GM Igor Smirnov’s birthday – special offers

It’s my birthday today – a really special day for me, as I am in a very positive and happy mood, and filled with blessings and greetings from my family, friends and students!  And I’ll share this happy mood with you, too – I’ve a plenty of good deeds to do on this special day.

First, I’m providing everyone with a cool gift – a huge 30% discount on all RCA products – which will be valid from today until Tuesday, 1 November (inclusive)! Just use the coupon “bday” when making your purchase. If you don’t know how to use a discount code, please see here.

<<Shop now>>

Second, I’ve a surprise ‘package’ for you. A few months ago, we released our course “Winning the Middlegame”, which contains very powerful and instructive lessons on pawn structures and a single system on how you should play the middlegame. Many students have enjoyed studying this course very much.

I’ve had a thought about this: I’ve decided to help those students who really want to improve their middlegame skills and learn the A-Z about this very important stage of the game; or, in other words, those who want to become a “Middlegame Expert”.
If you’re in this category, I’ve some great news for you.  We’ve launched the “Middlegame Expert Package” (3 in 1) that contains the following courses:

• Winning the Middlegame

• Calculate Till Mate

• Your Winning Plan

This is a great opportunity for you to become a “middlegame expert”. If you study these courses, you’ll learn everything about middlegame play: pawn structures, planning, calculation, visualization, and most importantly, winning and what not!

Both “Calculate Till Mate” and “Your Winning Plan” have received a 5/5 rating from our students who have already studied them – therefore, there is no doubt that these courses are of a very HIGH QUALITY. The actual total sum of these three courses is $327 USD, while you can get them for just $249 USD with this package – saving a really massive $78 USD!

But that’s not all – if you also use the above-mentioned 30% discount coupon “bday”, you will save a further $75 USD approximately and get this package for around $174 USD. Therefore, you make a total saving of more than $150 USD – can this be any more awesome! 

<<Get “Middlegame Expert Package” now>>

Additionally, I’d like to share with you a birthday greeting card I received from one my students, Martin.
Thank you very much for your good wishes, Martin! 

Finally, I’d like to share with you a cool video that the RCA Team has prepared, wishing me a Happy Birthday, and explaining about the exciting offers we’re providing you with. You can watch the video below:

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

P.S. Guys, I hope you won’t miss this great opportunity to grab our courses soon with a really massive discount. Have fun and enjoy learning! 

How to attack a central king? (Fischer’s great game)

Robert James “Bobby” Fischer, born March 9, 1943, was the strongest American Grandmaster ever. Many consider him the greatest chess playerof all time – and they are right.

In 1972, he captured the World Chess Championship from Boris Spassky of the USSR in a match held in Reykjavík, Iceland.

Publicized as a ‘Cold War confrontation’, it attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before then. Fischer was to win it and become the eleventh World Chess Champion.

Fischer showed skill at an early stage. At age 13, he won a ‘brilliancy’ that became known as “the Game of the Century“. A year later, Fischer played in the first of eight United States Championships, winning each by at least a one-point margin. At age 15, he became both the youngest Grandmaster up to that time and the youngest candidate for the World Championship.

Today, GM Petr Velicka has prepared a very nice video for you. Today’s theme is ‘Attack the king in the center’.
As we know, in the opening we need to castle. Sometimes, even strong players try to do something else and delay castling. This is a very dangerous strategy and, in most cases, should be punished by the opponent.

You can watch the video lesson below and learn now:

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

Author information

Petr Velička, a Czech, was born on February 26, 1967 in Frýdek-Místek. He was awarded the GM title in 2007. His best performance in the Czech Chess Championship was second place in 1999 in Lázně Bohdaneč. His Elo rating is 2421 (August 2013), which makes him no. 32 in the Czech Republic.

P.S. Did you enjoy watching the video lesson?   Please record your thoughts below about Velicka’s video. If you think you have learned something of value, please do share it with your friends.

Recommended

Stronger players UNDERSTAND chess better! Wanna become one?  We’ve revealed the most important strategic and positional rules that enable them to demolish the opposition in “Grandmaster’s Positional Understanding”.

Unknown stories about ‘Viktor the Terrible!’ (Part-2)

This is the second part of the article about the four-time USSR chess champion, Viktor Korchnoi! If you missed the first part of this interesting feature, you can read it here.

