Chess forum by Grandmasters

Against Caro Kann

Today I played two games against Caro Kann. In both cases I have advantage in opening. But I fail to convert both games to victory. What is the problem? What mistakes I have done? Please help me.

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As far as I can see: First of all, you had a better position, without a doubt, but I don´t think, that it was a big adventage. 

You lost a lot of tempi, by not trading the pieces in the right way

b4 was maybe too weakening, or if you do it, place your knigt faster on c5. The way you did it, he created annoying counterplay

Lastly, when he hadnt any defneder on his kingside, you swtiched your queen from your Kingside to your queenside. Instead lift your rooks and mate him. The ending isnt as proimising, while an attack seemes very strong.

Please take note, that I just had a brief look at the game, and didnt analyzed it in serious depth

2nd game

It's because of lack of knowledge of classics. I am not sure you had one on one call with coach @GM_Avetik_Grigoryan or not but when I had I asked him same questions and he told me about my issues of lack of knowing classics. Classics will teach us everything. They are the foundation of any chess player. No matter you are deadly tactician or nice calculator or problem solver but without knowing classics you wont be able to understand how to win a winning position. Once you will start working on them you will see difference in your overall play.

Here is what I suggest. Read this blog and you will see why you had issue in converting advantage.

https://chessmood.com/blog/why-It-is-a-must-to-study-classical-chess-games

My story:

I started working as coach said. But issue came when he asked questions in commented classical games. I never found answers in unknown openings. So I talked with him that coach I can't analise games and I miss most of the lines. So I asked him what will happen if I watch 1000 classical or commented games in video and grasp concepts from there. Then he said every game will give you 50%  benefit because you are only seeing the game but if you analise game then it will give you 100% benefit. So I decided let's first watch 1000 classical games and once I will be familiar with more patterns then I will work on analising games. So from that day to now I think I saw more than 200 hr video content based on middegame and positional games and I also rarely miss streams so I am doing superb in winning a winning positions and my feeling of killing bad positions is also improving. 

Conclusion:

Work on classics= Watch them gives 50% benefit or analise them gives 100% benefit.

If possible hire a mentor who can see why and in which kind of positions you are making mistakes. 

Good luck, I hope my advice will be super helpful for you

Tanmoy, when you play b4, hurry up playing Nb3 Nc5. 

Anti-Sicilian with Nc3!? Part 1, What after 10. Be3 d5! ?

What after 10 Be3 d5! ?

11. Bc5 d:c4

12. d:c4 Ne7

Black are piece up but in bed position.

I think there should be some line about this in course.

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Coach already modified this file I think. I do not remember the move here but I like Bb5 here  rest you can find in the next update video in which coach shared the idea  instead of Be3

So Bb5 was the right plan here.  You can check the next videos and you will find that coach shared lines with Bb5 instead of Be3

Hey Marcin! Yeah, in the advanced section I offered a better way to play against e6. 
It's an adv. one, but check it out - https://chessmood.com/course/sicilian-defence-part-1/episode/303 

The Monster Knight on d5

I played a game with the Scotch where I had a "Monster Knight" on d5. I watched the video of the same topic in Commented Classical Games Course, and I loved it! I ran into some time trouble issues in the endgame, so the execution was not entirely perfect.

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Cool :) 

My study plan

Avetik Sir had recommended me to complete all white openings and not for black according to my study plan

I have completed scotch, petroff, anti Sicilian all parts, Scandinavian , caro kann and Czech pirc

But I find it little tough to memorize the lines and subtleties 

What to do?

And any suggestion of books or any other study material? (My rating is 1628)

Thank you in advance

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If you like the arising poistion, than stay with this repertoire, just play it often, go through the pgns etc.

Denvash, you can also watch all the streams where all lines and ideas will be applied by the GMs. Streams help me in memorization and revision. I still have to finish Pirc and Alekhine for white and I haven't touched Petroff yet.

