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We’re living in times when it’s important to support each other as never before...
Yeah, just by staying at home you can save lives…


...but at the same time, you can skyrocket your chess and help others as well.
HOW? 😮

We’ve UNLOCKED ALL of our courses, created by GRANDMASTERS.
That’s 100+ hours of courses!

We’ve spent a few YEARS creating all of these.
And now all of them have been unlocked for 1 week.

✅Step-by-step Grandmaster openings for White
✅Step-by-step Grandmaster openings for Black
✅ 20+ hours of commentary on games of World Champions,
and loads more...

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http://link.chessmood.com/covid19

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Share this with them, helping to beat COVID-19 boredom, while doing something useful.

See you in the courses 

TASC Chess Tutorial 2 (CD)

The first 5 Chess Steps material contained in a single CD.
Although this CD has been published a few years ago, the chess principles contained in it do not change in time. Recommended.

http://www.chesshouse.com/TASC_Chess_CD_2_Chess_Rules_Learn_to_Play_Chess_p/a216.htm

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Oct. 22nd 2016 update

The Chess Tutor  is the evolution TASC Chess Tutorial 2 (CD).

More on the "Chess-Steps Method"

 At this web page 

 we read that specific books are recommended for players having a target rating. For instance:

• Step 4 Workbook & Manual suit players having an USCF rating up to 1750
• Step 6 Workbook & Manual are recommended for players USCF rated up to 2100

Somewhere I read that Fide Ratings are about 100 elo points lower than USCF ratings. I have wondered if these indications were really correct or if they were a vague guess only. So I made a research on the Internet in order to find  if other chess players, besides me, had published any report of their own success/ratio in solving the Chess-Steps Workbooks.

Unfortunately I found only one.
This is the link:
http://chesstrainerphaedrus.blogspot.nl/2009/12/step-6-and-stoyko-exercises.html
There we can read what follows:

5 december 2009 - Step 6 and Stoyko exercises

At the moment I use two training methods. The first is step 6 of the steps method. I already did this book once (over a period of more than a year) and had an overall succes rate of about 85%.
At first I thought it would be best to concentrate on the exercises I failed to solve. But when I started to pick up the book I noticed that I didn't remember most of the (1300) positions. For this reason I decided to go through the book again. Not surprisingly my succes rate is now about 95%, and I also solve them a lot faster than I did the first time. I consider this work to be largely a kind of maintenance of acquired patterns. (...)

 In another post written on 25 February 2009:
http://chesstrainerphaedrus.blogspot.nl/2009_02_01_archive.html
the author states that :
"(...) I think that for a player of my strength (2050+), (...)
so, that player had a Candidate Master rating at the time he was solving the Chess Steps 6th Workbook.

As my own final success rate of Step 4 is about 95% (my current FIDE rating is 1780), in absence of additional data, for the very limited info/reports in my hands, I suppose that the rating indications provided at http://www.chess-steps.com/index.php may be accurate.
If any reader has gone through the chess-steps workbook and he/she would like to share his/her success ratio, please send an email at ricettario@fastwebnet.it so I will be able to update this post. Thanks.

The “Steps method”

 http://theamazingchessworld.blogspot.it/2012/10/the-steps-method.html
The “Steps method” is a relatively young method worked out by the former Dutch Federation coach and IM Cor van Wijgerden and Rob Brunia, chessplayer and specialist in pedagogics.

The essence of this method is that you learn certain themes, first in their easiest appearance but with each step some complexity is added.
There is a strong emphasis on tactics.

The “Steps method” contributed to give a good chess education to a whole generation of young dutch chessplayers.

What I like the most is that within the method chess knowledge and skills are  nicely structured. This means that the method’s serious student rarely fails in endgames with a few pieces, and rarely misses a combination too.

Step 6 http://www.chess-steps.com/step6.html  may really be the real step for a 1^st class player to become a good candidate master.

The authors explain that it is required to integrate a serious study of the “Steps method” with:

• Playing serious games;
• Analysis of the games played.

Concerning Step 4 http://www.chess-steps.com/step4.html I have studied the first 4 lessons of the manual and I have gone through the same number of exercises in the workbook, with a success rate of about 85% So I can say that the indication that Step 4 is for players up to a USCF rating up to 1750 is quite ok.

It should be noted that Steps 1 to 5 are contained in the Tasc Chess CD 2    http://www.stappenmethode.nl/en/tasc-chess-cd-2.php

Additional material to the standard Steps  is available as well:

http://www.chess-steps.com/workbookplus.html

http://www.chess-steps.com/workbookextra.html

At last we want to highlight that International Master Cor van Wijgerden helped Chessity to develop an exciting new training concept:

http://www.chessity.com/

To conclude, I can say that the material is well organized and challenging. Highly recommended.

PS my thanks to IM Gerard Welling for being a constant source of chess inspiration.

The Steps Method

Too much time without publishing a post... so now I will simply introduce my next post, apart from the du Chattel's Blitz games. It will deal with an amazing method to learn chess. Here are the explanatory links:
http://www.chess-steps.com/index.html
http://www.stappenmethode.nl/en/index.php
A brief review of:

• the Fouth Step 
•  Step 4

to follow soon. Soooo...Stay tuned

”Play Like Mikhail Botvinnik” training course released for free!

http://chessok.com/?p=24620
This is what we can read at the above mentioned link:
"This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 6th World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. In honor of World Champion, ChessOK releases a free training course ”Play Like Mikhail Botvinnik” in Peshka interface.Learn to play like the 6th World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik in 350 most interesting and instructive positions from his games!
This course also features 1.069 games played by Botvinnik from 1924 till 1970. The games are deeply annotated by GM Alexander Khalifman, FIDE World Champion’1999 and IM Sergey Soloviev."