Create your free account

By clicking “Register”, you agree to our
terms of service and privacy policy

Log in

OR

Reset password

Chess forum by Grandmasters

French Bd3 line

Couple weeks ago, i've played in a rapid game against FM CM French Bd3 line. In 3rd section 3. ...de, video 13 it says 7...Nd5?! is not a best move, but my opponent played really fast and after we finished he said he prepared this line few years ago. Maybe this game will be useful for someone. I'll paste the link with analyses. By the way it looks like Hans Niemann played this line in 2019 :)) https://share.chessbase.com/SharedGames/share/?p=ATcw+stxriwN/OP0XeI8RGpI+/tOnl7UQU1HXSKvYBAkYp58eEaHrevaFeZcLDir

Replies

Very nice and instructive game! Thanks for sharing it with us!?

Dear Vladimir,

Sorry for the little late reply, I just finished with my wedding and back to work :-) 

The variation your opponent played is completely fine for white. It's playable for both sides. Black goes for a sacrifice line with compensation. As you can see your 2400+ opponent was prepared so well, and to compete against IM, GM level you will need to work a little on the openings and go even deeper :-) 

Good luck!

Caro-kan is very hard to crush ?

Why The caro-kan was so stong the position likes white storm piece on kingside black all thetimes But the black side so strong to defense and closed. https://lichess.org/41Fo81K4/white#79

Replies

Come on Kamikaze! 😅 You had a winning position all the time…💪 You had the checkmate there too. 💥Next time you will for sure do it, but your g4 and g5 closed your attacking options! You need to open some file for attack, not close the king side. With the g6 pawn played, g4, h4. h5 nicely timed will open the position for White pieces. 
Still you had overwelmingly advantage through the game. Check out a bit the model games on the Caro kann course to reinforce some ideas.
And the most important please check the webinar on “How to win winning positions”
https://chessmood.com/event/webinar-how-to-win-winning-positions
I hope this helps but you played very well the opening and I am sure that with the Exchange variation you will win many Caro kann games very soon!! For me is one of the most easy straight forward plans with very good results.🤠🤠
Go get them!!!
😈

French Attack vs 3. Nc3 Name Proposal

Hi Avetik! In the Blackmood openings course, you discuss the French Attack vs 3. Nc3. I have a name proposal for your paradoxical variation after ed5 attacking the black knight. You recommend that the knight retreat to g8. The knight going back to the starting square will seem lackluster and maybe even foolish or mocking to the opponent, but it contains deep strategic value. For those reasons, I propose the name "French Black Geode Variation". Just like a geode appears lackluster on the outside, and yet is filled with sparkling gems, so the move Ng8 seems foolish and yet has hidden surprises.

Replies

New article: Deep Thoughts on Chess Improvement by Gukesh's coach GM Vishnu Prasanna

GM Vishnu Prasanna is a man of deep insights and wisdom. 

One of the students whom he nurtured from a young age is GM Gukesh, who’s currently one of the strongest juniors in the world. 

We had an interview with GM Vishnu Prasanna where he shared: 

✔️His deep and interesting theories around chess improvement.

✔️The biggest challenge adult improvers face!

✔️The lesser-known qualities that make Gukesh the player he is today,

✔️The time when he was Adhiban’s second and Adhiban played the King’s Gambit against Wesley So and Scandinavian against Magnus.

…and much more!

Check out the full interview here 👇
https://chessmood.com/blog/vishnu-prasanna-coach-of-gukesh

Replies

Very interesting interview, especially when he says you shouldn't use engines U2200. I would find very difficult to build my openings pgns without at least an engine blunder check. At the end the theory of nowdays is mostly what our silicon assistant says. In the old times there were opening theoreticians who piled the knowledge of many top rated games and when a new move/variant appears, they stated frequently that it has not been sufficiently tested at GM level. Another quote was that theory was what GMs played. Now you just click "analyze" and you have an immediate response about the soundness of the novelty variant. About Gukesh he is just 16 and a +2700 player. Anyway his rating has been built playing lots of games/tournaments. He not only plays the usual tournaments you expect a young prodigy to attend. He plays the turkish league, the polish league, the spanish league and I expect to hear of him at the Bundesliga. If you see other talents like Pragg, Abdusattorov, Keymer they hand pick with their coaches which tournaments to attend. Even Pragg coach, R.B.Ramesh, complained last year that the pandemic had cancelled many tournaments in the 2020/21 period and that is reflected in their underratement. But you won't see Pragg playing the turkish league. He rather plays this online rapid not FIDE rated because his coach wants him to interact with the best players in the world. At the end, Karjakin, as Gukesh or Sarin, were GMs at 12, Pragg and Magnus at 13 and Caruana at 14. There is no hurry if you walk with firm steps.

