Advanced Chess Strategy: Enhance Your Game Skills

Posted by IchessU on April 8th, 2016

Chess is a game that requires continuous learning. One can never truly master it, but improving skills over time is the desire of every chess player. Even international grandmasters practice for several hours a day. For people who are just beginning to learn the game, this presents a different kind of challenge. Learning the basics can be fun. But against more skilled opponents, they seem to lose control over their ever diminishing pieces. This is the time to start learning new and advanced strategies.

Studying about advanced chess tactics, openings, and end games is the traditional approach. There is an alternative too. Our minds can also learn by repetition. This and various other methods are employed by chess coaches worldwide. Thanks to the internet, their services are now available to everyone.

Introduction to advanced moves is a natural progression from the basics. The strategy is divided into several phases based on the stage of a game. Each phase is tackled separately with adequate practice and games against virtual and real opponents.

Study of important games is by no means an innovation. Newspapers and magazines have carried chess game puzzles and their analysis for decades. In the modern context, computers assist in the analysis and understanding of the strategies employed in important games. It takes a normal person years to achieve the skills of a grandmaster. Yet, anyone can learn from key moments in a game. Even when Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov, a defensive knight move at a time when the supercomputer was ahead forced the grandmaster to make mistakes and eventually lose the game. Unexpected moves in games where only humans are involved are easier to understand when there has been time to analyze the entire game. Sometimes, this happens several years later. Unraveling such delicate strategy requires guidance and explanation. Online chess coaching allows a player to expand their thinking and learn effective strategy.

Beginners focus more on pieces but experienced players focus on the blocks and the spaces. The ability to perceive the difference is intuitive and can be taught. By oneself, it requires inordinate amounts of time and failure. A chess coach makes this point an important part of improving the game of their students. They can help a player think like a battle commander leading an entire army instead of individual soldiers.

Another rookie mistake that most beginners make is to focus either on offense or defense. A skilled player needs to learn to do both and alter the balance when required. A coach can help them with specific moves and counters. The coach can also inculcate the student’s ability to develop such strategies on their own.

As with most sports, chess coaching is not all about playing the game. Just like an athlete, a chess player needs to develop endurance and confidence. A chess coach can assist them to build the required set of skills that will take their game forward.

About the Author

Albert Fishman has been involved in teaching chess since 1996 and is part of the IchessU coaching staff. IchessU is the best online chess school and their coaches are titled masters and grandmasters. Their students enjoy private or group chess lessons in our online chess club.