12-year old Magnus Carlsen’s amazing queen sacrifice

Attack is one of the most important and essential skills in chess. You cannot win a chess game if you cannot attack. But many chess players don’t know where to attack and how to start an attack. The right plan is required to deliver a proper and successful attack.

Even the first undisputed world chess champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, used to say that “Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack.”

Today our guest coach CM Tryfon Gavriel has prepared a very instructive video lesson for you. In this video, he will show you a great game played by the 12-year old Magnus Carlsen, where the current World Champion had delivered a successful attack with an amazing Queen sacrifice.

Suggestion: you may also like to see Magnus Carlsen’s immortal chess game!

You’ll also learn about the following in this lesson:

• Flexibility and coordination of your pieces
• Manoeuvring
• Importance of the space advantage
• Power of the queen-bishop battery
• Pawn breakthrough
• And lots more

Watch the YouTube video by CM Tryfon Gavriel

Author information

Tryfon Gavriel is a FIDE Candidate Master (CM) with a rating of 2170. He has over 35 years of playing actively both online and offline.
He won the Lloyds Under-18 national UK tournament in 1989, and was awarded with the trophy by Grandmaster and PHD Mathematician Dr John Nunn. He also played twice in the main British Chess Championship.

P.S. Did you enjoy watching the game? What is your impression about Tryfon’s lesson? Feel free to write your thoughts and feedback in the comments below.

Get GM Igor Smirnov’s best collection of premium videos for FREE!

In recent times many of my students had requested for me to provide them (and also you) with instructive video lessons. As some of you might know, I’ve a busy schedule and that’s why I was not able to prepare video lessons regularly for you. However, I’m doing my best to coordinate with our guest coaches and give you high quality lessons.

Meanwhile, in an effort to fulfil the requests of some of my students I’ve decided to do something special. I’m providing everyone with an opportunity to get some of my best collection of premium videos, the “GM Smirnov’s Bundle” for FREE! 

Yes, we’re conducting a “Like and Comment“ contest on our RCA Facebook page. So how does this contest work and how do you participate to get my premium video collection for FREE?

About the contest

The contest rules are very simple. All you need to do is:

1) ‘Like’ and ‘comment’ on the Contest Post
2)  Send us a private message (to our RCA Facebook page)
3) And, get “GM Smirnov’s Bundle” for FREE!
Note: if you don’t know how to send us a private message on Facebook, you’re welcome to check the FAQ here.

What’s a Contest Post?

The Contest Post is like a message posted on our RCA Facebook page. For your convenience, we’ve pinned the post to the top of our page, so you can easily find it on our Facebook page. Below is the screenshot of the Contest Post.

All you need to do is ‘Like’ the Contest Post and ‘comment’ something like “I’m in!” to participate and then send us a private message on Facebook.

After sending us a message, our Support Team will reply to you and provide you with the prize, the “GM Smirnov’s Bundle” within 24 hours!  If you face any issues or have any doubts, feel free to report to us by writing in the comments below or by sending an email to support@chess-teacher.com.

<< ‘Like’ and ‘Comment’ on the Contest Post now >>

Let me inform you that “GM Smirnov’s Bundle” contains five of my premium videos:

1) The Art of endgame ($20)
2) How to win a won game? ($20)
3) Press your opponents like Carlsen ($20)
4) Play like Nakamura ($20)
5) The art of Defense in Chess

The Bundle price is $39 USD – so you get a prize that is really worth it by participating in this contest and that’s really, really MASSIVE! Moreover, all of these videos contain very useful information and they can really help you improve your chess progress. 

Learn how to analyze chess games like a PRO!

Recently we encouraged you to submit your chess games in a blog-post and informed that we’ll analyze the game(s) that gets the maximum number of ‘votes’. First, I’d like to thank everyone who took interest and submitted their games! 

The winner is Narayan Joshi, who has got four ‘votes’ for his game – congratulations! I’d like to appreciate other students who had submitted their games as well, and that’s why I decided to do something special and useful for everyone.

In order to help you learn how to analyze YOUR games, I’ve prepared a FREE mini-course “How to analyze your chess games?“. In this course I’ll teach you the universal approach to analyze a chess game.