Viktor vs King’s Indian Defense

Wohl Aleksandar and Viktor Korchnoi

In the Gibraltar Masters (2011, Round 9), Viktor played White against Wohl Aleksandar. Viktor won a beautiful game and said to his opponent: “No one in the world can play the King’s Indian Defense successfully against me.” Wohl’s reply was “Ok, thank you for the game.”

Subsequently, he came over to Wohl again, smiled and said, in English this time: “I thought that you spoke German. Do you speak German?” Wohl’s reply, also in English, was “Yes, I speak German.” Then Viktor continued his train of thought: “No one in the world can play the King’s Indian Defense successfully against me. I would just like to be sure that you understand me.  ”

Read to give a lesson

Viktor was very happy to ‘give a lesson’, especially to younger players. He was very happy if he managed to beat them on the board or teach them some manners off it.

For instance, one day a young opponent came for a game after a 10-minute delay. He sat down, offered Viktor his hand and played his first move. Viktor, in a very serious tone, told him: “You should apologize for your actions. It is not polite to be late for a game. Never do that again.”

Suggestion: you might not want to miss “The greatest chess game everyone MUST know”. 

His character

Korchnoi and Kasparov

Korchnoi was a good person with a sense of humor, but sometimes he was caustic and made rude remarks. Yet, if we take a closer look at his life, we can understand that he endured difficult times. Similarly, we can recognize his great passion for the chess game. This passion sometimes creates strange behavior, especially when you lose a game.

If he lost a game

At the end of 2003, 18-year-old David Navara was facing Korchnoi for the first time. He sacrificed a pawn on h6 to get a strong attack and finally won the game. Of course, Korchnoi was upset and left the hall.

When David started to show variations to the fans, Viktor returned and suggested an improvement. David noticed that the position was unclear. In response, the famous Grandmaster replied: “Only to you!”

He died a few months ago, on 6 June 2016, and leaves behind a grieving chess community. This was Viktor the Terrible, a truly great chess player, a legend. Below, you can see some of his best combinations.

Korchnoi – Donner

White to play

Korchnoi – Hernandez

White to play

Nijboer – Korchnoi

Black to play

  

Korchnoi – Ye

White to play

After calculating all possible variations, you can check the complete games here.

What did people say about Viktor on social media?

Vishy Anand: The chess world loses its greatest fighter. R.I.P. Viktor Korchnoi. Every time I had a rook ending, I would look at Viktor following the game and think, “What would Viktor say?”

 Follow

Viswanathan Anand 

✔@vishy64theking

Miss Viktor. Personally I will miss his characteristic laughter & his love for chess.#Viktor Korchnoi

9:15 PM - 6 Jun 2016

 
•  6767 Retweets
 
•  101101 likes

Nigel Short:

 Follow

Nigel Short @nigelshortchess

Farewell Victor Lvovich - a cantankerous, old git, but a true#chess great nevertheless. Thanks for the many battles we had over 40 years.

9:46 PM - 6 Jun 2016

 
•  4343 Retweets
 
•  8484 likes

If you live in Germany, we may meet soon.  I plan to visit Bavaria, if you live nearby, feel free to send me an e-mail to gm.smirnov2014@gmail.com

For any other questions, please, use the support e-mail: support@chess-teacher.com

P.S. Brace yourselves, something cool and amazing is on the way – stay tuned! 

Recommended

Get your guide to thinking and calculating during each stage of a chess game. Learn to stop making blunders and to calculate variations quickly and precisely. Get “Grandmaster’s Secrets” now!

Unknown stories about ‘Viktor the Terrible!’

First, let me remind you that we’re celebrating the milestone achievement of getting more than 10,000 Likes for our Facebook page. You can get a huge $15 gift voucher which you can use on RCA products.  Simply use the coupon “fb15” when making your purchase. Don’t know how to use a voucher code? Learn how to here.

<<Shop now>>

This is a limited-period offer – it will END tomorrow, Thur. 20 October. Therefore, don’t miss it!

Viktor Korchnoi: if he won a game, he was very polite with you and would analyze it happily. If he lost, then … he would pull back his chair with venom and leave the room very angrily!

He was a four-time USSR chess champion, 10 times candidate for the World Championship and played in two World Championship matches. He was in the top 100 best players at the age of 75 and beat Fabiano Caruana at 79!

Suggestion: you may like to know how I defeated Fabiano Caruana in a blitz game here!

Even a stroke in 2012 did not prevent him from returning to competitive chess. The above achievements made him one of the strongest chess players in the world. Unfortunately, he never won the World title because he lost to Anatoly Karpov each time.

