The Keys To Chess Improvement

Ive spent years trying to become a stronger chess player and failed miserably during much of that time.
The problem was that I made the same mistakes that most players below the 2000 level make: I studied
the wrong things the wrong way and ignored the advice of strong players about how to improve. After
many wasted years of trying everything EXCEPT what they advised and making no progress I finally
realized theyd been right all along.
We all have a limited amount of time we can put into improving at chess. The key is to determine the
most essential things we need to do or learn, and the most productive ways of going about learning them.
After years of trial & error, discussing the subject with other players, finally listening to what successful
players advised, and observing what actually works, Ive determined that the following seven items are
the most essential things to do and will give you the greatest return on your investment:
1. Master tactics
2. Increase your knowledge and understanding of all aspects of chess play
3. Develop a consistent thought process to reduce errors
4. Develop a suitable opening repertoire
5. Study annotated games
6. Play and analyze your own games
7. Strengthen your biggest weakness
Ill go into greater detail on each of these things further below, but first, I want to tell you about my own
chess journey and some things Ive learned along the way so that you have a better idea why I believe
these things are important and whether you should follow my suggestions.
I didnt start playing chess until my early twenties. My best friend and I took a year off from college and
decided to learn how to play chess just to have something to do. Almost immediately we became
completely obsessed and didnt want to do anything else but play chess. For the next 15 months we
played 40-50 hours per week, eventually playing almost 3000 games against each other.
We each bought one or two introductory-level books that introduced us to the basics of the game, plus
one book of tactical problems, and that was all the formal studying or training we had. By luck, more or
less, we did discover two of the most important keys to becoming strong players: we mastered tactics and
we analyzed all of our games in order to eliminate errors from our play. Everything else we learned by
just playing. We were classic coffeehouse players - all tactics with almost no understanding of openings,
positional play, strategy, or endings. Our knowledge of those subjects was never any greater than that of a
typical 1200 player. We just developed quickly, went on the attack, and were ruthless tacticians.
After fifteen months of this we knew that wed improved, but we had no real idea of our actual strength
since wed only played each other. We each returned to our respective universities, joined their chess
clubs, and soon found that we could easily beat all the players below the 2000 level. We won most of our
games against the 2000-2200 players, and it was only against the Masters that we were usually
overmatched. Id estimate our playing strength at 2150. We had gone from beginner to near Master in
only fifteen months. I dont believe either of us had any exceptional natural talent. Wed just focused so
intensely on the game and had accidentally discovered the two biggest secrets: master tactics and
eliminate errors. Being tactically sharp and eliminating most of your errors are enough to take you to the
Master level.

Within a year though, I quit playing. I finished college and got busy with other things, but the biggest
reason was that I just burned out on chess. I packed my chess books away and hardly thought about the
game for almost a decade. In my early thirties, I developed an interest again. I got my first computer and
bought an early version of Chessmaster, got my books out and bought a few more, and started studying. I
soon found that all my old tactical skills had evaporated, I had no other chess knowledge to fall back on,
and my playing strength was no better than 1400. No matter how much I studied, I didnt improve. Id
work at it for several months, see no improvement, get frustrated, and quit. After a few months, Id do it
all again, but with the same results. This was my pattern for the next several years. Far from improving, I
actually went backwards, eventually dropping to the 1200 level.
The problem was that I had absolutely no idea what I needed to study or how to do so. I was studying the
wrong things, jumping from book to book without ever finishing any of them, and never mastering the
basics before tackling advanced material. My understanding of the game was completely fragmented and
jumbled. I knew a thousand things, but had no understanding, and I couldnt put them all together into a
coherent whole. It was like knowing most of the words in a dictionary, but having no idea how to put
them together to form sentences and express ideas.
By the year 2000, Id grown weary of this and decided there must be a better way. I began talking to other
intermediate players and discovered that my situation was quite common. Most of them had done the
same thing and gotten the same results. I began examining my own study habits, listening to what strong
players advised, trying to determine what actually worked, and developing a more structured, disciplined
approach to improving. It didnt take long to realize that all the jumping around and haphazard study was
a major factor in my lack of improvement. I needed a more structured and disciplined approach where I
mastered the basics before moving on to more advanced subjects, and I needed to focus on improving my
tactical play and eliminating errors the things that strong players had advised all along.
