this material - don't! It's really great stuff there. 

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Thanks for sharing ...

Have you seen the other endgame videos? 

Is it better to start with the classical endgame course or the pawn endgame course? 

What rating level are these courses made for? 

Starter course openings ... Is there more coming?

Hi,

I am a new PRO Member ordering, and wondering if the Starter course opening epertoire will eventually be expanded and be a complete starter repertoire for Black and White for players like myself who are under 1500 ELO?

Also, I have read that many strong players and coaches recommend starting with classical openings for learning ... as Black, are the Benko Gambit and Accelerated Dragon good for me to start with at my level (around 1100 OTB in all time controls) rather than QGD and 1.e4 e5? 

I have no personal or stylistic preference and spend most of my time studying tactics (around 1800 level on chess dot com ), but would like to play and learn more from games rather than just puzzles, and learn with the good consistent starter openings you recommend.

Thank you

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Another approach is to do the main courses, but try to absorb ideas rather than moves (maybe limit to 3 moves after the last position you know for example). As well as dip in after games to see what you could have / should have played and engine check the opening you did play to try to understand the difference (if inferior). Most of the games at that level (ignoring blunders which also happen at an alarming rate) will be won by tactics and endgame skill and a worse position is often countered by setting problems for (and continuing to press) the opponent who will then go on and blunder at some point almost guaranteed.

Hi Bahram, I would say the most important is to start with openings that are solid and have a good reputation. So you can be sure that spending time on them deepens your chess understanding. And you will not have to change them when your opponents get stronger. So let's look at the main openings by ChessMood for White:

1. e4 e5 - The Scotch. Very classical and even played by Kasparov. However, the h4-line is quite modern and advanced. So in the case of 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 you might switch to the Scotch four nights with 5. Nc3 (this is covered by Yusupov and Sielecki).

1. e4 c5 - Sicilian. A difficult one. I used to play the Smith-Morra Gambit before starting with ChessMood's Anti-Sicilian. This is a really hard stuff because Black has so many options and move orders. However the same is true if you were to play the more classical Open Sicilian. And the White's moves in the Open Sicilian might seem more natural and easy. However, one or two inaccuracies, and you get checkmated. 

1. e4 c6 - exchange variation. I will not say that playing this (for an advantage) is easy. But White's development comes very naturally and the plans are not too difficult to grasp. I would say - a very good choice to start with.

1. e4 e6 - French. 3. Bd3 is a sideline. However, it is a natural move. And in any case, Black will try to attack your central pawns and things can easily get very difficult. The alternative would be the exchange variation suggest by Sielecki (Yusupov covers the advance variation 3. e4-e5 which is not too easy).

So, now let us look for the Black side:

1. e4 c5 - Sicilian - I have not much experience for that on the Black side (I reply 1. ... e5). The advantage is that you will face 1. ... c5 a lot when playing 1. e4. 

1. d4 Nf6 going for the Benko Gambit. Well, even Kasparov covers this opening in his book on modern developments in the 70s and comes to the solution that it is a playable one. Black plays for a win. Following Yusupov a started learning the very classical QGD. Before that, I played the Grunfeld. I think it makes a lot of sense to spend some time on the classical QGD. And then to decide - do I want to play an opening that more or less guarantees me an equal game (but not more), or shall I fight for a win from the very first move. Playing the QGD in a classical and rated OTB game was absolutely fine for me. I focused a lot to be stay concentrated over a long time and to be patient. But in Blitz and Rapid, I had no fun playing QGD. And since we are no professionals, we not to have fun. Playing the Benko is a bit like playing an accelerated Grunfeld. I really like it.

Hey Bahram! 
Right, we're going to have starter course for Black as well. 
For white one will be expanded. 

But it doesn't mean they will be different openings. 
Our choice of openings, is that they're classical, easy to learn and help to improve with your growth. 
For example Benko, will help to understand activity of the pieces, half open lines etc...  

Just go with them. 
And about tactics, don't overdo it. 
Please read the following article: https://chessmood.com/blog/the-myth-about-chess-tactics-and-solving-chess-puzzles 

Thanks everyone ... all good point. I simply don't have the time to go through the full openings course, so I eagerly await the starter course.  I might start with the pawn endgame videos first, then the other endgames videos.