The course consists of:

1. How to analyze your games?

2. How to analyze your games? (Part-2)

3. How to analyze your games? (Part-3)

4. Conclusions

5. Practical part-1

6. Practical part-2

After the study of this free course, you’ll be able to analyze games like a PRO with the universal approach, and learn from your lost games.

<< Get this FREE course now >>

After the study of this course, please feel free to share your feedback with us – you may write your thoughts in the comments below or send an email to support@chess-teacher.com. Thanks beforehand and enjoy your learning! 

What obstructs 95% of chess players? (part-2)

In the previous article we talked about the typical problems many chess players have. You may want to refer to the first part here. In short, people read A LOT of chess books, but the benefit is MARGINAL at best. Why is this the case?

I’ll tell you something seemingly obvious, yet it will have a tremendous effect! There is a HUGE (I mean, extremely HUGE) difference between reading and studying. Unfortunately, most players don’t fully understand this, so let me explain this difference in detail:

1. TIME

How much time do you spend reading a book? Usually you will spend for one book from a few days till several weeks. Thus, reading can be quick.

Studying a text book can take a month or a lifetime! I’m not exaggerating. For instance, studying a religious book can take a lifetime, and even then you may still not fully understand it. This is closely connected with the next item.

2. REPETITION

Once you have read a book, you never read it again. It seems boring and unnecessary. When you study certain material, you try to implement it in your practice. In this case you’ll need to repeat the process several times to make sure that you understood completely before proceeding.

Once you’ve applied this knowledge in a practical application, you will develop new questions. You will then need to study this material again to find solutions for your new questions. This process may occur many times until you finally get 100% effect out of this knowledge (book).

3. YOUR ACTIVENESS

When you read a book or watch a video, the author of this material is active. He prepared some materials and is providing them to you. You go over this material, however, by yourself, without really doing anything active. This is passive learning, much the same as when you watch a new Hollywood movie – you are a passive viewer.

When you study something, you are independently active. You try and develop solutions yourself, and only after that will you compare your ideas with those of the author. You try to understand every author’s idea. If you don’t understand something – you don’t skip it, but study the material over and over again until all insight come to you.

You try to understand and remember everything. After that you go and try it in practice. You may fail, but you keep trying until you train this new skill enough to get good results.

Studying requires one to be very active.

4. LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY

As you may have guessed, reading is easy. That’s why most of people like it so much! You read something, you feel like you should be getting smarter. You digest ready-made material with little or no effort required from you. This comfortable situation makes you feel good because it is not difficult.

Studying is much harder. Here you have to face your weaknesses, admit them and then put in a hard effort to confront them. You need to spend a lot of time and effort, do unusual things and develop new habits. Inwardly you have to admit that somebody is smarter than you in this area, which is painful for a lot of people.

Reading is entertainment. Studying is a hard work.

5. MEMORISING

A few months after you read something, you only remember the most general ideas from that material.

Let’s create a little test. Have you studied any of my paid courses? Do you remember the titles of each video lesson? What rules were presented in each lesson? How many practical tasks were presented in this course?

If you only study my free lessons on the RCA blog, do you remember the lessons you’ve read two months ago? What were we talking about then?

Unfortunately, most people can only give very general answers. It means you have NOT studied these lessons. When you study something seriously, you won’t forget it later because it is learned. It becomes a part of your nature, your new habit.

In many countries people shake hands after a meeting. You never forget to do this. You don’t need to write it in your notebook – it is automatic and becomes a habit.

Studying develops new habits. Reading develops… nothing.

6. FREE/PAID

Not always, but often you can get reading material for free. More often than not, you have to pay for your study course materials.

There is some good news for you here. I’ve been an active chess coach for the past 12 years. During this period I’ve charged $0 (in other words, helped for free) and as much as $100 per hour. I’ve noticed an interesting thing: the more the student pays, the better results he/she gets.

I always try to do my best, so my coaching is the same but the students’ ATTITUDE is very different. For instance, those who paid a lot never come late to the lesson. Free students sometimes even skip the lessons.

Those who made serious investments write down all important information. Some of them even use a voice recorder, so as to repeat the lesson later on. Those who paid little never do. After an expensive lesson, a student always performs his home tasks (even when it seems unnecessary for him).