Once I began doing this, my playing strength rose rapidly and climbed almost to the 2000 level. I then
stalled for a few years as I had to focus more on family and work, but a couple of years ago, I was ready
to try and improve to the next level. I took a good hard look at my play and determined what areas I
needed to work on most. By studying the right things in a structured and disciplined way, I reached my
current playing strength of 2300, and I did this after the age of 50!
The lesson to be learned from all this is that learning chess isnt much different from any other subject.
You cant jump around and study in a random, haphazard manner. You must study the right things the
right way and you must learn the basics before moving on to more advanced ideas so that you have a solid
foundation to build on and a good framework on which to integrate future knowledge.
Along the way, I learned a few things that you may find very useful too. The biggest mistake most lower-
rated players make (and why most of them never improve beyond the Intermediate level) is that they
make the same mistakes I did with how they study. The other biggest mistake they make is spending
WAY too much time studying openings. Grandmaster Lev Alburt said, Theres a name for players who
are addicted to opening study: perpetual novices.
Most lower-rated players seem to believe that if they could just find the right opening, then it would play
itself, theyd blow their opponents off the board in the first dozen moves, and theyd end up with an easy
win by somewhere around move 20 in almost all their games. No such opening or defense exists! There is
NO SUCH THING! There are good moves against ALL openings! Unless your opponent blunders, you
cant force a win in the opening.
These players learn an opening, but soon run into problems and difficult positions because their
opponents play good moves too. They get frustrated and decide its the openings fault, so they learn
something new. A few months later they run into similar problems and difficult positions and start over
with yet another opening. Twenty years later theyve learned the first few moves to dozens of openings,
never mastered any of them, are still switching from opening to opening, and they cant figure out why
theyre still only rated 1400.
It takes time to learn all the ins and outs of an opening and how to handle the difficult positions that arise
in all of them. Every time you scrap one opening, you throw away all the experience you gained playing it
and all the time you put into learning it. Worse than that, if youre continually learning new openings, that
means youre spending most of your study time on openings instead of tactics or other subjects that are a
lot more likely to help you improve your playing strength and win games. Over-specializing in an
opening is almost as bad. If you spend countless hours memorizing the openings you play 20 or 30 moves
deep, youre wasting your time unless youre playing at the GM level. Virtually all your opponents will
stray from known theory before move 10. Any time youve spent learning lines beyond that point is a
total waste, since youll almost never get to reach those lines.
Grandmaster Lombardy said, All openings are sound below the Master level. As long as were talking
about standard lines and not off-the-wall unorthodox stuff, hes quite right. Some openings score slightly
better than others at the GM level, but thats because theres some small positional or tactical subtlety that
only a GM can recognize, let alone capitalize on. For the rest of us mortals there is very little difference in
the effectiveness of any of the standard openings below the GM level, and virtually none below the
Master level. Dont worry about what is or isnt played at the GM level. They all will score about the
same for the rest of us. Why play some complicated line that takes dozens of hours to learn and a GMs
skill to play when a much simpler, easier line to learn and play will score just as well for you? In fact, the
easier line will probably score much better for you since its easier to play and leaves you with a lot more
time to devote to studying other things.
Connected to all this is something Grandmaster Polugaevsky said: Your only task in the opening is to
reach a playable middlegame. He couldnt have been more right. The realistic goal in the opening isnt
to force a quick win. Remember, you cant force a win in the opening unless your opponent blunders, and
attempts to do so with risky moves usually backfire. Obviously, we must be alert to opportunities and if
our opponent blunders, then we should take advantage of it, but the goal is just to develop our pieces,
control the center, get our king to safety, and reach a playable middlegame.
Pick a set of sound openings and defenses that are easy to learn, learn them thoroughly a few moves deep,
understand the ideas and goals behind them, stick with them long enough to master them, spend most of
your study time on tactics, and use your openings simply as a way to reach a playable middlegame where
you can use your superior tactical and positional skill to win. Opening study will give you the poorest
return on your investment of study time. Put just enough time into openings to learn how to reach a
playable middlegame, and then devote the rest of your time to much more productive areas of study such
as tactics, positional play, or endgames.
When youre trying to get to the next level, its easy to believe that those players ahead of you must know
so much more than you do. When you get there, you usually find they didnt know half as much as you
thought. Thats definitely the case with the Intermediate players youre trying to catch. Youd be amazed
at just how little they really know.