Devansh, you should watch the streams, put in practice your knowledge, and fix the mistakes after games. 

KIA

What is the best setup against kings indian attack for black

White is super solid and how to breakthrough

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Maybe You can go into closed sicillian positions  

For Example. 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.g3 g6 3.Bg2 Bg7 4.0-0 0-0 5.d3 c5 If white plays 6.e4 it transposes to sicillian type positions or else If white replies 6.c4 Then you can play either 6...Nc6 follow up with d5 or direct d5 follow up with Nc6

Hello Denvash, it can be also useful to play like against the King's Indian, Petrosian variation with a tempo down. 1. Nf3 d5 2. g3 c5 3. Bg2 Nc6 4. O-O e5 5. d3 Be7 6. Nc3 d4 7. Ne6 h6, preparing g5 closing the Kingside and preparing to transfer the game on the queenside. Also, watch the game Bobotsov Petrosian " Never play without a plan ".

It depends on your setup as black. If you play d5 vs Nf3 for example, I can highly reccomend Jan Gustafssons (A second of carlsen) video on it. He goes for an e6,d5,c5 setup, and plays a profilactical setup (dont want to go into detail, as it is his work) He mostly relies of Karjakins games where he had 0 problems.

I'm big fan of h3 setup :) 

Anti-Sicilian Part 1: Example Game

This was how I crushed a 2000-rated player on Chess.com, with all the moves in the course. Hope you enjoy!

He resigned after Rxf7.

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Nice!! 
Have you seen my game against Alekseenko? :) 
Same trap :) 

Novelty

I always feel excited about how GMs handle whenever they are hit by any novelty during they are playing a tournament. How is your mindset that now the task is to handle a silicon brain not muscles hehehe. How you guys handle those feelings?

A story I remembered in which Fabi threw a novelty on Aronian in Sinquefield Cup and it took a lot time almost half the time of Aronian but he found all right moves but in the end he lost due to time pressure. 

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Novelties are different. 
Bluf novelty, semibluf novelty, strong novelty. 
Mostly they try to figure it out which one has done opponent and then based on it, find a solution :) 

A blog Suggestion

Can in future you guys write a blog on  basic steps on visualizations skills?

It will be helpful for us to learn to think in proper way. We all can assess ok the position is plus minus we have initiative but task becomes tough when we need to calculate lines. Especially with a line full of branches from move 1. I know calculation is a broad subject but still any intro to this dark mystery will be helpful for those who have no mentors.

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I agree. Visualization and Calculation for dummies would be a nice bonus course

Yeah, they are big topics! 
Hopefully, I'll be able to create an app I have in my mind. 
I'll need to have developers volunteers to help me with that. 

Hi everyone~

I'm a FIDE 1900 who loves chess. Joined PRO  because of the exchange Caro Kann and the commented games courses. A few views and I've learned a lot  of new concepts and ideas already. 

Although, I don't intend to replace my whole repertoire with Chessmood's :)

The grandmasters running this Chessmood brand seem to be dedicated and honest, so let's take advantage of it!

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Hello, I spent 1 whole year trying to find trustworthy online sources to improve my chess and I luckily came accross Chessmood before 10 months. I am a PRO member since 1 month, and my favourite course is Commented Classical Games.

Welcome to our family. Even if you think no  you don't wanna change your repo  then I suggest you to check out all courses and I am sure you will change your mind. I changed my repo too. I never ever played Grand Prix and now Grand Prix vs Sicilian is almost 1-0 for me. Rest in case of caro kann too. So, enjoy and learn well . Have a good day and good luck for your games

Hello and welcome! I found this past ChessMood webinar helpful on opening choice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuKZFMuULwk. Whatever you play though, as you hinted already, there are good ideas to learn from all the courses and webinars, ideas you can apply in other contexts.

I think the classical games collection and the community alone is worth the price of membership.

