Upgrade your “Thinking System”!

Today we have some really great news – one of our top-selling (and cheapest) products “My Thinking System”, a premium video, has now been upgraded!  
What’s new?

Previously, this premium video only had a video element. Now we have made the following updates to it:

• An e-book – a text version of the complete video lesson

• Practical part – games and positions that will help you to DIGEST the ideas well.

And guess what! The price of this product remains the same – just $17 USD! 

If you have already studied this premium video and would like to get the new version, please contact our Support Team and get the updated version completely FREE!

If you have not studied this premium video yet, I know what you might be thinking …

Why should I study/buy this premium video?
Well, I have a list of answers to your question. 

• I recommend to my students to start with this premium video from among our paid products, as it contains high-quality information about the chess thinking process at a cheaper price. You can find more information about this topic here.

• If you cannot afford to buy our paid courses, then “My Thinking System” will suit you best. You will spend only $17 but get a high-quality video lesson.

• In this video, you will learn the need to have a well-developed system of thinking. It will be UNIVERSAL and help you detect the best move in any kind of position.

• This video lesson has received a 5/5 rating from our students (as you can see in the product page).

• Moreover, a former world number 5 player, GM Jaan Ehlvest, has written a detailed review of this product (and also my teaching methods, in general). You can find it here.

I’ve said it all and you have to make the final decision now. I’m sure you will find this premium video very instructive and useful. 

<<Get it now>>

P.S. If you have already studied this video lesson, please write your feedback and thoughts about it in the comments below, guys! It will really help others and I’ll appreciate it. 

GM Igor Smirnov answers students’ questions

As you may already know, I conducted a live “Ask Me Anything (AMA) event” on the RCA Facebook page on 15 August. I conducted this event to celebrate the release of our new course “Winning the Middlegame” (released on the 17^th). If you missed it, you can check the Facebook post here and go through the questions asked by our students.
I was on roll as I answered the students’ questions for about 2 hours.  I had to make sure I answer almost every single question and to do so properly – to provide you with the right answer and the tips/advise for YOUR improvement.

Yet, unfortunately, I was not able to answer a few questions and I missed a few questions as some students posted their questions directly in our FB page instead of following the “procedure” to comment down the event post. Therefore, I’ve decided to answer the unanswered questions today! 

Let’s go to the questions right away:

Q1: Hello Igor, one tiny thing, that it is better to study, games with the chessbase or the same with board and book? - Antonio Cortes Montoya

It’s better to study with chess board + book, but I know you’ll use ‘chessbase’ anyway, don’t you? 

The good thing about using real chess board is that it somehow provokes you to think. While observing a game using software, you are enticed to press ‘forward arrow’ and scroll through the game too quickly.

On a positive side, computer engine can help you see the lines and evaluation. Therefore, you can check if your ideas are right or wrong.

Q2: Sir, Is London System better than Colle System - Jai Prakash Singh

Any opening is good when a good player plays it. 

Objectively speaking, both London and Colle systems deviate from the fundamental chess principles. Thus, these are not the most powerful openings.

However, it’s easy to study and play such openings. White plays the same moves against almost any replies of Black. That’s why some players prefer to play London/Colle.

In my view ‘London system’ is a bit dull. GMs make jokes about it, saying that ‘White is fighting for a draw’.

London System

I would recommend that you play Colle. People commonly consider ‘d4-e3-c3’ pawn setup to be ‘Colle opening’

Colle Opening

It’s not bad, but I would rather recommend that you fianchetto your queen-side bishop – it’s more aggressive.

Suggested: you may like to study our article “Best chess openings and how to pick one for you” here.

You may hope to get a position as shown in the above diagram in the middlegame. White has good prospects in the king-side attack.

Q3: What variation can you advice to play against Tropovsky? – Misyuryaev Sergey

Trompowsky Attack violates one of the opening principles, and therefore can’t be really dangerous for Black. Any logical response will give a good position for Black, for instance 2…Ne4, 2…d5, 2…e6.

I like 2…d5 variation, as it’s both solid and active. If you would like to study it seriously, check out the course “The Grandmaster’s Openings Laboratory“.

Q4: Playing Black against Vienna 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.f4 d5 I was confronted with 4. Qe2. After 4…Nxe4 I lost a Pawn, and eventually the game. What is the best response to 4. Qe2 — ? Thanks - Dada Dadamax

Black to play

4…Nc6 looks good to me. In case of 5.fe you’ve got an unpleasant surprise for your opponent – 5…Nd4! And White is struggling.

Now, just find that guy and challenge him again. You’ll beat him badly! 

Q5: How GMs remember all those complicated variations in their opening line? – Jhec Bello

• GMs understand strategic principles very well. That’s why they don’t have to memorize lines mechanically, they UNDERSTAND the lines, and ‘digest’ them naturally.