Special thanks to Abhi Yadav and the forum

Last week I played a game were I won against a 2413 in blitz, but the funny thing is that it was thanks to this forum and thanks to @Abhi Yadav. About a year ago, he posted one game were he explained us that there was a fantastic move on the move 5 of a variation in our Sicilian with white with 2...Nc6 Bb5.

He posted the example and I was very surprised and somehow I remembered very good the variation that he explained and I also continued the line a bit because this variation happened to me once and I messed up about 5 months ago.

Now after winning this game I tried to find the post but I had no success. Anyways, this is the first time that I win with this variation, and I hope that many of you will do to if this happens to you. @Abhi Yadav, if you can find the post that you posted in the past, please let us know!

I am pasting the game and take a look at the moves 7 and 8! the rest can be played differently and I even missed one mate... but the Qh5 and a4 are this type of moves that Avetik would say: This is a cheater... No, sensei... @Abhi Yadav, showed it to us...

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Wow Edo! Thank you Chessmood Forum and Abhi!

Hi Edo, that you a lot for your input. 4...Qb6 is indeed a dubious move, and the way to exploit it is perhaps not so straightforward if you see it on the board for the first time.

This weekend I played a blitz tournament on europe-echecs.com. I scored three wins in the first 3 rounds and then I got to play two GMs. I drawed the first and lost to the second. I am telling this because in the second game I lost the I got an early surpise 4...Nf6

1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nd4 4.Nf3 Nf6!? 5.e5 Nxb5

When my opponent played 4...Nf6 I spent some time and played 5.e5 thinking that he will have to retreat back to g8. After his next move I realized that he will be able to go to d5 if I take the Knight on b5. 

I played 6.exf6 , which unfortunately gives black advantage.

6.exf6 Nxc3 7.fxg7 Bxg7 8.dxc3 h6 9.O-O d6 and Black has a Bishop pair in an open position.

Later I looked into the theory and after:

6.Nxb5 Nd5 7.Ng5 we get quite a funny position. I am attaching the screenshot, where quite a few games where played, among those these two:

Caruana - Carlsen 1-0 https://lichess.org/d8jFc67C 

Grishchuk - Korobov 1-0 https://lichess.org/ZouhmLo2 

So 4...Nf6 can be a surpise weapon in some games. Happy analyzing.

I think i deleted my many useful posts from chessmood in past because people were not interested and looks quiet. I don't like to help quiet people sometimes. But thanks for mentioning me. I respect your appreciation

I played this over board but I did not found Qh5 I think and still I won that game. may be it's in my database

An early e5 & d5 in the Grand Prix

My student played the attached game and run across an early deviation in the Grand Prix. I checked it with Fritz, and the the line appears good and there are no similar games in the database. So I have to come to a higher source for a real suggestion on how to handle it. Comments in the game are mine to my student and a few evaluations from Fritz.

I would appreciate any thoughts.

- Murrel

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Hi Murrel,

3...e5 is terribly weakening d5 square.

After 4.f4 you are right d5 is already complicated.

I will have 2 suggestions. Either take on e5 and after nxe5 play nf3 with a logical development in future of bishop to c4 and short castle or to play in a gambit style with 4.Nf3 sacrifice the pawn and after Exf4 play bc4 followed by castle.

Benko Gambit - 4. b3 or 4. Bg5

I would love to hear the recommendations of the CM GM team about the following deviation in the Benko:

4. b3 - do we take on c4 here or should be play b4 similar to the recommendations against 4. Qc2? Furhtermore, should black here play e5?

4. Bg5 - here d5 as against the Trompowsky is of course not relevant. Should we play 4.. Ne4, or just go for regular Benko moves and "risk" that after g6 white takes on f6?

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For lines, which are not yet covered in the ChessMood courses, I use other sources. Here is what In have in my files. 

