Recommended Rating: Under 1800 Learning how to evaluate a position is an essential skill that every chess player must know. However, it may seem confusing or impossible to do so when there is so much going on in the position. In this lesson, I wi...
Recommended Elo: 1000-1800 Backward pawns are a common pawn weakness, created by pushing too many pawns or as a concession in the position. Because of this, it is important to study how to take advantage of such weakness and exploit it to its ful...
Recommended elo: 1400-2000 Strong players know that it is important to control the open files with rooks, and often both players will do so. However, there are some occasions where one player does not fight for the open file; in that case, you m...
In my last blog, I talked about studying chess, and in there I mentioned that studying tactics is important. I then talked about the purpose of puzzles, the process of solving, and different studying methods. However, I didn't talk about specific ...
A very common question I get is “How exactly do I get better at chess? Should I train tactics? Middlegame? Should I just play games? Or is there a book I should read?” Of course, when I was first learning chess I didn't really know the answer to t...
In this lesson we will cover how to identify your opponent’s plans and learn how to choose the correct plan In chess we are constantly trying to figure out how to achieve our own goals that we often forget about what our opponent wants. This caus...
Recently I’ve been trying to find a response against 1.d4 and more specifically the queen’s gambit accepted. I had been just playing the QGD (Queen’s Gambit Declined) like the vast majority of chess players, and I had also tried the nimzo-indian f...
My name is Shamyn and this is my first blog. I plan on writing about current tournament games, instructional moments in mine and others games, and any other chess news that is going around. I haven’t figured out the finer details on how often I wi...
