Chess forum by Grandmasters

MoodCoins

Hello Guys..

Do any of you know how to purchase courses with MoodCoins? Can the purchase only be completed if we are PRO or ESSENTIAL members? Or can we do this even we only have a free account?
Thanks..

Replies

Anyone can buy courses with moodcoins! 
To buy courses, pick your course and select “Or get lifetime access” then click “Buy the course” and in “Choose your payment method” the last option will be to buy with moodcoins. Select that.

$1 = 1,000 moodcoins. Select courses like the SLP course cannot be bought with moodcoins.
for more info: https://chessmood.com/moodcoin

Homework

Hi, 

In the opening courses, Avetik reffers to homework, but I could not find it. I searched in the forum but only in pro members responses, so where can I find them?

Replies

It’s in the pgn files. That is the homework. The section is called “PGN files” or something similar. However, some courses like the Czech Pirc don’t have it yet.

New podcast with Amy Morin: Mentally Strong Chess Players Don't Do This

Best-selling author and renowned psychotherapist Amy Morin, known for her book “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do,” joins GM Avetik on the ChessMood podcast! 

They discuss the list of things mentally strong chess players don’t do, how to recover from painful defeats, and how players can build mental strength. 

Choose your plaform to tune in👇

Youtube: https://youtu.be/sUKop-zc8RA?si=ehHaZRFDdVblQq83

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/chessmood-podcast/id1685445424?i=1000648915643

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0VhlqRCmtWbWHlGoMDM0qt?si=747ec653bed64d8d

Replies

you are the best sir

you gave me courses and certificates and thank you for giving this all 😊😊😊😊😊.

My 1 question

Can anybody tell me what is the steinitz basic rule mentioned in the 3rd game of 100 strategical masterpieces at around 6min50secs..i was not able to hear it properly

Replies

“Never advance your pawns without any real need."

 “The Modern Chess Instructor”  is Steinitz’s book, Lasker spends some time on Steinitz in “Lasker’s Manual of Chess."

I thought I had a bullet list of his principles somewhere, but, as usual, I can’t seem to find it.      :/

Tactics Ninja 777 Test Positions

This has probably been asked and answered many times before but I cannot find it anywhere…

Are the Tactics Ninja 777 Test Positions the same as all of the Quiz positions from the course, or is it a new set of positions?

Replies

 they are a new set of position

how can you spend mood coins? I don't see a way that you can buy the course using moodcoins on any of the courses

Title

Replies

Hi there,

Try this:

1. Go to the Courses page and pick your course
2. Select the option “Or get lifetime access”
3. Select the option “Buy the course”
4. In the right-hand section titled “Choose your payment method” the last option will be MoodCoin.

Remember that $1 = 1,000 MoodCoin.  So, if the course costs $300 that is 300,000 MoodCoin.

Need to earn some more?  Details are here: https://chessmood.com/moodcoin

Black against 1e4 e6 2Nf3 ?

Hello, 

where do I find information about this opening 1e4 e6 2Nf3 in the openings for the beginners (BlackMoodOpenings)

And also I do not know, how to go on with 1d4 e6 2Nf3

Thank you for your support.

Joachim

Replies

We go d5, and after exd5, we do the exchange setup, while with e5, we go c5 immediately, then pressure d4 square with nc6, qb6, ne7-nf5 (side note, this occurs after 4.c3, trying to go 5. d4), if they go immediately with 4. d4, we take then pressure e5 pawn with nc6 and qc7.

Question about daily routine

First sorry my english

Im about to subscribe to chessmood after finishing marvelous opening principles course.

My question is if I need any other resource than chessmood. The ninja tactic course is what i should consider my daily tactic training? 

I have 2:30 hours per day and my fide 1574 (with the march improvment so probably is 1300 (?)) and I would love some advice about my daily routine.

So maybe 1 hour ninja tactic, 30 minutes openings, 30 minutes another course and 2 games 10+5? Or les study and more play? Im very confused about effiency in the study time.

Thank u

Replies

Hola Guillermo!
Que tal? 
The first thing that you should do is to read the study plan above or click in this link: https://chessmood.com/chess-study-plans/for-advanced-players
Follow the training program by Avetik, you should spend your time this way more or less:

Study - 45% 
Practice - 45% 
Fix - 10%
In your plan above, you study too much. Adjust the time accordingly! The most important is the Fix! It's the point that makes the difference and everybody forgets it… 
Check the plan and let us know if there is anything that you do not understand!
😀And BIENVENIDO a la familia! 💪

How to remeber all that preparation

Hi, I know that “understanding” is the key to “learning”. Yet, even if I understand what I am doing, it is difficult to find all the key moves in every line if you do not have a good memory. How do you manage to memorise enough to help your understanding? Btw, my ELO rating is 1900.

