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Welcome back to Junior World League Deciders Part 3. We are continuing from UK vs Greece in the Semi Finals 2014. Last time, we looked at a very exciting game. Now, we look at a game where Greece has the upper hand (White) but then UK gave away the game (Black) To sum up the match, if you have a look at it http://www.chess.com/groups/team_match?id=419750, 5 out of 9.5 points from UK were timeouts. Greeces points all came from winning games even though some were lucky. The 2014 Grand Final, Australia managed to win pretty easily, next time we will catch up to this year, 2015. See you then!

It's time to talk about defending! All chess players should learn how to defend and how to defend well. If you don't, I can gaurantee you that you will not reach your full potential. Don't be rolling your eyes at me, I'm serious, the same goes for not learning how to attack, or not learning how to play positional chess. I know it may not be your area of expertise, but that's the whole point. If you want to get better you need to focus on your weaknesses as well as your strengths. Without doing anything else, let me get some misconceptions out of your head about defending. 1. Defense is always passive. That's simply not true, you can not play defense passively, if you do you will get steamrolled every time. 2. Defense is super boring. Again, that is simply not true, it's only boring if you make it that way, no aspect of chess is boring, and it never will be. 3. If I play defensively, then I won't be able to win as much. This one is slighty true, you will draw more, which isn't a win, but you won't lose as much, when you play chess you have to realize that often times a draw is good, although it's nice to win, playing you very best should be your goal. Moving on, I'd like to talk a bit about some other skills that will help you with defending. 1. You're going to need some reasonable endgame skills, often a defenders goal is to keep his king safe and allow his opponent to overextend himself. Once he's done that, he tries to snatch a pawn by pressuring it until it can't be defended anymore. (Because you will need endgame skills, I will be writing a series on how to win endgames when a pawn up, after I finish this one.) 2. You'll need foresight (and a lot of it!). If you can see what is opponent is trying to attack way before it happens then you'll be able to stop it, the former world champion Tigran Petrosian was a master at preventing things way before it happened. Remember that phrase every mother has said at least once? "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." 3. You will need tactical knowledge. Not so you can whip out a tactical pattern on someone (although it does happen sometimes), but so you can avoid them. 4. And last but not least, you'll need patience. There is no rushing in defending, you have to take your time and be very precise. Let's talk a little bit about what your thought process should be when defending. 1. I need to make sure my king is safe. 2. I need to get my pieces out to good strong squares 3. I'm going to let my opponent attack me, but I'm going to defend correctly and cause him to overextend himself. 4. After I've done all of that, I'm going to try to secure a superior endgame position, and win the game. Well I guess that concludes the introduction, I'll continue this series next week, I'm going to start out with elementary ideas and principles and work it all the way up to intermediate level. Please stay tuned, and enjoy the first installment of this series!

Hi all, I want to share with you guys a couple of games that I played in a over the board tournament a few months ago, in these games both of my opponents weren't careful and got into trouble quickly, and it was all because they didn't actually look before they decided to go through with a move. So without further ado, I present to you game number one! That was a nice quick win, my opponent played fairly well. But assumed his move was safe and lost very quickly. Don't ever assume that your move is safe, always double-check and be sure that it is safe. In the same tournment, in the very next round, my opponent did the very same thing! He assumed that his move was safe, without checking to make sure. So remember, always looks before you leap! Make sure your move is safe, and take plenty of time to do so!