Even I did not play anti sicilian with nc3 but I have faith in these courses and I completed all the parts

Inguh, welcome to PRO team :) 
You should reserve your 1-1 welcome call for getting a personalized study plan. 
At the end you can keep your study plan, keep your opening choices, but I think the call gonna be valuable for you :) 

Draw against Master Fide from Indonésia Blitz Online!

Uma Galera conseguiu empatar com um MF da Indonésia que tenha 2350 de Blitz (tenho 1655), pior que vi ou lança o que o computador fala para fazer, usar peão no e5, mas não vi a sequência do que achei melhor ou perfeito!

The crowd managed to tie with an MF from Indonesia that has 2350 Blitz (I have 1655), worse than I saw or spear that the computer says to do, use a pawn on the e5, but I didn't see the sequence of what I found best or perpetual! 
Thanks GM Avetik for your classes!!!! 

[Evento "Hourly SuperBlitz Arena"] [Site "https://lichess.org/ciy39k7i"] [Data "2020.08.02"] [Branco "MagicIrair"] [Preto "FIRDAUSMAKSUM_FM"] [Resultado "1 / 2-1 / 2"] [UTCDate "2020.08.02"] [UTCTime "23:23:52"] [WhiteElo "1655"] [BlackElo "2340"] [WhiteRatingDiff "+6"] [BlackRatingDiff "-5"] [Variante "Padrão"] [TimeControl "180 + 0"] [ECO "B00"] [Abertura "Barnes Defense"] [Rescisão "Normal"] [Anotador "lichess.org"] 1. e4 f6 {B00 Barnes Defense} 2. f4 Kf7 3. Bc4 + e6 4. f5 h5 5. fxe6 + dxe6 6. Nf3 Nd7 7. OO Nc5 8. d4 Na4 9. c3 Nb6 10. Bb3 a5 11. Ne5 + Ke8 12 Qf3 Ne7 13. a4 fxe5 14. Qf7 + Kd7 15. Qxe6 + Ke8 16. Qf7 + Kd7 17. Qe6 + Ke8 18. Qf7 + Kd7 19. Qe6 + Ke8 20. Qf7 + Kd7 21. Qe6 + Ke8 {O jogo é um empate. } 1 / 2-1 / 2

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Cool! :) 

-

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Hi
It works fine by me. What is you solution?
/KS

Hi Krystof? Do you mean the puzzle of 24 July? 
What's the issue?? 
I tried, all works fine. 
Can you send a screenshot please? 

welcome and one question

Hi all Chessmood friends,

My name is Wojciech I'm from Poland and I wont to introduce mysalfe to start. I'm amatore chess plaey and I want to improwe my skills due to chessmood courses. 

I have one queston. The file PGN is posible to course "11. Crushing the Pirc" ???

all the best

Replies

There are attachments after the courses

(Pgn + Homework)

You can download them

It's a draft file and you have to fill in all the details to remeber the variations correctly

the pirc course isnt too big, so I made my own file, eventho I play it a bit differently. If you want I can send you the file I made

The key is to make your own PGN files, to help reinforce what you have learned. 

A question to think about

Can you honestly say to yourself that you use time effectively?  

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I tend to train more what I like than what I really need, so neither effectively not efficiently... But working on it... 

My daily schedule in mentioned in the bottom:

Openings:

2hr on chessmood openings daily revision bec I finished the courses in past so in order to memorise lines I am doing revision.

Tactics from Woodpecker Method Book:

3 hr on tactics because I am doing woodpecker training. I am on third cycle of my first set of 850 puzzles so have to finish it before 8th August.

Endgames: 

I am doing worse in endgames so I am working on Muller Endgame Dvds and three pages daily from  dvoretsky endgame manual ..  It takes 2 hrs of me to analise but still I fail in most of the analysis but I am grasping ideas.

Middlegames:

 In past I saw all Chessmood videos on Commented Classical Games so after that I downloaded 570 hr middlegame videos from Saint Louis Chess Channel and I saw 200 hr of content in 3 month and grasped a lot concepts from them.