New trend in Philidor Larsen line

Just to let you know, today I discovered that 7...0-0, the only move really covered in the course, hasn't been played since 2018. (Engines don't like it either.) Instead, the main move is now 7...h6. After 8.Bf4 (recommended in the course) Nc6, Qd2 followed by 0-0-0 no longer works. Instead, we can choose between Nxc6 and Bb5, with different play compared to 7...0-0. Another option for Black is 8...g5. PS: Typing this on an iPad, I would really appreciate a timely fix for the previously reported "please type text in English" forum bug.

Replies

Thanks for the info and the update.🤠
We took note of it and reminded the technical team of the typing issue.👍 

I stink at blitz

Hi Guys I've just played 6 blitz games in a row and lost six games - a real blunderfest. Should I just admit I'm too old and slow and give up on 3+2? When I slow down blunders disappear so should I only play slower time controls and just play fewer games? Is there any benefit to playing 3+2 or will it ingrain bad habits into my slower games? Not feeling the mood right now......... please someone give me a pep talk!!

Replies

It might be helpful if you share your approximate level and approximate age. You can always play 5+3 blitz instead of 3+2 - there is nothing magic about the 3+2 time control. You can also try get better at blitz. Drilling some *very* easy tactics every day can help - focusing on speed and accuracy.

I always speak about this with Avetik and Hovhannes, we are teaching how to play chess, not how to play blitz or bullet chess.
In fact in several webinars they mention that they do not recommend bullet chess at all because it creates bad habits (superfluous and fast thinking and therefore lots of blunders). 
There is no too old in chess though, you have to adjust the time to your abilities and your purpose. 

Are you learning chess in Chessmood to be a better blitz player? Or to be a better chess player? 
Are you just trying to practice the opening? Or do you really want to have a great blitz score?
Playing rapid games is very good in general and also 5+3 as in Lichess time is very good since you have more time and it is still blitz. 

 

One thing of being with Avetik or Gabuzyan is that they are very good, you watch their streams, learn their openings and you get fantastic positions that fail to convert. Well they have years, and years, and years of practice. Maybe a hundred thousand games played… Practice makes perfection, and they played a lot, analyzed their games a lot, etc… 

Sometimes when I calculate a variation in an interesting problem and it takes me 5 min to figure it out, I show it to them and it takes 10 sec. They know a lot! We are not at the same level.

I do not know how old are you but I play regularly blitz with people above 70 years old, they enjoy it because blitz is fun.
Bronstein stated in his books that the ideal time for playing training games should be 20 min. With this you can play quite a good game and there is enough time to think in a couple of complicated positions. Less than 20 min was for fun he used to say.

In my case I play blitz 3+2 or 5+3 focusing in the opening practice but the results decrease with faster time since I'm not so young anymore. When I want to play a completely focused and well thought game I try to play a rapid game of 15 min with someone. So find your Why as Avetik would say. Why do you want to play online, and then adjust accordingly.
It also depends on your level. 
Check the blunderproof course, Avetik is going to upload the last sections very soon.
And do not lose the mood, good mood always! Then play… And remember: this is a game, you must have fun… Otherwise it makes no sense… 
I do not know if it is a good pep talk, but hopefully it will give you some food for thought.
😀
 

What a difference 24 hours make - and lots of good advice. I played an 8 round 10+0 tournament today and won it! That does not happen often. Thanks for all the advice.

Reti Opening

Hi. This Friday I have an OTB with black and is probable I meet 1.Nf3 to which I thought to reply 1...c5. The guy is a hypermodernist and likes to fianchetto both bishops. Any recommendations?