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 4.b3 e6 5.dxe6 fxe6 6.cxb5 a6 7.bxa6 Ne4 8.Bb2 c4 9.a3 Nxa6

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 4.Bg5 Ne4 5.Bf4 Qa5+ 6.Nd2 g5 7.Be3 bxc4 8.Qc2 f5

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 4.Bg5 Ne4 5.Bf4 Qa5+ 6.Nd2 g5 7.Be5 Rg8 8.Nf3 Nxd2 9.Qxd2 Qxd2+ 10.Nxd2 d6 11.Bg3 Bg7

These are quite sharp lines. Avetik, if you are reading this, could you please give your opinion?  

We discussed this briefly with the CM team and against Bg5, we have a couple of good and simple options. The first one is just go b4 followed by g6 with our habitual play. The second one would be to play g6 in the 4th move, again trying to reach similar positions. Bg5 is not a good move against this structure, and we need to use the time wisely.

As for 4.b3, there are 2 options, ...bxc4 and bxc4 with a very good structure. c4 is occupied by a pawn, usually this square in benoni like structures is used for a knight, here is is not possible.

The second option would be go g6, Bb2 and Bg7, with familiar structures too. It all depends on your taste, but try to work with familiar structures not memorized lines as much as possible...

Hello Yair,

My opinion is that after b3 case black can be taking on c4 and open up the b file, so the bishop on b2 in the future will be bothered by Rb8 move.

And after 4.Bg5 g6 5.Bxf6 is not dangerous as bishop located on g7 will become powerful with f5 move in future.

A Doubt in the Commented Classical Games

In this position Coach asked to pause the video and think I thought about an interesting idea. The move played in the game is 12.Bg4. The Move I thought is Nb5 (This idea came to my mind from the Daily Lesson of Knight Raid - Thanks!) with idea Na7. Below I am giving the pgn of my analysis.

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Rating Progress

Champions, how many rating points have you raised since joining ChessMood? 
Offline or online. 

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In Chess.com 2185-2502 and In Lichess from 2200-2428[Highest Being 2474]

2000 to 2200 in chess.com and around 150+ rating in lichess

chess.com:2519->2760

c24: N/A (only used to spectate tournaments)

lichess.org: 2402-> 2585(only playing quarantine league; mostly used for storing studies)

FIDE: +79 since Jan 2021

Lichess: 1900-2400

Chess.com: 1800-2200(I don't play much there)

Those were the rapid ones. For the blitz ones, I'm only playing the Bundesligas, so I didn't increase much. My tactics rating is 2500 on lichess and close to 2800 on chess.com

I have gained approx. 450 blitz rating points online - almost 400 rating points in rapid online - 140 rating points USCF OTB, but was halted because we coulnd't play for the last year or so, and I think will increase a lot more now that tournaments are starting up again.

chess.com 1900 to 2100 but not playing there a lot due to interface.

lichess.org  2000 to 2200 highest went 2284 but right now above 2250. Hoping to reach 2300 soon.

I am not offline rated. But I think before chessmood I would have 1200 and now 1750. Online. Bullet +200 (1960), Blitz +400 (1930), Rapid +420 (1921), Classical + 330 (1850). I have been a chessmood member for 1,5 years. 

In the 2 weeks since joining I've gone from 2102->2225 in blitz on Lichess and it is climbing every day.  My puzzle rating has also increased from 2470 to 2580.  Can't wait to see how it affects my OTB rating when that starts up again.  Hope it continues as I learn more lines and do more courses.  I'm delighted!

Around 300 pts on chess.com to around 1900 at 5+0 and hard to say on lichess.

I was up to around 2150 on my old account it got banned for cheating though I didn't, after I did well in a bundesliga tournament and beat a few 2300 players. I even made some big blunders in those games also. I blame chessmood openings! My old account which I went back to is around 2050 but I stopped playing there so much. Though I do prefer 5+3 which is what I am playing on there.

I was 1700 in lichess for many years. A year after joining Chessmood I am 2100, that makes it 400 points. Over the board I won 85% of the games played since November and I am enjoying chess more than ever! I could never have imagined this before, playing the same openings and watching and learning the streams makes the difference!!!

King´s Indian Attack. How to play with black!?

Hello GM Avetik!, could you explain in your course "Crsushing all Sicilian's sidelines" how to play against King's Indian Attack please!, and also cover this line in the variation Alapin which is very common:

1.e4 c5, 2.c3 Nf6, 3.e5 Nd5, 4.Nf3 Nc6, 5.d4 cxd4, 6.cxd4 d6, 7.exd6 Qxd6 and then?