Replies

I am assuming you have read these two articles, right?

https://chessmood.com/blog/how-to-memorize-chess-openings-variations

https://chessmood.com/blog/how-grandmasters-memorize-opening-variations

Here is my additional steps to memorize it further.

First, make your pgn file (or get one from the attachments section) and put all the moves you remember.

Second, play more blitz! Should not matter when you win/lose, you should only look for the mistakes and correct them.

Third is to watch model games! Here, you would see how they play the opening part, but also the middlegame plans and structures that come from these positions

(https://chessmood.com/course/rock-n-rolling-with-white)

(https://chessmood.com/course/rock-n-rolling-with-black)

Additionally, Chesstempo has an opening trainer, which simulates an opponent, but you need to paste your repetoire first.

Just play. Play and you will learn it. It may seem hard or obscure, but I have over 30 full files that I have nearly memorized. Just play and correct your mistakes.

I also suffered from this thing

Then I watched out some Chess videos and figured out

(I am 2000 elo btw)

PRACTICE & VISUALIZE!!

play the lines that you have learned on an analysis board in chess.com or lichess if you get stuck go and try to learn the moves again and repeat it until you make all moves correctly 3 times in a row

Take rests between these or you will end up getting bored or losing concentration

after all this play a game with someone who knows the opening

You should also visualize the moves in your mind

like if he plays this i will play this

I finally learned to checkmate with two bishops!

Please be proud of me. I always struggled with this.

Replies

Good job! It is instructive to see how they work together.

You can also apply that in the middlegame :)

Youtuber who is using your content

I found a guy using your content for youtube. He created a playlist on Attack and it was full of your examples and your principles. And he said, "This is how I got to 2000 with Attacking Chess". He is 2200-2400 lichess but he said like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJu2ao6ibpc&list=PLf5T-au8Lb22dU-pwt1_OoYOhI3SUvtMU This is the playlist. He has now also started a series on planning. And that's also your content. (Fearless Warrior & 7 Q Courses). He also took the classical games content.

Replies

SLP Success!

Hi everyone! This is my first time posting, but I've been a ChessMood member since December and I've really been enjoying the content. I currently have a 1173 rapid rating on Chess.com so I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn. I recently went through the SLP course and am currently working my way through the WWP course, and just wanted to share a success that I had specifically due to these courses:

https://www.chess.com/game/live/105989995257

In the game I had a strong opening that left me a piece up, and then I immediately made a bonehead move that cost me a rook and left me exchange down. I'm pretty sure that before the SLP course I would have been really frustrated and mentally given up right then, but now instead I looked at it as an opportunity to practice the SLP approach. 

Right away I stopped worrying about capturing miscellaneous pawns or protecting my queen-side pawns any more than necessary. I just focused on coming up with a strategy for targeting the opponent's king. The basic outline I came up with was:

  1) Get control of the long diagonal with my dark-square bishop

  2) Somehow get the opponent's king trapped in the corner

  3) Mate using my rook and dark-square bishop

  4) Keep the mood

I did try to avoid exchanging pieces, although there was one exchange in particular I really wanted: exchanging my knight for the opponent's dark-square bishop, in the hopes that my dark-square bishop could dominate that diagonal. There was one instance where I had the opportunity to exchange light-square bishops, and I think before the SLP course I would have, but instead I moved it away and it ended up playing an important role in the eventual mate. 

Anyhow, the approach went amazingly well. A cool thing that happened during the game is that with the perspective I'm getting from the SLP and WWP courses, I could really see how my opponent was not playing correctly. Instead of pushing their advantage and trying to force me to exchange pieces or give up important positions, they seemed mostly focused on just targeting and protecting pawns while ignoring the threats to their king. The one piece they exchanged was their dark-square bishop for my knight, and before the WWP course I don't think I would have seen anything wrong with that, but with this new perspective that immediately seemed like a huge mistake to me as I think that bishop was playing a critical role in defending their king. 

