The beauty of a move lies not in its appearance but in the thought behind it.

Most chess players enjoy being in control and remaining active. Therefore, when it is their move, they are happy, and having to stay idle during the opponent's move is a necessary evil. However, being the one to move can actually be more of a curse for a human than a blessing!

In every position, if you make the best move, the evaluation will remain the same. Speaking in chess engine terms, when you choose an inferior continuation, the evaluation will go down. If you frequent chess sites that feature broadcasts of chess tournaments, you see this all the time. Even though chess engines don't play chess perfectly just yet, in most cases choosing the top suggestion of the computer is a guarantee that the evaluation of the position will remain unaffected. And you can't "improve" it; it can only stay unchanged or decrease.

Hence, you can view approach the game from a slightly different perspective than usually: how does one "pass" in an efficient way, i.e., makes moves that don't affect the evaluation much while forcing the opponent to ponder difficult variations. In this sense, having the right to move is a liability in a certain sense because, after your choice, the position will either remain as good as it was or worsen.

Back in the day, computer scientist Dr., IM Ken Regan introduced the term "nettlesome" with respect to World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen after analyzing his games. It implies that Magnus knows how to play "consistently accurate moves that maximize the chances of inaccuracies from an opponent" (Dr., GM Jonathan Rowson, The Herald, Scotland, 2013). The ability to put pressure on the opponents and set well-disguised traps is one factor that separates him from other great chess champions.

According to the statistics of the Play Magnus app, most of its users can't beat Magnus age 10+. Even his character in the game is sly enough to know how to trick the unsuspecting victim, forcing him to walk a tightrope during the game, where a single misstep might turn fatal!

An experienced and cunning player always knows how to put pressure on the opponent. The more choices the latter has to face, the better for you. Here are some of the benefits of this approach:

Each challenging situation offers a chance to go wrong.

The more complicated it is to make a choice, the more time he will spend, potentially exposing him to time trouble.

One's mental and physical resources are limited. The longer and the more complicated the game, the more exhausted a person becomes. Hence, the more challenges your opponent faces during the game, the more likely he is to crack up under pressure eventually.

Even though chess is a concrete game, let me offer you two typical examples of when this tip could prove quite handy. Naturally, there are way more of them than that, but we have to start with something.

Let's say you are on the attacking side. Your position is a tad better, but there are no knockout tactical blows just yet. Inexperienced attackers typically waste a lot of time in such situations and then end up making the most direct continuations, creating obvious one or two-move threats, such as taking a piece or giving checkmate. Usually, in such cases, the opponent's reply is more or less forced, so they shrug and defend against the threat, making the attacker ponder his next step once again. Quite often, it leads to time trouble and self-destruction, such as going for an incorrect tactical sequence. In this sense, wanting to win too much can be detrimental.

A more sophisticated player, however, calmly makes common sense moves, building up the position and putting the burden of choice on the sweating opponent, for whom it could be pretty difficult to decide how to try to improve his inferior position. It is not unheard-of people to make weakening moves in such cases, changing their position from bad to worse.

Another notable example is the famous "do not rush" principle that is widely used in converting better endgames. I won't be going over the concept itself since it deserves a separate article and will instead focus on the part directly related to the art of passing the move to the opponent in the best possible way.

Defending is usually more complex and less pleasant than attacking. When playing an endgame position "for two results" (a win or a draw) it often makes sense not to force matters. In such situations, experienced players start maneuvering and seemingly shuffling the pieces back and forth, trying out different ideas on the board. It serves several goals:

• The longer the game lasts, the more tired and demoralized the opponent usually gets, especially if he is on the defensive.
• If your moves convey an impression of doing nothing, the opponent might lose his vigilance and underestimate one of your maneuvers when you finally initiate them.
• There is a chance that your opponent will lose patience and try to force matters himself, ruining his position. This is what they refer to as "the fruit will ripen and fall by itself."
• Using such an approach, you have the opportunity to try out all the offensive setups one by one and see whether the opponent will be able to respond to them correctly.

Summarizing, if you have a choice between moves that seem to lead to positions of roughly the same evaluation, ask yourself the following questions before making a final choice:

• For whom will the arising position be easier to play: for my opponent or for me?
• How would I reply if I were him?
• Is his reply a no-brainer move, or is there room for making a mistake?

Keep in mind that chess is a GAME played by two people, so errors are waiting to be made. Using this fact to your advantage can significantly boost your performance. Good luck!

Are you not convinced yet? Does this blog post sound too vague to you? Please make sure to check out our trademark Magnus Trainer app to learn from Magnus himself how to pose as many challenges to your opponent as possible!

Why can having the right to move be more of a curse than a blessing in chess? And no, we are not talking about zugzwang today! »

Let's say you play a tournament, preferably a traditional Swiss one with a classical time control where you find out your opponent's name the evening before the actual round. The first step when preparing for the upcoming match is reviewing the opponent's games. The big question is: where do you find them? Some of the ideas lie on the surface, but other tips might be of use to you.