Korchnoi, born in 1931 in Leningrad, USSR, was nicknamed “Viktor the Terrible” for his legendary fighting spirit. There are hundreds of books and thousands of articles devoted to this extraordinary person, the legendary Grandmaster Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi, but let’s make a quick summary here.

Early life

He learned to play chess from his father at the age of five. He had the ability to defend with vigor and determination, even in the most difficult positions, and was always ready to unleash a deadly counter-attack.

J’adoube!

He was a really smart guy. Everybody knows that if you touch a piece, then you are forced to move it. From time to time, this happens even to the best players, like Kasparov (in his game against Judit Polgar in 1994) and Nakamura in 2016. So this is what happened to Viktor.

During a game, he grabbed his queen in order to place it somewhere. Suddenly, he realized that this move was a big mistake. What could he do? He already had the queen in his hand …

Instinctively, smart Viktor plunged it into his tea and started to stir it! He justified his action by claiming that he had mistaken the queen for his spoon, and so he was spared a fatal mistake. 

Defection

In 1974, the USSR started a campaign to promote Karpov over Korchnoi. The central authorities prevented him from playing international tournaments or even playing in Estonia which was part of the Soviet Union at that time.

Suggestion: you may like to learn about “Karpov’s Prophylaxis” here.

Tigran Petrosian made a public statement in the press stating that his generation, including Korchnoi, which been defeated by Fischer could no longer hope to compete successfully against him. So he agreed with the Soviet Federation, wishing to develop younger players like Karpov.

In 1976, the USSR authorities allowed Korchnoi to play in a tough 16-player round-robin tournament, IBM Amsterdam, probably in order to prove that he was not so strong any longer.

Korchnoi scored 9.5/15 points and shared first place with Britain’s Tony Miles. At the end of the tournament, he asked Miles to spell ‘political asylum’ for him. But he would have to leave his wife and son behind in the USSR.

So, in 1976, he defected from the Soviet Union and took up residence in Switzerland, becoming a Swiss citizen, and continued to be active in chess. Immediately after his defection, he became a public villain in the USSR. The newspapers and TV accused him of a deadly sin – betrayal of the Motherland.

Best combinations

Now let’s take a look at some of the best combinations from Korchnoi! 

Nataf – Korchnoi

Black to play

Korchnoi – Xie

White to play

Korchnoi – Kozul

White to play

Korchnoi – Shaked

White to play

After calculating all possible variations for each puzzle, you can find all the games here.

Recommended

Get the combined experience of former USSR chess schools along with the psychological knowledge about human brain functioning (and effective learning) now from “Self-taught Grandmaster”.

Facebook contest winners and milestone celebration

First, let me thank everyone for participating in the RCA Facebook “Like and Win” Contest. We had more than 200 participants (those who “Liked” both the contest post and our Facebook page).

If you think that this is not really ‘competitive’, as we chose two winners randomly, well, we conducted a ‘competitive’ crossword contest last month. This time, we wanted to have something fun, providing all participants with equal chances of winning, by choosing two winners randomly. But don’t worry, we plan to conduct several contests in the future – so stay tuned! 

Finally, it’s time to announce these two very lucky winners, whom we’ve chosen COMPELTELY RANDOMLY:

• 1^st winner: Nicky – will have an hour-long Skype session with me

• 2^nd winner: Prasad – will get an RCA course for FREE

Note: for privacy reasons, we’ve only mentioned their first name (or a part of their Facebook name).

The winners have already been contacted via a Facebook message. In order for the winners to get the best out of this opportunity, we will need their cooperation. The winners can find more information about how to ‘claim’ their prize here.

To everyone else: don’t worry if you did not win this contest. You gave your best by “Liking” both our Facebook page and our contest post – I very much appreciate your efforts; thank you for that! But that’s not all – I’ve something else for you. 

Many students seemed to have enjoyed participating in this contest, as we crossed a huge milestone for our Facebook page – we’ve got more than 10,000 “Likes” for it! This is a huge achievement for us and thank you very much for your support and enthusiasm! 
Therefore, to celebrate this milestone achievement, and to thank all participants in this contest and our Facebook fans, we’re providing you with a huge gift – you can get a massive $15 gift voucher and use it to purchase any RCA product you want.

Simply use the code “fb15” while making your purchase. If you don’t know how to use a voucher code, please see here. This is valid only from today until Thursday, 20 October (inclusive).

<<Shop now>>

P.S. Don’t miss this great opportunity – you can buy any RCA product (paid course, premium video or package) and save $15. Good luck and thank you once again!