Sorry for the long post, it's just exciting to see a concrete example of a game I very likely would have lost without the ChessMood courses. I'm sure I did not play the position perfectly (and of course I'm not proud of the blunder that put me in a bad position in the first place) but it feels like real progress. Thank you to the GMs for the excellent courses, and to everyone else who works hard to make this site!

-Dave

Replies

Hi Dave,

What an excellent first post - I'm sure that Avo and the team will be very happy to hear of the success that you attribute to the SLP and WWP courses.

And … nice recovery in the game.  If it makes you feel any better, even after reading your comment about blundering a piece, I watched the game, I saw the huge swing against you in the Eval Bar after the B3 pawn move and I initially thought ‘What’s wrong with that?'.  It was only because of that swing that I looked more closely and then saw the potential danger - I'm pretty sure that I would have missed it ‘in the heat of battle’!. 

Nice comeback! A mating attack without queens on the board is especially impressive. It's nice how you can see your own chess progress, in this case with the SLP strategies coming into play.

I enjoyed reading your post. Feel free to post more game recaps in the future!

Finally, Tactic Ninja completed (first pass through)

omg!

I finally finished Tactic Nija.  I’ve been at it for about a year, now. I made it a rule that every time I visited ChessMood, I would start with Ninja before I went on to anything else.

 Mating Matador (which is now under my “Go here before anything else” rule :) is going more quickly for me.  I’m curious at how long it takes other people to get through various courses.

OK, off to begin going through the quizzes in Ninja again and start in on the test problems.  Arrgghhh!

Replies

Well done, Scott.  It's a lengthy course, isn't it?  

(I went through very quickly making notes and now I'm going through in more detail referring to my notes - I'm only halfway through!)

I finished my first pass of this at the weekend. I think it took me about 10 weeks. I found it reasonably easy up until section 24 after which it got really challenging.

At that point I took to setting up each position on my board and staring at it for up to 30 minutes. Even then I'd still get some detail wrong, there'd usually be at least one defensive move that I'd overlook. So I took to saving the positions and my analysis on a spreadsheet - including all the mistakes I'd made in my analysis - for any that I hadn't solved perfectly.

Whether this approach pays off or not I will see - I'm on my second pass through the course now. I'm putting more time into this and less time into “Puzzle Rush” over on chess.com. Puzzle Rush is beginning to annoy me anyway 

That's very good!

Doing this work is what will make you all improve.
Nobody gets good at doing pushups without doing them. This is the same. 

Some of my students did it 4 times and still they do the quizzes and problems from time to time… 

The problems are well selected and it's important to recognize and learn the patterns correctly.
😃WELL DONE again to all of you! Keep it up!!!! 👍 

Yes - I have been going for just over a year - almost through on my first pass

How to get over fear

I have a fear of just playing the Grand Prix attack because I fear just playing it wrong, is there some way to get over this fear? Any answers are greatly appreciated. :innocent

Replies

Hello, 

I suggest that you stay relaxed and don't worry about losing. After playing, you can analyse your game and see where you went wrong. You can also read this article to help you memorise it: How GMs Memorize Chess Opening Variations - GM Avetik Grigoryan (chessmood.com).

You got different options:

1. Request a new account on chess.com ( https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8568381-can-i-have-multiple-accounts ) and practise it on your new account.
2. If you have a training partner, train the grand-prix attack with your training partner. If you don't have one, you can find one here: ( https://chessmood.com/forum/main-channel/studysparring-partner-1362 )

I hope this helps you! 😃

😀Chess is game where even if you lose you learn… Try to learn all the time… And remember that it is a game! 😀

Tarrasch Defense! Need help!

Hello chessmood! For a year I have been studying the tarrasch defense against 1.d4 but I am unable to fully get a feel for the positions arising from it. I know that chessmood recommends the Benko gambit but I still wish to learn this opening as I have done a lot of hard work to learn this opening already. So can someone advise me on how I should work on this opening and recommend some resources on this opening so that I can make this opening my lifetime repertoire.

Thanks in advance!