Most of them are tactically weak, make several major blunders each game, have absolutely no concept of
positional play, rarely find the right plan, know little about endings, and theyve made all the same study
mistakes I discussed above, thus their understanding of the game is fragmented and full of holes. They are
almost universally unsound and very few have bothered to master the fundamentals. If you will study
correctly and master just the basics, work to eliminate most of your mistakes, and make sure you are
tactically sharp, youll soon completely dominate the players in this strength range.
Something I learned about them is that they tend to know only how to attack. Its like the old saying about
how if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail to you. Lower and
Intermediate players typically have no grasp of strategy or positional play. They dont know how to build
a position or what to do when there isnt an attack thats justified by the position so they attack anyway,
as its the only thing they know how to do. The problem is that unless your opponent blunders, an attack
when theres no weakness to justify it is doomed to failure.
What Ive found over the years is that one of the surest ways to easily and consistently beat Intermediate
players is to just play soundly and wait for them to blunder, which they will almost certainly do in every
game. You dont have to launch brilliant attacks, embark on complicated and risky adventures, or employ
deep strategies. Its enough to simply play soundly, strengthen your position, make sure you give them no
weaknesses to attack, and then wait on them to over-extend themselves, launch an unjustified attack,
create weaknesses in their position that you can exploit, or simply self-destruct (and they will 99% of the
time!), then capitalize on their mistakes. Its an almost risk-free strategy and will bring you countless
wins.


Positional Play
Ive mentioned positional play several times and its a major component of my own play and something
Im going to recommend that you learn. Most lower-rated players think positional play is some deep,
dark, complex subject that only Masters can comprehend, let alone use. Nothing could be further from the
truth! Very few Intermediate players do so, but positional play is no more difficult to understand and use
than any other aspect of play. Even a basic understanding of it will give you a HUGE advantage over
other Intermediate players.
Were all familiar with the list of piece values where pawns =1, bishops & knights = 3, etc. Those values
are just a rough guide at best, though. The actual value of a piece can vary dramatically throughout a
game. A piece gets its value from its mobility, how much territory it controls, the value of that territory,
what functions its serving, etc. A piece that has little mobility, isnt involved in the action, and isnt
serving any purpose is certainly worth much less than an active piece thats hindering the opponent,
contributing to the attack or defense, and controls vital territory. In other words, the actual value of a
piece is determined by its effectiveness.
Positional play consists of three basic elements: maximizing the effectiveness of your own pieces,
minimizing the effectiveness of your opponents pieces, and accumulating a series of small, attainable
advantages that will eventually add up to a winning advantage.
Maximizing the effectiveness of your own pieces is a simple concept. Every general knows that before
the battle, you seize the high ground, try to control the mountain passes or crossroads, aim your artillery
at the places most likely to be critical during the battle, and place your forces so that they cover the most
important parts of the battlefield, maintain as much mobility as possible, and can support each other. Its
the same in chess. You want to put your bishops on open diagonals where they control the center or are
aimed at vital areas in your opponents position and have the greatest scope, create advanced outposts for
your knights where they cant be easily driven away or traded off, and seize open files with your rooks.
Of course, dont place your pawns where they block your bishops scope or occupy squares you need to
use for your knights, and dont do things like let your knights get driven to the edge of the board or your
let your bishops get hemmed in. Get all your pieces activated, mobile, and doing something useful or at
least aimed at something vital or likely to become vital! The more you do this, the more effective and
valuable your pieces are.
Minimizing the effectiveness of your opponents pieces is just as important! Deny him any advanced
outposts for his knights, fight him for every good diagonal, critical square, or open file; use your pawns to
block any good diagonals he controls, drive his bishops and knights to bad squares, control the squares he
needs in order to get his rooks into the game, induce him to make pawn moves that block his own pieces,
restrict his pieces, and reduce their mobility and scope.
Have you ever played a game where your opponents pieces always seemed to be in just the right spot and
working together like a well-oiled machine, he seemed to have anticipated all your plans and had
everything covered, and all your own pieces seemed misplaced, uncoordinated, hemmed in, and tripping
all over themselves or their own pawns? Weve all suffered through such miserable games. Theyre the
result of our opponent using basic positional play to maximize the effectiveness of his pieces and
minimize the effectiveness of our own.