• GMs are professional players. Same with other professionals, GM’s have their ‘8-hours working day’. Of course, one can learn plenty of things while studying it for days and years.

Q6: What do you do to relax and recharge after training or tournament – Jhec Bello

Some of my foreign friends think that I manufacture ‘Smirnoff vodka’, and this is my recipe for relaxation. 

On a serious tone, I do physical sport, reading, communication with family, strolling through the park, etc. Aside from that, I’m a big fan of self-improvement topic, and it energizes me a lot.

Also, there are some psychological tips for chess players specifically. But on the top of all that, it’s your life philosophy that matters the most.

Finally, I’ve already written a whole book ‘Champion psychology’ about this topic.

Q7: Heres a question, are you planning to make all of your courses available on mobile devices? This is the only downside I can see to any of your courses, and I have them all ! Igor Smirnov - Philip Porter

Hi Philip, it’s nice to hear from you again! Thanks for your nice words!

I plan to update the RCA website and make it mobile friendly. Hopefully, we’ll launch the update within a month.

As for the courses, I will definitely strive to adapt future courses to mobile devices. Not sure if it’s worth the effort for the past courses…  Will you really review them once again in case they start working on mobile devices?

Q8: What are you thinking algorithm step by step that can be used in every positions? – Misyuryaev Sergey

It’s a very good question, although it’s really HUGE, almost like “How to play chess?” question 

This is exactly what I explained in details in the courses “The Grandmaster’s Positional Understanding” and “The Grandmaster’s Secrets“.

If you are tight in budget, however, check out my free videos about preventing blunders. This is a very good point to start from, while buying your thinking algorithm.

Q9: hallo. sir my question is…… i learned basic chess moves in 2013… i have no FIDE rating… but i love to play chess…. i always played chess in online.. my internet chess rating is 1500+… and am stuck in there only from one year…. i took part here in local in one tournement and i defeated three FIDE rated players of rating 1200+,1400+ and 1450+…. and i lost to age category players of just 1100+,&1200+,…and that tournement was my first tournement which was organised just before 4 months back and since then i didnt took part in any tournment…… in that tournement didnt make any single draw but eigther won or i lost ,thats what happen there … i dont know what to do now… is i need to quit chess or i should continue…and also there is lot of pressure on me for finding a job …i have completed my graduation and dont have a job also….. i bought ur book promoted pawn just before one month and it is having very good information. i completed 12 chapters in that book… and now i dont know what to do…. please guide me - Dost Nizam

Hi Dost,

Although I’m a chess coach, in your case, frankly, I would recommend that you opt for a standard job (not related to chess). For a beginner-level player, it’s hard to make living from chess.

Still, you’ll be able to devote a few hours for your chess study before or after your work. Start from the course “The Grandmaster’s Secrets”. You’ll see improvement within a few months of training. Once your chess level gets higher, you’ll be able to shift to chess playing/coaching.

Also, you may give it a try and apply for a job at RCA: Join RCA - Career We are constantly growing, and from time to time there are new open vacancies.

Note: questions 10 and 11 meets the same answer.

Q10: What’s the best way to analyze my games – Ahmed Seif

Q11: Hi sir, I want to know the study plan for intermediate player ( how we can proceed further)..as i am stuck around 1600+ rating on chess.com and not able to increase. some times it got inscreased by 1750 but again i came back to 1600, now there is no improvement in my rating…:( can you suggest some good book resources and a details structure for how i should study and from where i should study..??? so that it can enhance our skills..I think every body have this question that how they have to proceed from an intermediate level to advance level player. – Kanhaiya Gupta

With very few exceptions, most of the players at your level suffer for lack of proper coaching/guidance. As a result, you suffer from unstable results.
I developed a complete course dedicated to effective self-training, it’s called “Self-taught Grandmaster”

If you are tight in budget, study the free mini-course “Chess Training Plan for Rapid Improvement”.

Good luck!

Q12: Hi Mr Smirnov I wanna ask you about the engines what’s most important depth or calculation speed ? Second when l analyse my games can I use one engine or more ? Thanks in advance –Ahmed Seif

Hi Ahmed,

GMs often use a few engines while analysing openings. Each engine has its style, and one may hope to find new or unexpected opening moves for an opponent. However, for your needs it’s absolutely enough to use 1 engine.

Not sure if I got your question about depth/speed. Anyway, you may pick ANY engine. Stockfish, Houdini, Rybka etc… – don’t worry, they all are good.

P.S. In order to thank you for asking the questions, we’ve prepared a little present for you. The PDF report “Tips to improve middlegame play” contains the most powerful ideas from RCA’s best middlegame lessons. You may download it here (of course, it’s totally FREE).