Suggestion: you may like to read an interesting article “Chess, Life and Happiness”.

In the same way, you will probably eat the dish if you paid a lot for it in a restaurant (even if the dish looks unusual for you). It seems silly to pay for something and then not use it. We avoid making silly mistakes.

After a free lesson, a student decides by himself which tasks to perform and how. So he distorts the training and doesn’t get any real results.

All in all, when you pay for something you take it much more seriously. That’s why some tricky guys download tons of free chess materials from the internet, but their real progress is miserable. It’s just fair.

7. EFFECTIVENESS

After you study something new, you can take a qualitative leap forward. You develop new (more effective) skills. You change (improve) your way of playing. You start getting outstandingly great results.

After reading something, you feel good. You may be enthusiastic. But when it comes to practice – nothing changes.You still get the same results as before. This upsets you. You want to bring your mood up again and… you start reading another exciting book…

CONCLUSION

Now that we have discussed this topic in great detail, it’s time for you to ask yourself “Am I reading or studying chess materials?” Be honest with yourself. Be objective and take all criteria (your results) into account.

P.S. Have you enjoyed this lesson?  Please share it with your friends by using the buttons below.

What obstructs 95% of chess players?

There are literally millions of chess books and tutorials that are available to us these days and all chess learners study from this same pool of material.

However, only a very small group of players (less than 5%) will experience any significant progress. The majority of players (95%) will unfortunately experience only slight advancement or, worse, no progress at all.

How to deal with such a sad situation? There are two typical approaches:

1. The players belonging to the first group are a little confused and they ask themselves the question (or send the question to me  ), “Why am I not progressing despite all of my desire and efforts?“ If you are in this group, please accept my congratulations – you have very good chances for improvement!

2. The second group of players prefers to believe in what they want to believe. They think that they are “experienced,” “advanced,” “experts” or that they “know all the chess basics already,” etc. However, there is a well-known refutation proverb, “If you are so smart, then why are you so poor?” In regards to chess, this proverb basically translates to: “If you know so many things about chess, then why your rating is so low?”

In reply to this obvious question, this 2nd group of players will start providing various lame excuses such as:

• “ I’m a good player, but only have problems with tactics (or opening repertoire or anything else)”.
• “I don’t want to memorise opening lines, because I like creativity.”
• “I have problems with concentration, and sometimes make blunders.”

Being under the delusion of their “advanced” level, such people produce a lot of lame excuses for their poor practical results. They also start blaming chess books, authors, teachers, etc.  OK, maybe a certain book was bad, but it’s quite unlikely that all of them are bad, right? So maybe the problem is not there?

All in all, if you are a 2000-rated player and honestly believe that you’ve learned all of the main strategic and tactical motifs – you are in this second group. In this case, I wish you good luck, because there’s nothing else that can help you. Yes, I’m not here to say pleasant things, but to tell you the REAL situation.

Now let’s get back to the first group of people, who wonder, “Why am I not progressing despite all of my desire and efforts?“

Please think about this question. I’ll give you the answer in the next lesson, but in the meantime your independent thinking is very important.  Perhaps you’ve learnt A LOT from chess books (or other tutorial materials). Why didn’t it bring you A LOT of a progress?

P.S.  Write your opinion in the comments. After thinking about the above question, you may read the second part here.

Typical double attack scenarios Part-2

This is the second part of the article about the typical scenarios of the tactical motif in chess, which is called Double attack. If you have missed the first part, you can find it here.

Practical example 2

Black to Play.

How do you evaluate this position? At the first glance, the position looks a little better for Black, because White has weaknesses in his pawn structure.

Have you spotted that the Rook on b1 is unprotected? It is difficult for someone to discern this immediately. In any case, the game continued in a forcing way: 41…Nh2 42.Rf2 Nxf3+ 43.Rxf3

Perhaps you can spot a very obvious double attack now. The Bishop captures on e4 and both of White’s Rooks are hanging. Black makes this move in the game and White resigns instantly.

Conclusions

1. The double attack is the most common and one of the most powerful tactical weapons in chess.

2. We have three different scenarios:

• Scenario 1: One White’s piece attacks two Black pieces.
• Scenario 2: One White’s piece attacks the King and another White’s piece attacks the opponent’s unprotected piece.
• Scenario 3: Last, but not least, the White’s Queen is threatening checkmate and another unprotected piece.