The third aspect of positional play is Steinitzs Theory of the Accumulation of Advantages. This is a
fancy name for a very simple concept. More than a century ago former world champion Steinitz realized
that strong opponents would rarely just hand you a single large advantage that was enough to win, such as
blundering away a piece. He realized that instead, you had to work to accumulate a series of much smaller
and more realistically attainable advantages that would eventually add up to a winning advantage. Its
exactly the same as if you need a dollar to buy something; it doesnt matter if you have a single dollar bill
or some combination of smaller coins. Finding a nickel here, a dime there, and a few pennies somewhere
else is much more likely than hoping to just find a dollar bill.
During the course of a game against a good player, your opponent is unlikely to just blunder a piece away
to you or walk blindly into a mating combination. Instead, you must work to create a series of small
advantages and to chip away at his position by saddling him with several small weaknesses until his
position becomes so precarious that it collapses. Some examples would be trading off his key defenders,
saddling him with an isolated pawn that will be hard to defend or at least tie his pieces down to defending
it, trading off your least effective pieces for his most effective ones, weakening the pawn structure around
his castled king, controlling more vital lines and squares than he does, saddling him with an ineffective
piece, preventing him from castling, leaving him with a cramped position, or inducing him to make pawn
moves that hamper the mobility and scope of his pieces. None of these things are enough, individually, to
win the game, but if you accumulate several of these advantages or inflict several of these weaknesses on
your opponent, they begin to add up and create a miserable and untenable position for your opponent and
a winning position for you. Such positions also have a profound psychological effect on your opponent.
When hes saddled with several difficult problems and several weaknesses to defend, he will tend to
become overwhelmed and discouraged, and be much more likely to blunder badly.
If you just stroll through a game waiting on your opponent to blunder and give you a chance to execute a
winning combination, youre not going to get nearly as many opportunities as you could. Positional play
is what creates those opportunities by weakening your opponents position, destabilizing it, restricting his
pieces, tying them down, disrupting their coordination, and ensuring that your pieces are always well-
placed to take advantage of them. Rudolf Spielmann was one of the top players of the 1930s and one of
the greatest tacticians in chess history. He once said, I can see combinations as well as Alekhine. I just
cant reach those positions. He was simply waiting for his opponents to err and hand him a tactical
opportunity, while Alekhine used positional play to regularly create those opportunities! Positional play is
what one uses to create the proper conditions and greatly increase the opportunities for tactical play.
Consider the following quotations:
Tactics flow from a superior position. Bobby Fischer
It is an understanding of positional play that restrains the master from embarking on premature, foolish
attacks and that checks the natural impulse to hunt for combinations at every turn. It counsels him in the
placing of his pieces where they have the greatest potential for attack and tells him how to seize the vital
central squares, to occupy the most territory and to cramp and weaken the enemy. And it is positional play
that assures him that definite winning opportunities will then disclose themselves, and decisive
combinations will appear on the board. The master does not search for combinations. He creates the
conditions that make it possible for them to appear. Irving Chernev
Make the moves that conform with the requirements of the position, and you will be suitably rewarded.
Play the moves necessary to establish a superior position! Develop your pieces so that they enjoy
maximum mobility and control most of the territory. Direct your efforts to weakening the enemy position,
cramping the movements of his pieces, and reducing the capacity of his resistance before you make the
first move of a combination. When the time is ripe, the attack will play itself. The decisive combination
will stare you in the face. Irving Chernev
A famous player once said that positional play was what you did when there was nothing to do. In almost
every game we reach positions where there are no combinations available, no attacks are warranted, and
we struggle to come up with a good move. Remember I mentioned above that most amateur players only
know how to attack, and if theres nothing to attack theyre lost for how to proceed and usually embark on
poor plans or attacks doomed to failure. Heres where positional play can be a huge help. A positional
player would look for ways to strengthen his own position, improve the placement of his pieces, activate
his least active piece, weaken his opponents position, drive one of his opponents pieces to a bad square
or reduce its scope, trade one of his least effective pieces for one of his opponents most effective ones,
damage his opponents pawn structure, or countless other ways to simply increase his own advantages or
increase his opponents weaknesses.
If you will take the time to learn the basics of positional play and how to apply it in your own games,
youll have an enormous advantage over the vast majority of players below the 2000 level. Most of them
dont have even a basic understanding of positional play or how to use it. Youll be consistently rewarded
with many more tactical opportunities, your attacks - when they come after youve weakened your
opponents position and reduced his capacity to resist will be lethal and virtually play themselves, and
your opponents will find that they regularly reach miserable positions that are teetering on the brink of
collapse without ever really understanding how they got there.