Now, I started to work on books  the following books: Takes my 6 hrs

1. Karpov's best Games. 1 game a day

2.  GM Chess Strategy " What Amatures can learn from Ulf Anderson's Games. 1 game a day

3.  Chess Pattern Recognition for Beginners. 2 example out of 6 (daily from one chapter)

4.  The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions Into Chess Mastery (Book by Jeremy Silman) Daily 10 pages from this book

Calculation:

As coach @GM_Avetik_Grigoryan told me I need a mentor so soon I hope to hire @Nicolo_Pasini as my mentor but right now I can't so I need to arrange things first then I will work on calculation with him.

So I think I am doing my work with dedication but yeah I need to work soon on calculation and then I will do well I know. 

If you think I am doing something wrong then coach let me know.,

Related to efficient use of time: If you had 2 hours to invest daily in chess, what do you think it is more efficient?

1.- To spend the two hours on the same theme. For example, monday openings, tuesday strategic/positional play, wednesday tactics, etc

2.- Divide the 2 hours in 2 slots of 60 minutes or 4 slots of 30 minutes and train different themes in each slot

My daily schedule is 

1. 3 hrs of ChessMood opening.

2. 1 hr of tactics training from chesstempo and 1 hr from chess.com

3. 1 hr of end game training from Silman's book and chesstempo.

4. 1 hr of ChessMood opening revision.

5. 1 hr of commented classical games.

I ask more suggestions from our coach and advanced members for first growth. 

Scotch

E4  E5

Nf3. Nc6

D4.  Cxd4

Nxd4 Qh4

Nb5  Bc5

Qf3. 

What happens after Nd4

My engine is going super crazy

Sometimes, it shows advantage, sometimes equal

How to continue? 

Replies

I believe the best continuation is: 1. ... Nd4 2. Nxc7+ Kd8 3. Qf4 Nxc2+ 4. Kd1 Qxf4 5. Bxf4 Nxa1 6. Nxa8 d6 the endgame is equal, both Knights will be trapped in the corners and we have also kept our space advantage with e4 pawn against d6 one.

The Winners of July

Hello ChessMood Family, hello champions! 
This month we got 300+ games! 

Just one thing guys, this is the contest of best games. 
No need to post here absolutely all the games you played, or the games you won. 

Let's see the winners. 

The winner of the best games of July becomes Moemedi Machobane for his impressing attack in Acc. Dragon variation. Moemedi also raised his classical rating with 62 points in 1 tournament! 

The 2nd prize goes to Devansh Shah for his crushing the Caro Kann. 

The 3rd prize goes to Rob Dzedzic for his Grand Prix attack! 

The 4th prize goes to Piotr Urbanski, for his Queen Sacrifice! :) 

The 5th prize goes to Arman Shahzamani for his nice attack.  

The prizes will be sent to your accounts. 

Thanks for all the participants. 
Keep the good job and COGRO (Constant Growth), 
and see you in the contest of August! 

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Congrats to all the winners and good luck for the upcoming event!

Congratulations To All The Winners!!

Congratulations to all the winner!!!

Game 1 Rubinstein-Nimzowitsch 1928

There were at least two 1928 Rubinstein-Nimzowitsch games, both Nimzo-Indian Classical (E32). The commentary we have from coach seems to be on the one that took place in Berlin, not the one in Bad Kissingen.

Rubinstein-Nimzowitsch 1928, Berlin

- Game: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1102434

- GM Avetik commentary: https://chessmood.com/course/chess-classical-games/episode/1575

Rubinstein-Nimzowitsch 1928, Bad Kissingen

- Game: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1004139

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The journey to the GM title

A very interesting podcast with one of our ChessMood Family members GM Kevin Goh Wei Ming.

https://omny.fm/shows/perpetual-chess-podcast/ep-184-kevin-goh 

Champions, check it out, you should find lots of interesting insights Kevin is sharing about his journey getting the GM title. 

