Trainings
95 trainings graded 1–10. Log in to track what you complete.
Strategy 12
Open files and rook activity
Rooks need open lines. Learn to find the right file, double your rooks and invade the seventh rank.
Weak squares and outposts
A square the enemy can never defend with a pawn is a home for your pieces. Learn to spot holes and plant knights in them.
Good bishops and bad bishops
A bishop is only as good as the diagonals it can use. Learn to judge bishops by your own pawn structure.
Isolated, doubled and backward pawns
The three classic structural weaknesses: how to recognise them, how to attack them and how to live with them.
Simplify into a won endgame
You are ahead in material. Find the forcing exchange that converts the advantage into a technically won ending.
When to trade pieces
Every exchange changes the position. Learn the questions that tell you whether a trade helps you or your opponent.
Pawn majorities and the minority attack
Where you have more pawns than your opponent, you can make a passed pawn. Where you have fewer, you can create a weakness.
Space: using it and fighting against it
Advanced pawns give your pieces room and cramp the opponent. Learn what a space advantage buys and how the cramped side fights back.
Attacking the king: pawn storms and sacrifices
When and how to attack the castled king: the pawn storm with opposite-side castling and the idea behind piece sacrifices such as the Greek gift.
Positional tactics: traps, outposts and the seventh rank
Strategic ideas that win material by force: trapping a badly placed piece, occupying an outpost with a double attack, and invading the seventh rank.
Prophylaxis: stopping the opponent's plan
Before improving your own position, ask what your opponent wants and take it away. The quiet move that prevents an idea often beats the active move that ignores it.
Piece activity versus material and the exchange sacrifice
Points on the scale are only a guide. Learn when active pieces, a wrecked pawn structure or a dominant knight are worth more than a rook.