Replies

Just play c5 trying to follow our repertoire, develop fast and play a good and healthy game. No one has never been afraid of 2 fianchettoed bishops.😀 It does not matter if the guy is a hypermodernist, you are a Chessmood member! Go get them!😀
 

Endgame Roadmap

Dear chess coach, regarding the 1st position, is it a forced win for white with correct black defense ? i m trying all the 5 positions before to start the course, now i m on the first chapter and studying it by playing some positions against engine. (by the way: it is a nice course with a clear target and goals in the endgame phase) for the first position, i m trying to beat the engine by creating multiple outside passed pawn but it s not so obvious.

Replies

Hi Marius,
I sent this question to Avetik a while back but when he wanted to ask, the attached position was not an endgame. 
Can you please show us again the position that you were refering to?

It may have been a technical glitch, I do not know and we apologize for it. ?

Please check this video about the first position of the course, Avetik explains perfectly the position because it happened in one of his games and even won a prize for the best endgame in a tournament in Saint Petersburg! 😀

https://chessmood.com/course/chess-endgame-roadmap/episode/4990

 

Chessbase sort

I'm looking for what I hope is some simple help from any Pro members who use Chessbase. Chessmood recommends playing a number of games with your openings, then carefully analyzing them. I am using for my model GM Gabuzyan's Racing To... series. In his summary on each series, he had all the games collected in a Chessbase database. Here's my question: He then would look at the games sorted by piece response. For example, as White he would play e4. Chessbase would show him all the responses to his move and their number. You could easily see that most response were e5, a certain number were c5, some were e6, some c6, etc. This continued for each of his moves. How do I get Chessbase to sort my database in the fashion he uses in his stream reviews? Thanks!!

Replies

I don't know how to do this in Chessbase (I don't use it), but in Hiarcs you can see this with "Tree Explorer" (selected from the View menu). So maybe it's called something similar in Chessbase.

Also, I want to mention that I am following GM Avetik's blog article on "How to Memorize your Openings...", especially Step 4 "Fix your mistakes". This is where you create a database of your games and compare them to your Opening File.

It should index them if you convert them from pgn to chessbase database format.

Hi John, 
I wanted to ask Gabuzyan but he's on leave now. I checked Chessbase a bit and I found how to do it very fast, lucky me! 😅

1.You open the database that you want to analyze (it does not matter if it is pgn or cbv). Picture 1 
2.Click on the first game to select it. One click only. Then select all the games (Ctrl+a).

3.Once all the games are selected, right click and select “Opening reference on selection”

💪4. That's it. Enjoy your study!!💪😀
 By the way, if you want to select just your games as White, select only your White games… (The same goes for Black) It will be easier to handle and understand the stats. The best way is to do 2 databases, one for White, one for Black…

Congratulations to GM Hovhannes Gabuzyan on his wedding

Many congratulations to our great coach, GM Hovhannes Gabuzyhan, as he makes the best move of his life tomorrow on his wedding day! Love & best wishes ;-)

Replies

I hope you have a great day! Congratulations, enjoy yourself and best wishes for the future. -:)

Congratulations for your wedding, GM Gabuzyan 👍

Congratulations and best wishes!

Hope you and your soon-to-be wife have a lovely day and many years of happiness together.

Congrats to him!

Congratulations, Gabuzyan! Wish you all the best. (Would be nice if you posted some pictures)!

Congratulations! 🥳🥳

Congratulations coach! Hope you will be very happy with your wife😀🥳🥳

Congratulations on your wedding

Congratulations coach!! Wishing you both many happy years!

Hastings anyone?

Assuming covid doesn't get it cancelled again, anyone thinking of playing this year's tournament?

Replies

😀🤠I would love to play there someday! Good luck and play good games to show us your progress David!!💪

scotch game

Hi, i am Nancy from Western Australia and i have recently completed the Scotch game course. my chess.com rating is 850 on average. i am looking for a sparring partner to further learn the Scotch game

Replies

At 850 knowing openings beyond the first few moves will not help. You could be given a database to play with (illegal of course) and your rating will not move much. At that level you need to spend time on not making obvious blunders, noticing what your opponent is doing, basic tactics and checkmates, K+P Vs K, developing pieces quickly to good squares and little else. Spending time in the right areas is important for growth. Learning openings is a big task that will take effort away from that. Your opponents aren't going to know much theory and if they do the rest of their game must be in need of work if they are still at that level.