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This was a very good podcast interview! Very inspiring!

WOW! This is a very nice interview!

Definitely =)

Opening

please give repertoire  against English opening and Catalan

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Avetik Sir is going to launch soon about these systems

Thanks for your classes! My victory is yours!!!

[Event "Hourly SuperBlitz Arena"] [Site "https://lichess.org/rO51xBGM"] [Date "2020.07.23"] [White "MagicIrair"] [Black "farzadalavi2015"] [Result "1-0"] [UTCDate "2020.07.23"] [UTCTime "08:09:05"] [WhiteElo "1601"] [BlackElo "2160"] [WhiteRatingDiff "+11"] [BlackRatingDiff "-11"] [Variant "Standard"] [TimeControl "180+0"] [ECO "B00"] [Opening "Nimzowitsch Defense"] [Termination "Normal"] [Annotator "lichess.org"] 1. e4 Nc6 { B00 Nimzowitsch Defense } 2. f4 b6 3. Nc3 Bb7 4. Bc4 e6 5. Nf3 Bb4 6. O-O Nge7 7. d3 d5 8. exd5 Nxd5 9. Nxd5 exd5 10. Bb5 a6 11. Ba4 O-O 12. c3 Bd6 13. d4 b5 14. Bc2 g6 15. Qe1 Re8 16. Qg3 Qf6 17. Ne5 Bxe5 18. fxe5 Qe6 19. h4 b4 20. h5 bxc3 21. hxg6 fxg6 22. Bf5 Qe7 23. Bg5 Nxd4 24. Bxe7 Ne2+ 25. Kh2 Nxg3 26. Be6+ Kg7 27. Bf6+ Kh6 28. Kxg3 g5 29. Bf5 g4 30. Rh1# { White wins by checkmate. } 1-0

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I feel you watched the Grand Prix attack first :) 

Anti Sicilian Part 5

After 5...bg7 

6 e5 nc6

7Qh4  Qh5 and you mentioned Qa5 with strong counterplay piece sacrifice

But my engine is showing Qa5 Bh6 and white is almost plus in all lines and in some variations, there are 2 piece sacrifices

Replies

Hey man, can you please share questions with move orders so it will be easier for me and others to find answers for you. I do not remember all lines because it's tons of analysis so kindly provide the move orders so I can help you in better way thanks.

First of all Qh4 I wrote in my system as Question mark so it means there is something wrong with the move. Another thing is that after Qa4 it's almost impossible for black to find decent plans which coach is showing us.  Also all unlocked cloud engines are suggesting this Qa4 move as advantage not Qh4. On the other hand coach used paid cloud engines so their depth is far deeper than our normal engines.

Now the line which engine is showing here after Bh6 is truely unclear to my poor mind. I do not see how to take advantage of the position. 

Qh4 Qa5 Bh6 g5 !? Qxg5 Bxh6 Qxh6 Nxe5 0-0-0 Nxf3 gxf3. This is what engine is showing and I am wondering how to take advantage of this position. My normal vision says like ok king is stuck in the center but I don't see any ways to enter in his camp. At my level it's unclear position to me. On the other hand coach's move orders are clear and simple to apply and understand and I won plenty of games in this position with Qa4 because most players at 2100 level do not know the move d6 then Bg7 but they directly play Bg7 and lose after e5!!

I do not know your FIDE rating but even if you are 2300 elo player then coach still suggest you not to work on engines too much in case of openings prep like this. This will confuse you and you will face too much issue. When we check this kind of lines then sometimes we forget Main lines of our course and we play those  lines which are unfamiliar to us and even if they gives us advantage according to engine then in the end over the board we feel like I do not know what to do next. So, I suggest you to check engine only to see lines but focus on main lines well and they will give you excellent results.

Rest coach will explain because I do not see any dangerous thing in Qh4 line and even if engine said it's +1.5 advantage but still I do not understand it and I can't play unclear positions because I am still learning basics.