Greetings!

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Ηello Arturo, against the king's indian attack I prefer to play something which resembles a reversed catalan system with d5 and c5 and fianchettoed bishop and king's indian pawn stucture on the kingside. Against the king's indian attack I also play a "reinforced centre variation: 1. g3 e5 2. Bg2 d5 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. O-O c5 5. d3 Nc6 6. e4 Be4 7. Nc3 or any other move O-O and Be6. 

Against that Alapin variation you have mentioned the arising positions are almost equal: In particular, after 8. Nc3 you should reply 8. ... Bf5 9. Bc4 Nb6 10. Bb3 e6 11. O-O Be7. If your opponent chooses 8. Bc4 then 8. ... Bg4 is good, and then 9. O-O e6 10. Nc3 Be7 11. Nxd5 exd5 12. Be2 O-O and you have a very playable position. And finally about 8. h3 a rare move which I came across you go for a king's indian structure 8. ... g6 9. Nc3 Bg7 10. Bb5 O-O 11. O-O a6 12. Ba4 Nxc3.

All of them are very playable positions, and I think these all were helpful for you. Ask me if you have any questions. 

Using landmarks, deduction, generalities and exceptions to find our way in chess

A walk in a country park reminded me of something relevant to learning chess. On the way back from a walk in one direction, I knew that the correct path had been taken because of landmarks I recognised, even though I wasn't paying so much attention to some of them. Why did I remember the landmarks (exist) more than say the exact path,  and couldn't I remember anything about what the field next to it looked like, or the not so remarkable trees. Why can't (assuming no predictable pattern) can we not remember what we ate for dinner last Tuesday, yet we can remember 15 moves of say the Sicilian Dragon in one mainline, yet fail to recall what the right move was in a variation of it we saw a few times a while back?

Perhaps the answer is we are built for survival and being able to find our way would be the difference between getting home to our village, or being lost in the wilderness and being eaten by wild beasts. I've seen the power of this first hand. Many years ago (long before Google Maps!) I entered the Blackpool tournament while at university. Some of the chess club members rented a house in which to stay for the weekend. On Friday night I walked to the seafront where the tournament was being held. After a reasonably long game, I was told to meet the other members at a pub nearby. Unfortunately that pub was closed (it was out of tourist season), so on not being able to find the others, I managed to find my way back, despite not having the address and not paying specific attention on the way there. Yet somehow logic of which road it must have been, landmarks and the property itself, I returned without getting lost.

So what does this mean for learning chess?

Thinking about this, I think we're good at the following:
. Things that stand out - landmarks. Taken the Qe1 idea in the Caro-Cann. That stands out. Even if I can't remember the moves to get there, I probably could reconstruct the position deduce what moves to play to get there.
. Things that can be logically deduced as must being the case. Take the move order in the English. If you know White's knight manouever and other tricks, it's possible to correctly determine the moves to play. Without thinking about what White attempting to do, would this be so easy?
. Things that are 'always' or 'never' true or can be simplified behind rules/mnenomics - for example Bb3 in d6 Grand Prix in response to e6 when d5 is threatened. Or capture on c6 as soon as the knight is no longer pinned.

On the other hand we're terrible at things that may or may not be the case, such as whether to play a certain move if that move appears in some lines and not others, or specific move orders where there is no logical order (not to say whether there is a correct one or not). More than likely there we will make mistakes. So why doesn't a GM (oh they do, watch the streams) or at least fewer bad errors. I think there are 'heat maps' of positions. This is the comment about intuition and developing it I was trying to get at. Strong players get a feel for whether something is right or not, because certain patterns trigger certainty, even if the position itself is novel. For a lower rated player, moves such as h4, g3, f4 in front of a castled king would feel suspect, even without the considering if the opponent can exploit the holes, because they have never seen strong players use such a combo. The danger is of just looking at weakly played games (including a diet of our own), is that the 'heat maps' that form aren't necessarily the ones that make good chess, and we have to relearn what is natural and what is not by looking at model games, positions and strategies. That way even if we don't know what's right, we get a feeling of familiarity of having seen a move before, vs one we haven't. This then allows us to select candidate moves.