Replies

Pranav, 
We are very sorry but we cannot recommend you a course on an opening that we do not play and we don't really know.
Still Jorden Van Forest made a course on Chessable on the Tarrasch, and Ganguly in the Semi tarrasch. They are very expensive, but this is what I remember. There was a book by Aagaard too from Quality Chess but we really can't recommend you a course because we did not check properly the courses on this opening.😀

Opening Question/Request

Hi, 

I'm new to chess. Just started playing slightly over a year ago. I only have 2 openings. Black: Caro Kahn and White: Vienna. I'm only a 900 on chess.com. Should I learn more openings or try to master these ones if I want to improve? Also it, doesn't seem like there's any course work here for me to improve either openings, am I overlooking something. Anyhow, I'd like to request a Caro course on here if you guys are ever looking for new content to post. Any feedback on if I should expand my openings or wait till I get better would be appreciated. Thanks

Replies

Studying tactics should probably take precedent over expanding your opening repertoire. That being said, the Caro Kann (1.e4 c6) only traditionally occurs after white plays 1.e4, so you may need to find a defense for black after the other main pawn move, 1.d4. If you feel comfortable with the Caro and Vienna, I see no reason to change anything.

Well…

You have those 3 courses, watch the first one, and 2nd and 3rd are if you want to learn new openings. The fact is that many GM's, let's start with GM Avetik, recommends Franche and Dutch defence (attack) for beginners, and one day you'll definitely have to know to play them too, if you are planning to play on higher level. I think that Caro is for stronger players than me and you, so you should change it, and Viena is ok, but you could try to expand your game repertoar by learning some new openings.

https://chessmood.com/course/opening-principleshttps://chessmood.com/course/whitemood-openingshttps://chessmood.com/course/blackmood-openings

Hi Jerry,

I'm new to chess too.  I think that we beginners tend to focus too heavily on openings (because we take comfort from the certainty they provide with “this move follows that move” and so on) - it is more important to focus on tactics and actually playing chess.  The ChessMood recommendation for those of us in the 0-1000 Elo range is to spend 90% of our study time on tactics and 10% on openings.  

Both answers are very good, but yes, you can play the openings you recommend, or stick to the ones you are playing. But at your level, please focus almost exclusively on tactics. Follow the study plan that we have and you will improve for sure. 👍😀

What is the basis for this computer suggestion, and how would I find it during the game?

In the game at https://lichess.org/54SFHhyLurZ1, I had the white pieces.  At move 19, my local computer analysis suggests 19.a4.  When I played 19.Qxa7, I didn't think it was a great move, but I didn't have any better ideas at the time.  Is the engine's suggestion a good one, and if so, how would I have found that move?  The engine analysis says 19.a4 is about a pawn better than actually taking a pawn with the queen.

Position before move 19 is in the image.

Replies

This is why we are humans and computers computers, you should not worry about this at all!
The computer is trying to get more space, to grind the position since Black is completely out of good moves. 
The computer will keep increasing the advantage and the control of the position in this case. There are some games by Capablanca or Carlsen  (amongst others) where they also push the h5 pawn before going for the endgame, maximizes the position. In a way this is the same, but you should not worry about finding this moves, taking the pawn is a normal human move.
Plus if you watch the streams Gabu always says: If you can take the pawn, take it… 😀

How to avoid time pressure?

I always get time pressure and loose

Replies

There is a great article by CM: https://chessmood.com/blog/how-effectively-are-you-using-your-chess-time .

It talks about "effective time management”, please have a look, it can hopefully give you some ideas on how to avoid time pressure

Did you watch the video Hriday ? What did you think about it? 😄

Tactic Ninja, Section 20, Clearing a rank subsection, Training puzzle 7, does not have a solution

Hello everyone, 

Just as a title suggests, in the mentioned puzzle there is no correct solution for black. First I spent some time on it thinking I'm missing something, then when I tried using Hint button it stopped working after 2nd move, then out of desperation I put the position to an engine and it says there is no solution, black is just losing material. Can anyone clarify on that? Is this some bug?

Regards,

Konrad

Replies

The same problem occurs in the Section 21, Decoy subsection, Training puzzle 7

This is indeed strange. My best guess is that it is actually meant to be flipped, and say in the first one, it is White to move. This makes some sense for the second one, but not really for the first one.

We will see what a team member has to say on this subject.

Thanks taking note of this and we will fix it as soon as possible.😃

commented classical games

Is it really worth it watching commented classical games? 

Replies

If it was not worth, we would not have spent hundreds of hours preparing the courses. 😅
Of course, you need to pause and think when asked, otherwise if you just watch and don't involve yourself in the games it is useless, but not only this course, any course! 😄
😁Take notes, screenshots of the moves that you find surprising, comment the games, etc. Be active when working, passive learning will get you nowhere… Still since I do not know your level, please stick to the Study Plan proposed for your level. Also one game per day max. ok? 💪