First, we must understand deeply the three main scenarios and then try to apply them in practice. Usually the practical examples are little more complicated, but if you have understood them then everything will be clear to you and you will gain a lot of wins.

Practice – exercises

Exercise-1
White to play

Exercise-2
Black to play

Exercise-3
White to play

Exercise-4
Black to play

Exercise-5
White to play

After calculating all possible variations, you’re welcome to check the solution in the PGN files here.

P.S. Did you manage to find the right solution for all the exercises? Did you like this two-part article? Feel free to write your thoughts and comments below.

Typical double attack scenarios in chess

Vasily Smyslov, a Russian Grandmaster and former World Chess Champion (from 1957 to 1958) used to say that in chess, we have four strong weapons. These are:

• The check,
• The double attack,
• The pin,
• The unprotected pieces.

I hope that the first weapon (the check) is a pretty straightforward idea. You should attack the King in order to checkmate him.

In many cases, the King or other pieces can run away from a threat. For example, we attack a Bishop and he moves away. We attack him once again and he escapes the threat one more time! Therefore, we need a stronger attack. This stronger technique is the double attack.

Double attack and its scenarios

When we attack two of our opponent’s pieces with one our piece, we call it a double attack. We have three possible scenarios.

Scenario 1
In the above diagram, we can see that White’s Queen is attacking both the Black’s Knights. Black can save only one of the Knights, but not both at the same time. The Black’s pieces are unprotected.

Suggestion: you may also like to learn about the tactical motif “Knight Fork”. 

Scenario 2

In the above diagram, Black’s Queen from the b6-square is threatening the White’s King on g1 and the White’s Bishop on b2. Please note that this scenario is a little different from the previous one because we are threatening the King. The attack on the King is a very powerful and forcing method.

In scenario 1, Black can choose which of the two Knights he would like to keep on the board. Probably he will choose to save the Knight that is closer to his King. In scenario 2, White should protect his King and, after that, Black can capture the Bishop.

Scenario 3

Scenario 3 is a combination of the first and second scenario. Here, we can see the idea. White’s Queen is threatening to checkmate on h7 and the unprotected Rook on a8. Black is forced to protect the h7 square, so he will lose the Rook on a8.

Note: usually it’s the Queen that performs the attack in this third scenario.

These are the three main scenarios of the double attack. If we are lucky, these may appear in our games and we can find them easily.  In most cases, however, the chess game is little more complicated. Perhaps 1-2 forcing moves will happen and then we should see the double attack. Or a double attack will be combined with another tactical motif.

Practical example 1

White to play

In the first practical example, we can spot the unprotected Rook on e7. If we attack this Rook with the move Knight to f5, then it will escape, for he can move somewhere else. As the great American player used to say, “Chess is time”. By this, he meant that we may have a plan but the opponent has his own plan, too.

Here is a practical tip for you. If you would like to win some time, then you should attack the King! So here White plays the best move – Queen to f6. This is a double attack on the King and the e7-Rook. Black moves his Queen to g7, what else does he have?

So we can see the updated position in the diagram below. It is White’s turn. Will White capture the rook as he had planned to one move ago?
Of course not! Do you remember the anti-blunder technique? Before making a move, we should ask ourselves: “What is my opponent’s threat?” With his last move, Black is threatening checkmate on g2. This happens accidentally. Black hasn’t planned it ahead, as he was forced to cover his King.

Suggestion: Get the FREE course “Quick success in chess”, optimize your chess training and speed up your progress! 

When we play a chess game, and especially a blitz game, we have this passion – to make quick moves – and if we find a good idea, we feel great and are impatient to perform it as soon as possible.

Now we are in a relaxed mood because our clock is not ticking, so let’s think about this position once again. White would like to capture the rook on e7 but cannot do so right now. White should win time. How can we win time? Of course, this can happen by giving a check.

Therefore, White plays the best move, Queen to h4. Black is forced, once again, to cover his King, and then White captures the Rook on e7.

<<TO BE CONTINUED>>

P.S. Was this article useful for you? If you have some chess friends who are beginners, you may share this information with them – it can be very helpful for them.