Studying
Finally, lets discuss the nuts and bolts of how to study, what to study, and whats really important and
effective. As I mentioned earlier, most players never improve beyond the Intermediate level because they
study the wrong things the wrong way and jump around without ever mastering any of it, especially the
fundamentals. I developed a systematic approach to studying and improving that might not work best for
everyone, but I believe works quite well for most of us.
What I recommend is that you study a basic book on tactics, positional play, endings, general play, etc.,
and then tie it all together by studying a collection of annotated games showing how all these things are
applied in actual play. You keep repeating this process, studying more advanced material each time.
Along the way, you will need to add some additional specialized training, such as analyzing your own
games, devoting time to learning an opening repertoire, playing training games, etc.
Dont belabor any idea, concept, theme, position, etc. when studying, especially when studying basic or
intermediate level material. The reason is that no matter how important the idea is, I promise you that
youll see it presented in a slightly different way by a different author in another book time and time
again. Its much more effective and a much better use of your study time to simply hit it and move on.
What you dont grasp the first time you see it will become perfectly clear to you the second or third time
you see it. In general, if you dont understand a concept or position in the first five to ten minutes, you
wont understand it after thirty minutes either. Just move on, let your subconscious process it, and know
that youll see it presented again in a slightly different way sooner or later, and youll usually grasp it
instantly then.
Before going into specifics, here is one final observation about studying: Going over material twice at a
rapid pace is almost always more effective than going over it once slowly! When studying a book or
database, go through it once rather quickly, and then go through it again. The first time is just to
familiarize yourself with the ideas and concepts its teaching. The second time, with the material already
familiar to you, youll be able to go through it rather rapidly again and grasp it all much more thoroughly.
Studying a book twice at 5 minutes per page is MUCH more effective than studying it once at 10 minutes
per page!


The 7 Keys To Chess Improvement
At the beginning of this discussion I listed the seven things that were most essential for improving your
playing strength. Ill now explain each one and why theyre important.
1. Master tactics Tactical skill is easily the most important component of a chess players strength. In
fact, everything else combined probably doesnt count for as much your tactical ability. Tactical skill
alone is enough to get you to the Master level, but all the other skill in the world wont get you to even
the 1500 level if youre tactically weak. Until youre at least a 2000 player, you should devote at least
75% of your study time to tactics. NOTHING will improve your playing strength any faster.
Tactical skill is the easiest and fastest aspect of chess to learn, but its also the easiest and fastest to lose.
You must put some time into studying tactics on a regular basis to keep your instincts and tactical vision
sharp. I suggest that you keep a book of problems at hand and spend some time on them every day.
I strongly recommend a particular intensive tactics training method called The Seven Circles. The guy
who created it a few years ago had been a life-long 1400 player and had tried everything to raise his
playing strength with no success. Realizing the importance of tactics and that normal tactical study hadnt
worked for him, he developed the Seven Circles program. Within two years he went from 1400 to almost
2200, and the book he wrote about his technique was named chess book of the year and has been hugely
helpful and influential.
The basic idea is to take a collection of 1000-1200 tactical problems suitable for your playing level and go
through them seven times. A critical aspect of this program is that you work on it EVERY day, no matter
what! The first time through, you solve the problems at a rate of about 16-20 per day, completing the
entire collection in about 64 days. Then you immediately go through them a second time, doubling the
number you solve each day and completing them in about 32 days. Each subsequent time through, you
double the number of problems you solve per day until on the seventh time through them, you solve all
1000 or so problems in a single day, with the entire process taking about 4 months. The first 3 or 4 times
through, the goal is to increase your vision and calculating skills. The last few times are to simply burn
the patterns into your memory. After completing one of the Seven Circles programs, you typically take a
break and return to normal tactical training of just solving a few problems from a book each day, then
after a few weeks, you start another Seven Circles program using a different, more difficult collection of
problems. The results are astounding! Youll see a HUGE increase in your tactical ability and overall
playing strength in only a few months.

2. Increase your knowledge and understanding of all aspects of chess play While tactics are
certainly the most important thing to study, a knowledge of endings, positional play, strategy, defensive
technique, attacking technique, pawn play, etc. is also very important and helpful. All of these things will
greatly increase your understanding of the game and enhance your playing strength. For the most part,
this will be addressed by studying books or databases on each of these various subjects. The key here, as
mentioned earlier, is to adopt a systematic approach. Start with the fundamentals, master them, move on
to more advanced material, and build a solid foundation so that your knowledge isnt fragmented and full
of gaps.
