Resources For Improvers

FM Nate Solon has a blog, Zwischenzug, and I like his post on how to remember your openings, in particular, the blank slate drill. I wrote a small blog post on how I did in the drill here.

For polish speaking people here, recommend Tomek Jaskółka's videos

Hey everyone!
I'm sharing a collection of powerful free and high-quality resources that can really help you improve your chess—from the basics all the way to 1600 and beyond. These have helped me and many others stay organized, learn efficiently, and level up faster.

Feel free to bookmark and explore at your own pace! 📈 

📘 OPENING TRAINING

🔄 Chessable Free Courses
https://www.chessable.com/courses/free/
Practice openings with spaced repetition. Great for London, KID, Italian, etc.

🎥 YouTube Channels

• ChessBootCamp very underated

• Gotham chess steps serie if i find something else ill post it here 

for arabic speakers watch takkat chess amazing courses from high level books like mastering chess strategy or attack like mikhail tal

Hello Improvers! Want to master the art of the endgame? Here's an in-depth playlist from Danya's YouTube channel that teaches how to do just that! He explains all kinds of principles in an easy-to-understand fashion and does detailed analyses of each type of endgame. All in all, I highly recommend a look! The link to the playlist can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT1F2nOxLHOfQI_hFiDnnWj4lb5KsviJ_.

From the videos that I've watched so far, it has been extremely instructive and helpful to develop my positional thinking and tactical awareness as well.

I can also recommend GM Igor Smirnov's chess tutorials. I learned plenty of useful information from them. He mostly works on example positions and makes videos mainly on openings. He has some videos for the middlegames and the endgames, but I think that his videos are very helpful for new and even advanced chess players.

How to stop losing rating points at chess by implementing a stop/loss system is explained in this video. I think a stop/loss of 25-50 rating points would suit me pretty well. https://youtu.be/UyCdY5gE0oA

Here's a free course on endgame basics. I think it has definitely helped me.

https://www.chessable.com/basic-endgames/course/6371/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eW6Eagr9XA

This is probably the best chess related video that doesn't teach you chess instead how to become better at it.

Of course it's Veritasium

Does anyone have recommendations for good chess books for 1400+? I already own Fudamental Chess Openings by IM Irving Chernev, but I was thinking of having a book more along the lines of positiona ideas and middlegame training. Thanks!

"How to reassess your chess" is a great introduction to positional chess

The website for the step method has puzzles that are renewed each week where each day you can test yourself on the fundamentals up to the need of your level https://www.stappenmethode.nl/en/puzzle-monday.phpThe method is explained here (https://nextlevelchess.com/steps-method-explained/) So if you are U1000/U1600/U1800/U2000/U2100/U2300 in rapid chess.com then you can do the puzzles from Step 1 to your rating up to step 6 one step for each bracket. It is similar training to puzzle rush on chess.com or puzzle storm on lichess.

Hi, which endgame book would you recommend for a beginner-intermediate player? I don't want necessarily an easy book but I'm trying the Kasparyan and it's proving a bit frustrating, a friend from my uni chess team (2100 fide) often talks thru the puzzles with me and many times I wouldn't have been able to solve them by my own

For free I recommend https://www.chessable.com/basic-endgames/course/6371/. Otherwise I would grab Winning Chess Endings by Seirawan which some recommend in book form, but if you like to collect things digitally in one place https://www.chessable.com/winning-chess-endings/course/59602/

Although this may not be considered a conventional resource and may even be often neglected, I'd consider it a resource nonetheless: breaks. Taking breaks is a vital part of the improvement process, and it's very helpful for avoiding tilt. Breaks allow you to decompress after a frustrating play experience, as well as distract yourself from the frustrating things. Improvement is best done gradually, rather than trying to increase by hundreds of points at a time. Additionally, trying to increase hundreds of points can be overwhelming for the mind, sort of putting it through a gauntlet of chess. For a good method to avoid tilt, take a break after 3 consecutive losses.

Hope this helps!

Jeremy Silman's Complete Endgame Course. Recommended by Coach Dane himself! In my one-on-one lesson with him, he told me he believed it to be the only endgame resource needed until master level. A recommendation can't get any better than that, honestly.

It has the added benefit of presenting endgames in order of rating of the player, which makes it really easy to navigate. You're not supposed to read the whole book in one go while your middlegame and opening are suffering, but to read until a certain point to have the knowledge you're most likely needing in your games, and then pick up from there once your understanding in other areas gets to the next level.

Here's another resource that may often be neglected that can be applicable to all levels of skill: routine. Having a set schedule for playing chess helps your brain adequately handle those times, as opposed to being overwhelmed when playing chess for several hours at a time. Additionally, routines can also help you plan your play time, study time, and practice time. For example, setting a specific time of day and duration for each of the aforementioned categories can really help bolster the improvement process. @Gothenburgess uses a routine like this, and it's where I came up with the idea of a routine as a resource, so I decided to share it here. Hope it helps!

Any resources on the most common unsound gambits and how to counter them? I also just saw Remote Chess Academy's video on the lolli attack and was wondering if there are any more in depth resources for it?

There's every gambit refuted on chess.com lessons (https://www.chess.com/lessons/every-gambit-refuted) and Chessable (https://www.chessable.com/every-gambit-refuted/course/232833/) as well as an e4 e5 gambit buster course (https://www.chessable.com/gambit-buster-1-e4-e5/course/225810/). I haven't used those courses myself though just seen them through ads mostly.

Nooo! Halloween Gambit my precious!