By knowing which strategy we'll need (and whether we'll need a strategy at all and just find our way over the board), has to be a key to remembering opening material, endgames and middle-game strategies.

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Nice example in a chess book of what I mean by recognition/intuition of something via a 'heat map'.

In this case it's word recognition rather than intuition or chess itself.

In Philidor's book, the 1790 edition, he starts the book with what we'd call an author's note or conventions (used in the book) where he explains his use of grammar and the symbols used. However, the word he uses is one that we wouldn't use now: advertisement. In modern times that word means to almost everyone something noting, recommending or introducing a product or service to make someone aware of, or to persuade to buy it. Here it's been used in a more archaic way as 'notice' - an advert is a notice after all, and it's etymology is just that, a statement calling notice to something.

Now that I've told you this meaning (aside from the fact I'm putting this idea inside your head!), when someone talks about an advertisement, are you going to think they mean marketing a product or instead that it's just drawing your attention to some information? I suspect it's the former still. The 'heat map' which the neurons in your brain 'implement' via connection strength will strongly give you the first meaning, and only rarely any other, because almost every time you've heard the word it's been the modern usage. We get the strongest association, and for any others we usually need to consciously scratch our heads (using associations to bring them back, or wait for it to pop out of the subconscious.

So what I'm saying is that by learning chess from good quality sources, the intuition, or first thing that pops into your mind will be often usually correct one (based on the examples you trained it with), then you need to scratch your head a bit (via calculation and looking around the board, recalling games, etc) to work out if it's really right here, or whether there are other things you are not aware of straight away.

Ps.
This is perhaps the reason too much bullet alone isn't good for you as a developing player, because the associations made by constant bullet games will help you play bullet games, but many of those patterns are refuted in blitz or classical since confusing opponents (with simple choice), time-wasting, defeating premoves, spite checks and so on, aren't usually useful strategies there, yet given the board, pieces and rules are the same, so will be the 'heat map' that is built up and your longer time control chess suffers.

How to analyze a serious game? (I would like if coach also answers the question)

Hello ChessMood Family, I have a question. How should we analyze our serious games? Like 60 + 30 games? What all things Should we consider? How should we analyze the endgame? How we should analyze middlegame? Should we use a help of engine? 

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I think that this should be topic of a blog article. It is a very broad subject and you can write a book about it. I will ask Avetik's opinion @Sidharth_Sreekumar

Hi Sidharth,

As mentioned previously it's a very large topic but I will try to share my experience.

Mostly I was analyzing my games with my coaches, and they were revealing em the mistakes.

Working alone is a little more difficult, sometimes you should just take a look at your moves and think:

Was it logical? What was the purpose of it? Did I locate my pieces in good spots? Did I activate all of them?

The engine may help you to reveal bad moves but will be hard to hear the explanation, so may be tricky.

Attack with Scotch game

Dear GM Avetik sir,

I have a question in the following variation.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nxc6 bxc6 6.e5 Ne4 !?

In this formation I try so many different options as White, but I am not able to build a strong attack on Black.

Please guide... How to continue?

Regards,

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Nd2, Qf3 or Qd4 are all reasonable ways to continue, with the main idea to pull ahead in development with the unsecured knight on e4.

Hello Jay, as Valdemar pointed out, there are several ways. I asked Gabuzyan or Avetik to reply to your post, they will get back to you soon.

Hello Jay!

My preference is to go to the 7.Nd2 move. White is having space advantage in a center and if we just trad of this knight let's say after 7...Nxd2 8.Bxd2 white will have a better position. Bishops will be placed on c3 and d3 aiming for black's kingside, as well due to more space it's a very easy to game.

If after 7.Nd2 Nc5 8.Nb3 is a good one with the same ideas, as well if here black at some point captures on b3 with axb3 move we will open our rook on a1.

Scotch Game h4 Line -- A Surprise ?!