Merry Christmas

Hello,

Our GM Igor Smirnov wishes you all a wonderful holiday season and gives you some amazing offers for his courses.

He said, 

"

I wish you a wonderful Holiday Season! May it bring you lots of smiles, presents and positive emotions!  And of course I’d like to wish you many pleasant victories: both in your chess battles and any other challenges you may have!

Also I’d like to thank everybody for participating in a recent survey! We received a lot of feedback and now are analyzing everything carefully. During the next 2013 year we’ll be working on answering your questions and realizing your proposals.

What are YOUR chess plans for the upcoming year? New Year is a very suitable time to sum up your past results, and arrange future plans.

If you develop a good training plan for 2013, it will favor your steady progress.

In order to simplify this task for you, I combined the courses into PACKAGES suitable for different level students. Choose your package, and it will become your training guide during the next 6-12 months. Make 2013 the best chess year you ever had!

Good news: during this holiday season, till December the 31st you can get any package on a special discounted price.

<< Choose Your Package >>

"

Isn't it amazing? So don't miss it. So you can choose your package on discount price.

And also you can get his other chess courses here !!! Have fun friends! :) Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday Viswanathan Anand

Viswanathan Anand is an Indian chess grandmaster and the current World Chess Champion. Anand won the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2000, at a time when the world title was split. He became the undisputed World Champion in 2007 and defended his title against Vladimir Kramnik in 2008. With this win, he became the first player in chess history to have won the World Championship in three different formats: Knockout, Tournament, and Match. He will next defend his title in the World Chess Championship 2009 against Veselin Topalov, the winner of a challenger match against Gata Kamsky in February 2009.He have also won his championship against B.Gelfand in 2012.

Source: Anand's Chess Biography on Wikipedia.

Visit : http://ChessBaron.co.uk/

Happy Birthday GM Igor Smirnov

Hello,

Chess Strike wishes International Grandmaster and Chess Coach Igor Smirnov a very happy birthday!

And not only that, there is 20% Discount in his all courses. So hurry up and get them!

Grandmaster Secrets : http://chess-teacher.com/course#oid=1096_1_csb

The Grandmaster's Openings Laboratory : http://chess-teacher.com/opening#oid=1096_2_csb

How to Beat Titled Players : http://chess-teacher.com/program#oid=1096_3_csb

Your Winning Plan : http://chess-teacher.com/plan#oid=1096_4_csb

An Endgame Expert : http://chess-teacher.com/endgame#oid=1096_6_csb

Self-taught Grandmaster : http://chess-teacher.com/selfteacher#oid=1096_7_csb

The Grandmaster's Positional Understanding : http://chess-teacher.com/understanding#oid=1096_11_csb

Calculate Till Mate : http://chess-teacher.com/calculation#oid=1096_12_csb

Package : http://chess-teacher.com/package#oid=1096_8_csb 

Hurry up! And grab the 20% Discount courses!

And also read his nice post here : http://gmsmirnov.com/birthday-cake/

Thank you!

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

Hello friends, 

So our GM Igor Smirnov continues his post on "What obstructs 95% of players?" with his second part!

Here it is......

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In the previous issue we been talked about the typical problems many chess players have. You may want to refer to the previous issue here: LINK

In short, people read A LOT of chess books, but the benefit is MARGINAL at best. Why does this happen?

I’ll tell you something seemingly easy, yet it will have a tremendous effect!

There is a HUGE (I mean extremely HUGE) difference between reading andstudying. 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? Anywhere from a few days to as much as 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 you understood completely how to proceed.

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 to 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 do 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 the author’s ones.

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 insight comes 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.

To study 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 a 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 hard efforts to confront them. You need to spend a lot of timeand 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.     Memorizing:

A few months after you read something, you only remember the most general ideas from this 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 this blog, do you remember the lessons you’ve read 2 months ago? What were we talking about then?

Unfortunately most people can only give very general answers. It means you have NOT studiedthese 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 7 years. During this period I’ve charged $ 0 (in other words helped for free) and as much as $ 100U.S 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).

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 things.

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 unusually 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…

————————————————>

Now that we have discussed this topic in great detail, it’s time for you to ask yourself “Am Ireading 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? Share it with your friends by using the buttons below.

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So it is really another fantastic post! Please share your comments below!

Thank you!

What obstructs 95% of players?

Hello,

I have read another impressive article from our GM - Igor Smirnov in his blog,

The post is about "What obstructs 95% of players?". Read that article below....

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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 2 typical approaches:

1) The 1st group of players is a little confused and 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 2nd 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 how come 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 memorize 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 2nd 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 1st 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 of chess books (or other tutorial materials). Why didn’t it bring you A LOT of a progress?

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So that's really a nice one, isn't it? You can also share your comments here!

Thank you!