Hi Nancy!🤠

I hope that you watched the opening principles too, and you are already slowly but steadily becoming a tactic ninja!😀 

You can check the following thread to see if anyone else is interested in finding an sparring partner:
https://chessmood.com/forum/main-channel/studysparring-partner-1362

Take a look at it and good luck finding a partner. By the way, you should post this message there so the previous people that posted there will know that someone else is also looking for a partner.💪

New article: The doctor who only used ChessMood to raise 400 points in 1 year

A ChessMood student raised 400 points in 1 year while being a full-time doctor.

How did he do it? In today’s story, you’ll find out:
 

✅How he rediscovered his passion for chess.

✅How he improved his chess without any books or private coaches.

✅The tournament where he beat 5 higher-rated players in a row while working his job in the morning!

…and more.
 

Read the full story here? 

https://chessmood.com/feedback/doctor-shahinur-haque-chess-improver


And once you finish reading, share your thought and drop your wishes under this forum thread.

Replies

Very well done Dr.Shahinur. Hope you strike FIDE 2000 soon. I am 60 y.o. and fighting back aging to recover my old 1780. If I scored 1800 I would be pleased ?

Llorenc, just change your “if” to “when.” Haha. 
Seriously. It's a way to trick our brains. 

Great job Doctor Shahinur!!! Keep on! You are an example !!!

Can we have a course on calculation and visualization?

Hi, Not sure if this has already been thought of my our fantastic content creators. I was wondering if we can have a course on calculation and visualization, as this in my view is the singlemost thing that most club level players below 1800 can improve on. Of course this is just a suggestion, and if this topic is getting combined with some of our other courses, that also works. Cheers..

Replies

I'd love to see such a course too. At 2200 FIDE, calculation/visualization is still my biggest weakness.

I'd love to see a course on calculation and visualization too!! I hope GMs will read this! ?

I think a big question is whether most people would be better off focusing on improving their tactical pattern recognition or improving their calculation ability. The ability to spot simple tactics consistently and quickly is a massive advantage and makes all aspects of chess much easier. I would say that if your best 5min Puzzle Rush score is under 35 (or preferably 40) then you should definitely be focusing more on drilling fundamental tactical patterns than working on advanced calculation.

Hello,

Courses about calculations and tactics have some similarities. Understanding that U2000 level players need to rarely calculate long forced lines, instead need to have a sharp tactical vision we created the course Tactic Ninja. Going from easier to hard levels the course can be very good training in that sense and will help to improve tactics to a decent level.

Calculations and visualization is an interesting topic, and we might consider that opportunity in the future, but as you can see now we are working on more practical courses of openings, middlegames, and endgames.

 

Thank you!

Below 1700 FIDE long-play (and 2000 blitz / rapid?) calculation and visualisation is a much less needed skill, but going beyond it starts to gain importance. Yes it's often wrapped up with tactics, and solving puzzles and tactics regularly helps this skill. It is however also an endgame skill as often endgames are decided by a tempo or so and not forced the same way as tactical sequences. I've lost track of the number of games won or saved by performing better in the endgame which often calls for calculating. Endgame performance is one of the big differences between 1700 and 1900 FIDE. As demonstrated by my last long-play game in which I chose a wrong middlegame plan, but came back and won the ending. I would forget Kotov trees and long or highly branched sequences, although it can make good training if you can put up with the difficulty. Rarely will you ever need to go 5 moves ahead (pawn and king races as an exception are often simplified with rules, counting and usually not branching), and often practical play is made of 2 or 3 move sequences. The deeper it goes, the more likely there is a mistake, so there are also practical considerations to avoiding long lines and tailoring them to your skill and the chance you are wrong (conversely you also need to have confidence in your ability and not shy away if you think you're right). The main things to practise are 'seeing' the final position correctly and not missing an opponent's resource, 'moving' a piece twice, sticky pieces and so on. It also needs checking for opponent's counterplay. The problem with relying solely on tactics to train is that you know there is a win, even if there is some hidden counterplay. Plus it doesn't help the endgame so much. OTB you might have a lovely variation but it turns out it doesn't work.

I'm finding that solving about 5 mates in 4 on lichess daily appears to be helping this a lot.

