Chess forum by Grandmasters

Happy B

Happy 7. Birthday Chessmood 🎉🎊, very warm congrats to Avo and the whole team and big thanks for the intense streaming week especially to the very busy Gabu. I enjoyed it so much😃😃

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Dear Alan thank you so much for this kindest words :-)

Courses?

I'm a 1400 rapid on chess.com. Has anyone else been 1400 recently and had a course that specifically helped them. I think I'm going to work on the endgame courses, but I want to maximize my results. 

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Below 2000 all the courses in the rating booster section are very good, particularly the tactic ninja and blunderproof courses. The u2000 endgame course could also be useful for theoretical endgames or the endgame roadmap for more practical tips.

Hope this helps, Samuel 

Please help 🙏🏻

Guys hi chessmood family I've finished this free week and I really learned a lot and sadly it has ended, if anyone could help me or we can split the price of the course because I don't have that much of money and I have the most important tournament of my life in may so I need it so much, and if anyone can recommend chess books for me that could help me please 

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Hi Gbril,

You are more likely to get some help if you provide a little more detail.

What is your current chess rating?
What details can you give about the tournament?
Which areas do you think you are weakest in? (eg openings, tactics, endgame …)

Also, remember that you can buy courses with MoodCoins. Do the daily puzzles, answer questions on the forum, post your best games in the game of the month posts. It may take some time to accumulate enough MoodCoins but it is basically free.

i dont know how much time you have left but all the best for the tournament . Books For Endgame: “100 Endgames You Must Know” , “Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual (Some of the sections in Dvoretsky might seem complex to some people ), ”Fundamental Chess Endings  “by Karsten Muller. i would recommend to start with “100 endgames you must know” . 

For middlegame : “How to Reassess Your Chess" by Jeremy Silman” , ”Simple Chess" by Michael Stean, “Chess Structures” by Mauricio Flores (“Chess Structures” cover various pawn structures and positions that may arise out of various openings). 

For Openings there are various sources these days like databases , using engine , courses etc. One book for an understanding level approach with explanation is "Understanding the Chess Openings" by Sam Collins . 

For puzzle practice try "Woodpecker method" if u havent yet. 

Hi I'd just like to say a big thank you to Avetik

The free consult a while back was really valuable. I'm 1153 in rapid after finding it nearly impossible to stay above 1000 for a year.

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🤩

Wow, congrats!

Small doubt

Rise of the champions course
I already left a review but I had one small doubt, some of the puzzles had 2 to 3 solutions. Are they all supposed to be answers or are they tied from some places specially in the gyms

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what is it

Help!!!!!

I cant use mood coins

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If this is regarding buying courses with moodcoins, on the page of a course, you should find an option in the top right that says "Buy this course for $XXX". If you click on it, there should be several options regarding your payment method, one of which should be using moodcoins.

If this is about the daily puzzles, you have to finish them in one attempt to get the reward.

Ok update: I'm mostly over my horrendous tilt attack

Not quite the deadly predator I was last week when I was in really good form…but I got back to 1300 chesscom at least. Happy with that.

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Doubt in Philidor defence

When we play white against Antoshin line Philidor, after we played g3, Bg2, Nde2, if black plays Bg4 (before we play h3) what to do? Shoul we allow Bxe2 or play f3, g4, Ng3? Please guide me

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Things chess players say that would sound very alarming out of context...

‘Do you want some more annihilations?’

context: I was helping teach a beginner friend lol

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go back buttons

Maybe add buttons to go back 10 seconds and 30 seconds. Forgive me if this has been suggested before.

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Dear Daniel,

Thanks a lot for your suggestion.

How do we do in this kind of situations? 🙂

If we hear an idea from many students, we might consider adding it. 
 

Thanks for your time and for being concerned.

Good luck!

I'd like to know perfectly "Tempo"

I am studying wonderful and excellent courses in ChessMood,

but I can't find the exact meaning of “Tempo”. (If it's my falut, i'm so sorry because i'm still learning english)

So, based on courses, “Tempo” includes 

1. Attack the King(Check)
2. Attack the more valuable piece
3. Threat Checkmate

Am I correct? or Do I miss something?

thank you in advance.

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Good question! The idea of “tempo” can be tricky to understand, but it is very important to know. A “tempo move” is where your piece attacks or threatens your opponent while also being a good improving move. For example, think about this position from the Scandinavian Defense:
1. e4         d5
2. exd5     Qxd5
3. Nc3

The Nc3 move is a tempo move. It attacks the queen, and develops the Knight to a strong square at the same time. Black has to waste a move to move the queen away, so White gets quicker development. People will sometimes say that “Nc3 gains a tempo on the Queen”.

Checks are the most powerful tempo moves, because the opponent is required to respond. That doesn't mean every check is good, but they are always worth considering, especially if you are going for checkmate.

Let me know if you have any further questions

basically, a tempo is a move. 

If you make a move, you use a “tempo”. 
If you move a piece somewhere and then have to move it back to it's initial square, we will say “you juste lost two tempi here", meaning your moves where useless and did not improve your position. 

If you make a move a force your opponent to react, it is as if you had this move for free, that's why we call it a “tempo move”: you make the move, the opponent react my doing something forced, so you get to move again after. Using tempo moves can help accelerate the optimization of your pieces. Usually, a tempo move imply any kind of threat, forcing your opponent to react. 

BlackMood Main Courses?

In the BlackMood openings there is a lot of reference to the Main Course, but there is no French or Dutch in the Main Courses? Which ones are meant?

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Hey there,

We are planning to have advanced French and Dutch in the future, at the moment we don't have them in the advanced repertoire.
I can't mention exact dates, because, on top of openings, we are working on multiple other courses as well.