Hey guys, I haven't posted anything since I joined the team, but I wanted to speak up and ask for help. I'm at a fairly good place in chess study where I know I should be doing things like Tactics every day (I spend between 30 minutes to an hour doing tactics training on my phone with an app I downloaded). When I get home I try to read a few articles for learning and watch a few instructional videos, and then it's all about playing chess. I mean, I read that is the quickest way to get better at recognizing the patterns. Now, a little about me so maybe you guys can help me structure my learing for the quickest growth I can get... 1) I'm a huge strategy gamer. I played things like Magic the Gathering and Pokemon TCG at semi-professional levels. Even thought it wasn't the WCoP I was undisputed Poker champion for my command in the Navy (5k sailors), and learned how to play from David Williams... so I'm very good at strategies, puzzles, intuition, etc. I know in chess, recognition plays a huge part in it though, so I know only repetition will allow me to utilize those skills. 2) I'm an addict. That is, an addict to learning. When I get into something, I obsess over it in almost and near unhealthy ways. If you look at my profile on chess.com and lichess, you'll see close to 500 games in two months played. You'll also not see the almost 500 games I've played on my phone against various apps and engines, the OTB against my 10 year old nephew (haven't lost, picking on them kids...) and I've beaten age 10 Magnus twice and drawn once (out of about 10 attempts, so about Vishy in real life). I've seen every World Championship match between Anad and Carleson (both years, Svidler is hilarious btw as a commentator). I bought and am reading through a second time Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess and Chess basics by Capablanca... My problem though is I have ADHD and so while I'm a very good student, and I listen without doubt or question, my own personal structure... it's off. I've changed it a million times for a million reasons... so, I definitely need help maximizing my chess time. 3) Speaking of chess time... I have a full time Job (I'm 27), I'm married and my wife has a full time job (but she's going to start studying chess with me <3), and we have two wonderful children of ages 2 years and 3.5 months... which means no OTB or Chess Clubs for me for a while. No way I can justify it with my family at this moment, so I'm very much stuck to online play (but that is A OKAY! to me at least :P). I want to get good. Really good. In fact, Reddit/r/chess said that it was impossible for me to get to GM. I'm going to prove them wrong. I've never failed at something I actively wanted and put my mind to. It may take 20 years. It may take me sacrificing my career in 10 years (have I said I love my wife for being so darn supportive!??) and taking on chess full time, but I will do whatever it takes to hit my goals.... So, to summarize: I need help developing a focused plan of action in order to improve. I can post a couple games with my personal analysis if that will help... Focused study plan that includes something other than just tactics, tactics, tactics... Theory, etc. is exciting to me... I tried doing 2+ hours of tactics a day and found that I didn't really want to play chess after... so I reduced it by 15 minutes at a time until I got to my current 30-60 minutes and still super exhilerated... Any help would be fantastic!! Thanks in advance, I'm very excited to listen, learn and grow!! Sarkhon TL;DR: Want to get insanely good at chess, master level, no matter how many years it takes. Willing to do whatever it takes but need help creating a structured study plan. 27, Married, Full time Job (wife too), and two babies so OTB games not possible in the next 12ish months, so it's going to start internet then spam OTB once my babies are ready. Wife is a great study partner. TY in advance.

Each Piece strength can be calculated by number of squares or activity but u have to make sure to caculate those squares because each square has different value for Eg. the squares E4 , E5 , D4 and D5 are the most strongest squares on the board why ? because its the center squares. ok in Example 1 i will be showing a game between Winter and Capablanca in the 1900's The Correct move was G5!!

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Hello everyone! Today I am going to be analysing Junior World League games. So far, The Junior World League is in its 2nd year, with Australia defeating Greece in the final round of the 2014 and the first ever Junior International Cup. http://www.chess.com/groups/home/the-junior-international-cup-junior-world-league There have been exciting and match deciding moves that have changed the whole competition! Lets have a look! First, we are going to go from beginning to end. We start at 2014! Round 1 was all predictable, but Round 2 got very interesting. 2 of the top teams Australia (1st) and United Kingdom (4th) battled out in a sudden death! After United Kingdom had an upset loss in round 1, they had to take the consequences. http://www.chess.com/groups/team_match?id=367186 It was getting mad! 2 players (fischerfan10 and Oraoradeki) Were foreign! Fischerfan10 from the US, Oraoradeki has no association with UK, and is Japanese/Canadain. At first, everyone was arguing about it with Oraoradeki. It was left with no choice but to strip Oraoradeki's points into 2F-0F. After the match was finished, everybody agreed to make a rule in the rulebook that you MUST check every player before putting them in a team match. Before that could happen, Fischerfan10 was found to be USA. UK nearly quit JIC when it was threatened that his points would also be stripped. The 2 super admins of both teams agreed that Fischerfan10 was not stripped and that Oraodaeki's was. This match was very awful as a few team members quit. dikrik left The Australian team. Fischerfan10 and Oraodaeki was forced to leave UK, while Lacdad left before his account got closed down. dikrik, left because of this game. and after The Australian Junior Chess Team got frustrated, he had had enough. Hope you enjoyed this!

Welcome to my series on Opening traps. Now, this is an excellent thing to use just after you have been studying your chess openings. I am sure The Learning Center in the future will teach you openings, but if you read this in the early stages of the group, then it is okay if you have just studied it. Now, today we are going to be looking at the queens gambit. There are a lot of traps in the queens gambit. Lets have a look 4.. c6 4.. a6 4.. Bd7 (or 4.. Ba6 both have same idea) So there, you saw some examples of the Queens gambit accepted. Now, there are fewer in the declined, because it is less riskier for Black. There are still a few The Elephant Trap Rubinstein trap Hope you enjoyed part 1