3. Develop a consistent thought process to reduce errors Chernev said, The road to chess mastery
begins with the elimination of mistakes. Other than increasing your tactical skill, nothing will do more to
improve your results and playing strength than eliminating most of the major mistakes from your play.
There are two basic types of mistakes we make when playing. The first type is where we look at all the
important factors in a position, calculate as well as we can, and use our best judgment, yet still fail to find
the best move. This type of mistake comes from a lack of knowledge and all we can do is keep studying.
Its the second type of mistake the stupid, silly, unforced blunder that I want to address here. This type
of mistake has little to do with how much we know. It comes primarily from carelessness and getting
tunnel vision. We all have a tendency to get too focused on our own plans and forget our opponent is also
making plans, get too focused on one part of the board and stop looking at everything else thats going on,
or we only look at the immediate threat of our opponents last move and fail to ask ourselves if there was
a secondary purpose to it. This causes us to overlook threats or other important factors in the position. To
a slightly lesser degree, it also causes us to miss our own winning opportunities.
Carelessness is the other big contributor to blunders. We simply go blind and either dont notice our
opponents very obvious threat, or we do notice it, but get distracted and forget to deal with it. Weve all
had the horrible experience of watching our opponent take one of our pieces for free or checkmating us
because we simply got careless.
Even Grandmasters and world champions make these silly blunders. They just dont make them as often
as us lower rated players. If you play over any collection of amateur games, including your own, you soon
see that in virtually all of them, the game swung back and forth as each player made a series of bad
mistakes. They blundered away a piece in a totally won position, missed a winning shot in a lost position,
left an attacked piece undefended, overlooked a very obvious threat, or walked into a mate or other
devastating combination that was completely avoidable and obvious to even a novice player. It doesnt
take long to realize that if you could just eliminate a few of those mistakes, youd win a lot more games.
There is a system designed to help you do just that! Its very easy to learn and use, but it takes discipline
to make yourself consistently use it on every move in every game. The goal is to increase your vision of
the board, avoid getting tunnel vision, make sure you see all the important factors in each position, and
avoid making oversights and careless mistakes. There are two steps to this system.
Step 1 - After each of our opponents moves, we ask ourselves a series of questions:
What was the purpose of our opponents last move?
What did it threaten?
Does it threaten a check or capture on the next move?
Does it attack or pin any of my pawns or pieces?
Are there any hidden or secondary motives or threats?
Does it prepare any long-term threats, such as a kingside attack or remove escape squares for one
of my pieces?
Is he concentrating his forces, creating a battery, or setting up an attack or combination?
Does it threaten to improve the position of any of his pawns or pieces?
Did his last move create any pawn weaknesses?
Has he created, removed, or attacked any vital guards?
Is there a positional threat (e.g., occupying an outpost, seizing an open line, weakening my pawn
structure, creating a passed pawn, etc.)?
Did it create any new weaknesses with tactical or positional possibilities for him or me?
Are there any weaknesses in my position that he can exploit?
Are there any weaknesses in his position that I can exploit?
Are any pieces, pawns, important squares, or important lines in his position or mine that are
unguarded or inadequately guarded (look for loose pieces for both sides!)?
What pieces or squares did his last move reduce or eliminate the protection of, and can I exploit
that?
Did his last move create an opportunity to pin or skewer any of his pieces?
Did his last move expose or restrict his king?
If it was my opponents turn to move again, what could he do?
You can probably think of a few more similar questions to ask yourself. The goal is to increase your
awareness and make sure youre seeing all the relevant factors in the position without overlooking any
threats or opportunities.
Once youve answered these questions, you then start looking for a move. First, ask yourself if there are
any threats you must deal with immediately. If not, determine if there are any weaknesses you can exploit
tactically. Learn to look for and recognize all the tactical weaknesses, such as an exposed, unprotected, or
restricted king, over-worked defenders, a weak back rank, pieces with limited mobility or no escape
squares, unprotected pieces, pinned pieces, pieces vulnerable to discovered attacks, or your opponent
being behind in development. If you see any of these weaknesses, theres a good chance a combination is
available. If none of these weaknesses are present, it's unlikely that a combination will exist.