If you are a competitive chess player, you probably have ChessBase, Chess Assistant, or other similar professional database installed on your laptop. Don't forget to update it regularly! Such databases are usually the primary source of opponents' games. In many cases, you won't need anything else if your chess partner plays many high-profile events that make it to the database.

If, for some reason, you don't have a chess database installed on your PC, you can resort to online versions. There are plenty of sites that include a few million chess games. Still, the quantity of games there is usually lower than in chess software ones, and many key features that are crucial for successful preparation are missing.

Surprisingly enough, many chess players list their real names on their online profiles. Recently I have had a lot of success doing online searches and finding large game collections by my opponents. This is extremely useful, especially in the COVID-19 age when people play fewer live events on average. Quite often, by looking at the online games, you will realize that your opponents are trying out new openings that you won't find in traditional databases. Also, the game sample is likely to be much larger since most of us play blitz and bullet online, increasing the number of games dramatically compared to traditional "slow" chess.

Hint: to make life harder for your opponents, consider carefully whether you want to provide complete information about your identity on your profile. A compromise could be to abbreviate your name. For instance, write John S. instead of John Smith. It will be much harder to google you this way.

In one of the recent tournaments, I couldn't find many games of my opponent in the offline database. However, I discovered plenty of them at one of the major chess sites! Also, I realized that one of his training partners was an FM whom I had already faced before in the tournament. Now I both knew my opponent's repertoire and could also "play around" the guy asking his friend for advice on approaching the game against me. More on the "ask a friend" tip below.

Do a quick web search in general and see what info you can find about the opponent.

Maybe your opponent plays correspondence chess and has an ICCF profile?

What if he posts his best games on Facebook?

Have any of his games been mentioned in interviews or featured on chess forums?

Make sure to check the FIDE profile as well since there you can find valuable information about the tournaments the person has played in, some key stats and games (even though the feature seems to have been inactive lately).

Now let's move on to the "old school" methods that used to be around in the pre-computer age and still haven't completely lost their merits today:

If you are at a loss what your opponent plays, sometimes you can gather vital information from one of your chess buddies who have already faced the guy over the board. Actually, if they are insightful and experienced enough, they will also provide you with tips on the opponent's playstyle, time management, and other essential chess characteristics. This tip is particularly effective for local events where people keep playing pretty much the same frenemies over and over again year after year.

Look at other boards and train your chess memory

As you probably know, quite a few GMs walk around the playing hall on their opponent's move, observing other games of interest. To someone who is not accustomed to it and doesn't know typical middlegames structures associated with this or that opening, this could be a distraction and a waste of time and energy. In contrast, experienced masters quickly make mental notes ("Jones must have played the Najdorf against Klein and quickly got a fantastic position after employing an interesting plan that I haven't seen before"). Even if the games are not available online, sometimes you can recall such instances and take advantage of them while preparing for the round.

I recall traveling back home after a tournament with a GM rated about 2600, with who we were barely familiar. At some point, he started saying something like: "Ah, I remember, in the last round you played White against X. It was a French, and you castled long right into it! Quite unfortunate, right?". Needless to say, there were probably 100+ participants, and it's not like we were close friends who were supposed to keep track of each other's matches or that he needed that information for preparation. It is just an illustration of how well strong GMs keep track of games played around them.

In the days of my chess youth, one of the main ways of preparation was hilariously naive by modern standards. After discovering who your next opponent is, you typically went to the organizer and asked him for scoresheets of the previous rounds. Being limited in time and not even having a smartphone to take an image of the scoresheets, you frantically scanned the games, trying to arrive at some conclusions. In most cases, you weren't able to find your opening of interest, so the best you could come up with was something "deep" like "it looks as if he plays 1.e4".

Somewhat later, tournament organizers started selling printouts of games for anyone interested. From what I have seen, this service was particularly popular with older people who didn't want to bother using computers themselves. Maybe they still practice this in some parts of the world.

Nowadays, sometimes you can find games from the previous rounds at the tournament site or Chess-Results.com. In the case of local events, some arbiters maintain their own private databases without passing them on to producers of chess databases. If you ask respectfully, sometimes you will be able to obtain for free essential information that can't be found anywhere else.

Want to get access to all our chess learning apps? Right now, you can save 30% on our Play Magnus Plus membership. Good luck with your training!

For many players, the process of preparing for a round involves only checking out the opponent's profile in a popular chess database. How do you go way beyond that?

Tournament Play Secrets: Where to Look For Your Opponent's Games

You have probably heard about the popular 10,000 hours rule that Malcolm Gladwell popularized. It states that it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of complex skills and materials, such as playing the violin or becoming a proficient IT developer. As a result, many chess fans tend to oversimplify things, leaving all the other factors out of the equation. That is, they believe that their mastery in chess, typically measured in online or over-the-board ratings, should linearly increase over time as long as they put in enough effort. If, after doing some studies, they don’t see immediate gratification, such as a rating boost, they start lamenting.

While this situation is quite typical of chess players, the answer to why this might happen is highly individual. Let’s consider the most typical cases.