An idea for the website

Hi everyone! Recently after studying the Accelerated Dragon I took the quiz and I really liked it as it helps to grow our memory so in my mind an idea came that if Chessmood can create a feature where we enter a pgn and it creates a quiz on it's basis this might be very helpful for people like me who don't necessarily play all the openings of Chessmood. I hope my idea is taken seriously. Appreciate the wonderful work by the team? Vedant

Replies

Oops just checked I put a typo of ? after team I meant !

Course reviews disappearing/not appearing

Hi there This is an update to a previous question found here https://chessmood.com/forum/main-channel/course-review-rating-not-appearing I don't know if anyone else is having this problem, but currently none of my new review scores/comments are appearing and one review that had not appeared and was kindly fixed by ChessmoodOdysseus to appear has now disappeared again. This is all happening (or should I say not happening?!) in the Endgame Mastery courses. My review scores appear for the first two courses, but after that there is nada. What is going on and can it be fixed? Cheers in advance.

Replies

Don't worry, I informed the technical team and it should be fixed very soon. Thanks 🙏❤️!

New course:Fearless Warrior - Attack smartly and fearlessly

Our brother GM Gabuzyan is about to make the most important move in his life. 

And a day before GM Gabuzyan’s life changes forever, we’re launching the course, Fearless Warrior. 

In this course, GM Gabuzyan will help you understand the fundamentals of attacking in chess, all of which are packed into 10 simple concepts. You’ll learn: 
 

✅When to start an attack?

✅The different strategies to get your pieces into an attack.

✅How do you attack when the Kings are castled on the same side?

✅How to punish reckless attacks from your opponent?

…and much more.
 

Start watching from here 👇🏻

https://chessmood.com/course/chess-attack
 

As for GM Gabuzyan’s most important move, he’s getting married tomorrow 😊 Send him your wishes.

Replies

Congratulations to GM Gabuzyan!

Looking for the section in grand prix where black plays e6 after we play bishop c4.

Hello all. I am unable to find the section in the grand prix where black plays e6 after we play bishop c4. I don't think there was anything about this variation in the whitemood course. I only remember e6 before we played bishop c4. Maybe this section is in the main course. If anyone could point me to this section it would be greatly appreciated. I am facing a lot of e6 after bishop c4 on a lower level people realize how strong that bishop is. Thanks for your time.

Replies

I found it in the main course I think we play d4 is that correct? Do we only play d4 if black fianchetto's there king or do we always play d4 after bishop c4 e6?

If it was in the simplified Whitemood courses you might want to check the Anti Sicilian courses to figure that out. They go in far greater detail.

Daily puzzle /underpromotion 12.10.2022

Hello, In this position, promotion in rook is also mating. But it said "wrong". That s sad.

Replies

Exactly, I did it right then I tried both underpromotion to rook and it says wrong while it's not cause anyway black must take with Bishop after g8=R+ and its # even with a8=R#

I've gotten the last couple of daily puzzles correct but wasn't given the moodcoins. Today's one has a nice Novotny theme.

Lost control of the centre

In the attached position, I'd followed the ideas in the hybrid e6 a6 advanced section, but since Black played d6 delaying the advance d5 until after o-o-o (which seems a lot more sensible). Unfortunately I go wrong here and try to get some space on the qside with b3, with the idea of getting in c3, and get busted with a great attack from my opponent. Obviously right now the Bg2 is bad, but it's acting as a king shield from the g-file and long diagonal if Black can open it, and maybe later could be used in the game. Any suggestions for learning to handle such sort of positions. I know post-game it's easy to know that the centre needs to be controlled to stop Black's plan of b4 o-o-o Rg8 d5 Rxg2 Nxe4 etc. White can keep the advantage with Nd5 which at first glance messes up the pawns, but then c4 is coming after.

Replies

The full game: https://lichess.org/641iKS2TKBtP

Perhaps a useful way to think about this position is statics vs dynamics. Statically, white is worse because there is an open file onto their king. So if black can complete development and castle long the position will likely favour them. But dynamically, white is better because 3 vs 2 minor pieces developed, they are already castled, and black has a loose piece on f6. All that points to white needing to play with some urgency to disrupt black. Therefore forcing moves like Nd5 and Bg5 (also a decent move) should be high on the list of candidates. I agree the pawn structure after exd5 looks a bit ugly at first sight. The cramping effect of the d5 pawn is nice though. It might just be one of those patterns that we learn from experience.

This website uses cookies. To learn more, visit our Cookie Policy.