If not, then look for a way to harm your opponents position or improve your own. You can harm your
opponents position by damaging his pawn structure, taking away outposts, driving his pieces to bad
squares or restricting their scope and mobility, exposing his king, or decreasing his control of key squares
and lines. To improve your own position, look for ways to activate pieces, seize key squares & lines,
improve your kings safety, open lines for attack, improve your pawn structure, shore up any weaknesses,
grab space, or improve the scope and mobility of any of your pieces. If no such opportunities exist, you
simply look for a move that at least wont harm your own position.
Step 2 Once youve decided on a move, you MUST do a blunder check before playing it EVERY
SINGLE TIME! No exceptions! This is vital! Always ask yourself Is this move safe? before playing it.
This one little question will save you from countless mistakes!
After going through all the steps above, answering all the questions about your opponents last move, and
then deciding on your own move, pause for a moment before actually playing it on the board. Play the
move in your head, take a fresh look at how the position will look after you do so, and then ask yourself,
Did it address all my opponents threats? Am I leaving any threatened pieces undefended? Am I still
vulnerable to any combinations or mating threats? If I were my opponent, what could I now do? I s this
move safe?
These two steps asking yourself a series of questions after each of your opponents moves and then
doing a blunder check before each of your own will do wonders for your play! At first, it will seem like
going through all these steps and applying this system will take an inordinate amount of time, but with
just a little practice they will become second nature and youll find youre doing them quickly and
instinctively. Theyll help you avoid getting tunnel vision, will greatly increase your awareness of all the
important factors in each position, and will virtually eliminate unforced blunders from your game.

4. Develop a suitable opening repertoire As I mentioned earlier, our goal is just to reach a playable
middlegame, and all standard openings are equally effective below the GM level. As I also mentioned
earlier, one of the biggest mistakes most players make is that they spend WAY too much time studying
openings. However, we still need to have some sort of opening repertoire if we want to reach that
playable middlegame without getting skinned alive.
You can learn a complete set of standard openings and defenses, but no matter what you choose, you run
into a major problem: your opponent will have so many options against each that you end up having to
put in countless hours studying just to learn a decent line against all of them. For instance, if you want to
play 1.e4, you have to be prepared to face a dozen different common defenses such as the Sicilian, French
and Petroff. Its not much better if you choose to instead play the Queens Gambit as White, as youll
have to prepare to face the Kings Indian, the Gruenfeld, the Slav, and several others. Its just as bad as
Black, as you have to be prepared to meet several openings that White can throw at you. You end up
having to learn 30-40 quite different lines just to reach the middlegame alive.
The alternative is to play a simpler selection of opening systems or forcing lines that greatly restrict your
opponents options (and thus reduce the number of lines you must prepare against). An opening system
lets you just develop your pieces in a predetermined way every game, almost without regard to what your
opponent does. Instead of having to learn lines against dozens of various options, you simply develop
your pieces to the same squares each game, then play chess. This sounds too easy, but there are actually a
few such systems that are quite strong and frequently played at even the GM level.
This System approach works quite well. In fact, its all I played for more than a decade, and what I used
to climb back from 1200 to 2200. What Id recommend (and what I played also) is that as White, you play
the Torre Attack or the Colle Opening. As Black, you play the Scandinavian Defense against 1.e4, and the
Semi-Slav Defense against everything else.
The Torre Attack is quite sound, gives you good attacking chances, and is very easy to learn and play.
You simply play the following moves in more or less the same order ever game:
1.d4
2.Nf3
3.Bg5
4.e3
5.Bd3
6.c3
7.Nbd2
8.0-0
9.Qe2

Play these moves on a board and look at the position. Black will find it difficult to prevent you from
developing your pieces in this manner. You have a solid and active position, good attacking chances,
good control of the center, your king is safe, and all your pieces are developed and working together.
Thats all you can ask of any opening!
A nice variation of this line (and one Ive played hundreds of times with very good results) involves
developing the queen to c2 instead of e2 (setting up a queen & bishop battery), castling queenside,
launching a kingside pawn-storm to tear open the black kings position, putting your rooks on the g or h
files, and then throwing everything at the black king.
The Colle Opening is somewhat similar to the Torre. The big difference is that instead of 3.Bg5, White
leaves that bishop sitting at home on c1 until he completes the rest of his development, then plays his
pawn from e3 to e4, cracking open the center and letting his c1 bishop spring to life. The Colle is very
effective and is often seen at even the GM level.