Hi --- I've been doing very well with the Scotch but today was surprised by a move. In 5min Chess  I'd rather not be surprised !!  So the normal e4:e5  Nf3:Nc6 ; d4 exd : Nxd4 Nf6 : Nxc6 b/c6 : e5 Qe7 : Qe2 Nd5 : h4 a5 : g3 Ba6 : c4 Qb4 + ouch !!   I tried 11. Nd2 and then he played Bc5 I tried a3 but the queen dropped back to form a battery and I felt he had a edge . He played quickly and soon re-routed the d5 knight to f5 via e7 and I just didn't seem to have anything. It looked good for Black.

Any ideas I haven't seen this before and it threw me --which is in many ways  a good thing for my opponent in quick play . He won ................ 

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Erm isn't his knight hanging on d5 with the moves you gave?

Playing g3 does not necessarily always translate to playing Bg2 in the future. (for instance, in some f6 variation, when black plays Rg8 attacking the g2 pawn, we will move the pawn up 1 square to defend it) Therefore, after his Bc5 move, maybe we can already attempt to unpin the queen with Qe4!?. Additionally, whenever the bishop is on a6 loafing off, we can already play Rh3 and give black some headaches with interesting rook maneuvers (for instance, Rh3->g3 or b3 or a3)

P.S. In today's weekly Gabuzyan stream, this c4 Qb4 occurred in one of the games. Maybe worth checking it out sometime later. 

Hi Keven,

I never faced this on my own but found an interesting idea.

After 11...Bc5 12.Qh5!

The idea is that knight on d5 is hanging now, and as well we don't waste time on a3 move since the queen is not doing much on b4.

After 12...Ne7 13.Bd3 which is preventing 0-0 due to the mate on h7.

and after 13...Qb6 trying to make reversed battery just 14.0-0  this case white is much better, will be trying to play Ne4 soon with solid advantage.

How to study?

I personally have a hate of the word study. Not because it brings images of hard work, or sometimes long hours up against a deadline, but because it's so vague. As a child I was given the equivalent of a Rubiks cube in the form of a globe and my nan suggested that I study it. Study what and how exactly? What was the goal. As an adult I can grasp the idea was to have vague notion of where places were and what countries looked like in order to use that knowledge when the right time came (or just to sound worldly and erudite), but as a child without context what did that mean exactly?

So to chess, you study master games as part of your training, and it's well documented as a major component of improving. Certainly the classical games course here is very good. The problem with 'study games' is it's quite vague. For example, the are two extremes, both of which are probably good in certain circumstances, yet, for an improving player rather than a professional, quite idiotic as they will unlikely be successful long term and a waste of time: 1> Learn all the moves by heart of a few games 2> Flick quickly through as many games as possible and hope for some kind of osmosis. Neither of which mentions anything about selecting those games, managing time, how to ensure lessons are learned (or which), and how to recall it all in 6 months from now.

At one point I was given a rule of thumb for a player looking to reach 2300. When you learn an opening, select 10 master games to study. This raises a lot of question even if the advice was well meaning in some context. The questions I had were:

. What the goal is
. Why 10, and is that for a whole opening system, or a variation?
. How to select those 10 (in some cases there might be less than 10 (decent) games in a line I play or a major tabiya, and other times thousands)?
. What to do with those 10 games - what is the goal, how to go about it, how to know when it's done and move on, how to maintain it
. How to spend the time, what to focus on / is important, what not to focus on / can be skimmed over, and roughly how long
. Visualise from book, over a board, on a computer?
. Notes or positions to take, and how in order to be effective?
. How does studying games fit with being able to play those lines/similar positions (in particularly move and position learning) and how to apply the study to actual play?
. How to keep the memories fresh so it doesn't need repeating every few months (or that which does is easily done with little time spent) - repeating the whole exercise for every opening for a non-professional is not viable.

I'll stop writing at this point and see what the suggestions are, in particular from the Chessmood GMs

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Yeah! These are good questions in my view. I would also like to get answers from GMs.

Thanks for pointing out this post, I may have missed it with the latest technical problems which are almost solved. My bad!

Lots of things to comment on, I will check with the team and see how we can answer this, I think that it would be best with a nice detailed blog article, because there can be many opinions here too...

Hi David,

I  really like the word "study".

Why?