In Section 4 French Attack vs 3. Nc3

5. ... Ng8 This unusual move really makes me think outside of the box. I'd calls it Rein-Back Variation as in reversing a horse in dressage. This is a special "dreesage" routine since no horse has ever hops backward over 3 pawns at once. Also paying tribute to The Cadre Noir de Saumur. A famous riding school for training cavalry in France

Cheval s'inclinant, Saluer Avo!!!

BTW: I enjoy and learned a lot of wonderful chess from chessmood courses. Love you all.

Milestone aren't always epics

So, since the improvers tournament last sundays that let me with a peak rating of 1899 elo rating on chess.com, I have not played rapid chess. Was I intimidated? maybe a little bit, but mostly I was sick and in no condition to play. Today, I was better and just before going to meet my sparring partner, I thought “I have time for one game, let's see if I can get that 1900 before I see her!” (so I can brag about it :P ) 

I did my warmup, went into deep focus for a big battle. My opponent played the Queen's gambit declined. Surely, being more than 1900, he know some theory… I, for myself, have procrastinated studying it because it's not something I encounter very often, so I know what I play is not suppose to be good, but it has been “good enough so far". I stay in my confort zone, expecting to be punished at any moment… and then… my opponent play this weird Bb4 on move 7.

 
Isn't that a blunder? 

isn't that just lose a piece with a simple tactic?

I play my 8th move… 

my opponent loose the mood an resign. 

That's how I got to 1900. 
That's not epic. 
But still worth celebrating. 🥳

https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/123108910760?tab=review&move=14

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Absolutely it is worth celebrating.  Well done! 😎

Congratulations!  A very impressive milestone to reach!

Another one. Not bad for a poor lil blunderitis victim

Yes that is also me on one of my collection of lichess usernames

https://lichess.org/EAfAJL5i/black#44

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❤️

Yes, but from my humble experience I see that you cannot develop your gameplay just by playing Bullet, and you cannot play in "tournaments" with it. I see that you should play rapid or classic games to play well and develop, and there is no harm in playing Bullet, but the main thing for you to develop is rapid and classic play.I don't mean to criticize you, but I advise you from my humble experience 

New article: The Day That Changed My Life

A brutally honest story that GM Avetik Grigoryan dared to share.

🟢 How he spent the night before an important game…

🟢 How he lost it in a way he never had before…

🟢 How he hit rock bottom in a foreign land…

🟢 And how that day changed his life forever.

Read the full story here👇
https://chessmood.com/blog/life-changing-day

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“Instead of preparing for the game and getting a good rest, I had spent the night with bottles of whiskey and Asian Cleopatra.”

Worth it, surely?!

Reminds me of George Best: “I spent lot of money on booze, women and fast cars. The rest I just squandered…”

“Be brave, be honest, and always give 100%"

The second three rules my father gave me while i was growing up.  He was a good man.

(Those rules kicked in as i got older.  The first three rules were: wipe, flush, and wash your hands. Go figure :)

"I was representing my country. My family was watching the games live. My friends were rooting for me. And me?
In the pre-final round… On the first board… Instead of preparing for the game and getting a good rest, I had spent the night with bottles of whiskey and Asian Cleopatra." 

I can relate to that feeling, i had important exams this year and instead of preparing and studying i was procrastinating, and i had big expectations from families members, i hope that I'll change somehow.

Wowza Avo. I find it inspiring how you summoned the guts to share that…

I get your feelings. A bit ago, I was sort of slacking off chess, slacking off and procrastinating prep (but in a distracting way, if you get what I mean), but then a bully at school started insulting me and then told me that ‘No matter how hard you try, you’ll always be a weirdo'.

And while it was meant to be an insult, I thought if I was going to be a chess-playing ‘weirdo’, I might as well be good at it, so started trying harder, and now I don't suck at chess as much as I used to!

😔

Yeah, I have never been able to lock in

you really gave me some inspo

Players Wanted for the Chessmood Grand Prix 2025!

Hey Everyone!

If anyone is still looking for a team for the Chessmood Grand Prix 2025, my team still has plenty of spots open! The top 10 players in the team will get a free month of Chessmood membership, so much more realistic chances of winning a prize than joining one of the heavyweight teams :)
 

https://lichess.org/team/chess-lifestyle <-- here is the team link (the passcode is "c3venom")  
https://lichess.org/tournament/CMQ20Feb <-- here is the tournament page for today's event at 20:00 UTC

Excited to get this show on the road, and see you this evening on the ‘Chess Lifestyle’ YouTube channel for some hectic blitz battles xD

Cheers,
Michael
 

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We share the same name, also sure!

Update: I'm recovering.

I'm not fully over the tilt…but I'm back to being able to do complicated annihilations at ass o'clock in the morning lol.

https://lichess.org/lDxWqLQM/black#41

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Nice! Hope you get back into your full A game

That's great to hear, Voran

crushing 1.F4 with black

can you make a course about crushing 1.F4 with black pleaeaeaeaeasse

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Have you already found this video?

https://chessmood.com/course/blackmood-openings/episode/6182

 

Wanted to Write this to say thank you to Chessmood

😀

Thank you Chessmood and all the coaches.  I wanted to write this post to express my gratitude to everyone in the ChessMood Family. I am not a pro member but thank you for keeping your courses for free for 7 days

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Look at this dirty flag.

https://lichess.org/Kqi1o6tf/black

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White  was doing a great job not taking your last pawn :)

Haha, nice flag! Your opponent must have cried after that game 🤣

�🤣🤣🤣�

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