As Black against 1.e4, I recommend the Scandinavian defense, 1d5! The Scandinavian has a huge
advantage: right from move 1, Black eliminates all of Whites good options other than to play 2.exd and
enter into the line that WE want to play! In one fell swoop you just cut out having to learn lines against all
the countless openings White has at his disposal. The Scandinavian is also quite easy to learn and play,
and is absolutely lethal below the Master level. For more than a decade, it was the only thing I ever
played against 1.e4, scoring better than 75% with it, which is astounding for Black!
Natural developing moves for White often lead to disaster when facing the Scandinavian. Unless White
knows the specific lines to play, exactly what hes doing, and plays almost perfectly, he usually gets into
serious trouble in the first 10 moves or so. Youll usually grab the initiative from White, get a very active
and easy to play position, and have great attacking opportunities with the Scandinavian Defense. I had
more quick wins and brilliant games with the Scandinavian than with everything else I played combined.
As Black against virtually everything except 1.e4, you play the Semi-Slav Defense. This is one of the
strongest and most common defenses even at the Grandmaster level. At that level, it can become quite
complex and require a huge amount of study to master, but the basics of it are very easy to learn and are
all you need in order to use it at the Intermediate level. It is actually little more than the Colle in reverse,
which is a big plus if you already play the Colle as White. The pawn formations, development patterns,
and typical attacking themes will be familiar. Another big advantage is that it not only is extremely
effective as a defense to 1.d4, but works equally well against 1.c4 and all the other flank openings, as well
as almost all of Whites unorthodox lines. You just develop your pieces and play chess.
If these particular lines dont appeal to you, thats no problem. There are several others for both Black and
White that will work just as well. These are just the ones I felt most comfortable playing, and believed
gave me the best balance between effectiveness and time invested studying them.
The advantage of this System approach to the opening is obvious. You can spend 20-30 hours learning
three solid, active systems that will be very effective and get you to a playable middlegame where youll
have nothing worse than an even position, or you can spend hundreds of hours learning 30-40 openings
and defenses where youll have nothing better than a very slight theoretical advantage.
Lets imagine two players, each with 100 hours available for study. The first player spends 25 hours
learning an opening system that gets him to a playable middlegame, and then spends his other 75 hours
studying tactics, positional play, endings, and how to eliminate errors from his play. The second player
spends his entire 100 hours learning a more complicated set of openings that get him to a playable
middlegame with a very small advantage. Which player do you think will be more successful? The results
wont even be close! The first player will come out of the opening with an even position at worst, and
then use his superior middlegame and endgame skills to consistently outplay his opponents, while the
second player will come out of the opening with a very slight advantage at best, but not know how to
capitalize on it, and will consistently get outplayed the rest of the game by most of his opponents.

5. Study annotated games This is a very effective training tool! It gives you a chance to see how
strong players conduct a game, build a winning position, handle difficulties, execute a winning attack, and
to learn from their experiences. Well-annotated games will teach you the thought process behind the
moves and inspire your own play.

6. Play and analyze your own games I cant over-emphasize the importance of analyzing your own
games. I doubt anyone has ever become a strong player without doing so. This is a critical part of your
development and will do wonders for improving your playing strength. Analyzing all your games is how
you identify your weaknesses so that you can correct them. So many players never improve because they
fail to recognize the shortcomings in their play, and instead make the same types of mistakes over and
over without even being aware that they do so.
When analyzing our games, we want to do more than just identify the individual mistakes we made in a
particular game and figure out what move we should have played. Thats important, but even more so is
identifying the flaws in our thought process that caused us to make those mistakes, and detecting patterns
in our play across several games. We want to discover if were losing games because we make the same
type of mistake over and over, or if theres a particular area where were deficient, such as tactics or
endgame play. We want to determine if we consistently fall behind in development, expose our king,
make too many weakening pawn moves, overlook our opponents threats, fail to recognize opportunities,
play too passively, fail to coordinate our pieces, attack prematurely or with too few pieces, etc., etc.

7. Strengthen your biggest weakness This is such an obvious and simple concept, yet most players
never seem to think about it. No matter what our playing strength, we all have some areas of play that
arent as strong as others. Analyzing our games lets us identify these weaknesses. Once we do so, we
must ask ourselves which one most often causes us to lose. Thats the one we want to work on first and
eliminate! Strengthening this biggest weakness will have the greatest impact on improving our results and
how well we play. However, this is a never-ending process. Eliminating your biggest weakness means
that now another one takes its place and we must work just as hard to strengthen it! If you continually
work to identify and strengthen your biggest weakness, youll see a steady improvement in your playing
strength.