Well, I think that this is the only way that "old" men like us can improve.

I came back to chess after high school, an apprenticeship in a bank, and studying law.

So my only advantage to the talented kids is - knowing how to study! (There was a very instructive book called "how to study" that I read after high school).

Or to put into other words - how to learn.

Having twins (born in 2012), I, even more, got interested in the art of learning/teaching (one of our twins came to be really gifted).

So, coming back to your question - how to study chess?

I started doing it the way I did with law. Taking a really old book to get the basics - Lasker's manual. Followed by Capablanca's chess fundamentals. I also tried the Kasparov series. But that was way too much detail in the analysis for me. 

At the same time, I went for some very "easy" material - the steps method. When studying law, most students pay a lot of money for a "Repetitor" (revision course). The idea is to do certain patterns of legal arguments again and again - like chess tactics. 

But if you asked me what was really fun studying law (and chess) - it is the development of ideas.

Or the philosophy of law or chess.

That is why it is very important for me to have the historical context of openings.  

And this is why I very much would appreciate having a brief course on "Chess Philosophy" on ChessMood.

I am unable to download the PGN file for the Sicilian Defense

Hello,

When I click the attachment under the PGN file the page only refreshes, nothing downloads. This has happened for both the Sicilian Dragon and Nightmare of Rossolimo.

 Please advise, thank you!

Leslie Smith

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I have the same problem, e.g. accelerated dragon:

When you want to download the link is

https://chessmood.com/course/download/pgn/60/55

But this is not a pgn-file.

Sorry guys, we had technical issues. 
Now it solved.

forum software test ==pro channel

 Sorry if you are seeing this thread , this was created to ensure forum section is up and running .

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Hi Bhabatosh,

The forum has been going down each evening this week (I'm guessing for maintenance). Is it possible to have downtime announced in advance (assuming it's not possible to split production and dev). While it's not a major pain for me, it might be for members in other parts of the world.

Where to find updated variations?e Variation?

Hello, I can tell by the update icon on a quote that a quote has been updated. How do I know which opening variant has been updated? In the courses I only find references to unlocked.

Christoph

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It's something they'd like to correct in the new website, but no guarantees.

Normally you get an email and/or message to say what's been added.

Which course are you referring to, maybe we can help.

I think that the Advanced Section was updated if I am not mistaken. The Caruana variant and the another advanced line I believe.

I had the chance to check it with Avetik and this was a mistake, no variations were updated this time in the Modern Maroczy course. That is why no email was sent regarding this but your post made me realize that I had not seen the advanced section (which I already did now) and I found it very good and interesting. Highly recommended for 2200+ players...

Doubt in a game I analyzed (Just wanted to know your opinion about the evaluation of the position)

Here Paul Keres says (it's a game of Paul Keres with Black) it's equal but it doesn't seem to me it's equal. Position below:

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It's White to Move here.

Thanks in advance!

PGN download...

 this bug exists for almost a week now and i really dont get why its not fixed yet... i really need the pgn's to study my moves with Fritz 17. for now the courses are kinda useless for me. I hope this gets resolved asap. 

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pls try now...pgn download should work

What opening against Spanish opening

Hello everybody, 

Happy weekend and  I hope you are doing fine. 

I have a question.. I know ChessMood recommand to play e5 on e4.   What to play meeting Spanish opening?    I have played this variation before.   1. e4 e5 2.  Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 g6 . However I found it very comfortable playing with the white pieces and I am searching for something more dynamic.  Is 3 - a6 4  Ba4  Bc5 ( Mölller)  something to play.  Thanks for your feedback and experinces here.   

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Hello @Susanna_Berg_Laachiri , I think that you are confused because Chessmood recommends to play c5 against e4, playing the Sicilian Accelerated Dragon as a main weapon. That said, against the Spanish I have been always in love with the Marshall Gambit for Black, many hours spent there although most of the times my opponents chose other variations. Why don't you try to play c5, and then the Spanish will be called "Rossolimo"... ?

Yes, the Breyer is a very good option, it was my choice too if the opponent did not allow the Marshall and I had to choose a closed variation.

Cloud Engines

Quick question is it possible to use some cloud engines for free and if so how to initiate it?

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