First of all, there is the explanation that negative-minded and unsuccessful coaches like to offer. While bad doctors tell their elderly patients not to expect much from the treatment since the latter are “too old to be fully healthy”, some chess coaches follow the same pattern and tell their students that the latter have probably hit their ceiling. Most of the time, this is false, and in those cases when it is true, like a top player losing his strength due to an illness or aging, it is usually self-obvious and requires no expert analysis.

The second case is more complicated. Sometimes in both physical training and chess, one gets stuck on a plateau for a certain period. Progress in chess is not linear. It usually takes at least a year of dedicated studies to notice an increase in tournament performances. Don’t expect to gain points at a steady rate. As you build up your new chess habits, it is quite normal to fluctuate at more or less the same level for some time or even sink a bit only to soar up later.

Thirdly, sometimes one’s study plan is not efficient enough. If, after one or two years of hard work, there is no progress at all, the chances are that you are doing it wrong. For example, maybe you are studying too much and hardly playing chess. Or, the reverse scenario, all you do is play blitz without even analyzing your games and thus learn close to nothing. Or maybe you spend all your time cramming up openings even though it is by far not the best way to master chess, particularly for untitled players. The list could go on and on. In this situation, it is advisable to reconsider your training routine and to consult an experienced coach for the sake of getting some advice.

Fourthly, make sure you are not deluding yourself when you say that you “study chess hard.” How hard is hard? Even if you believe in the controversial 10,000 hours rule, it is better to keep a training diary and track how much time you allocate to studies. Otherwise, people often end up training inconsistently and overestimating the number of hours they put in. More on that later.

Fifthly, I will never cease to repeat that chess requires comprehensive training. A common mistake is to study too hard or to neglect physical/psychological training for the sake of working on the game exclusively all day long. If you gain proficiency in one component but degrade in the others, your overall result is not likely to improve. For instance, if you become better at chess, but your physical shape becomes so bad that you can’t focus well enough during the game, your results may suffer. Or, no matter how fit and good at the game you are, it is hard to play well when your mind is obsessed with some external issues: problems at work, a divorce settlement, a close relative’s death, etc. What is the solution? Balance, balance, balance. Think of yourself as a character in a computer RPG and realize that you are as strong as your weakest link.

Do these points sound a bit vague? Let’s wrap up the post with two concrete examples:

Adam, 42, works a regular job in the office and has a wife and two kids. Being serious about chess improvement, he decided to sacrifice some Netflix time every evening for the sake of practicing chess for an hour. Three days of the week are reserved for practice, such as the Play Magnus or playing chess online, while four days are dedicated to studying all the most important aspects of chess in Magnus Trainer. Based on analyzing his games, Adam knows what areas he should prioritize most in order to become a more well-rounded player. He realizes that things take time and is focused more on the process of creating an efficient and entertaining training routine than on immediate results, such as increasing his Chess24.com rating. Overall, Adam spends about 7 hours per week on chess training and modestly calls himself an “ambitious amateur.” Last but not least, he maintains an adequate life-work balance, sleeps well, follows a healthy diet, and allocates some time to hitting the gym three times a week and doing daily yoga exercises, thus remaining in good physical shape.

The other guy’s name is Steve. He is 21 and goes to university. However, deep in his heart, he believes that he is a future professional chess player. He does have an ardent passion for the game but has no clue what to channel his energy towards. Let’s see what his “chess training” looks like. Steve enjoys hanging out with his chess pals and drinking booze, taking inspiration from the “Queen’s Gambit” series. He cherishes the good company and hopes to become a better player by rubbing something off his peers. Also, the young lad loves reading biographies of top Grandmasters and imagining how cool it would be to become the next Fischer, Kasparov, or Carlsen. Steve has no training schedule and prefers to dedicate all his free time to what he loves doing most of all. In his case, it is playing blitz online and watching chess videos while simultaneously reading something on his smartphone. Sometimes he can pull off 10 hours of blitz per day only to give up on chess for the next week due to burnout. Still, unlike Adam, who puts in 7 hours per week, Steve invests at least 10 hours. And if you ask him about the number, he will mentally add up all the aforementioned activities and some more and come up with an absurd statement, claiming that, apart from his university classes, he is basically a full-time chess pro. His sleep schedule is as inconsistent as his chess training, and his diet mainly consists of junk food that he can easily order online. How about working out? Steve shrugs and says that this is for simpletons!

I won’t be asking you who is more likely to improve his chess level: Adam or Steve. These characters are a bit caricature-like, especially Steve, but the points still stand and will hopefully give you much-needed food for thought when it comes to your training routine.

Want to get access to all of our chess learning apps? Right now you can save 30% on our Play Magnus Plus membership. Good luck on your training!

Do you feel like you are not improving as fast as you expect? Let’s discuss what could be the reasons for that!

I Study Chess Very Hard. Where is My Progress?

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

One of the critical reasons chess players stop improving is that they don’t analyze their games and fail to pay enough attention to their mistakes at and away from the board. After a win, they are happy and don’t even bother rechecking the variations, and in the case of a tough loss, you may hear from them something along the lines of “I blundered a bishop for no particular reason; if I had played Qc7, I would have been fine”. What should they do differently? In this particular case, it makes sense to try to pinpoint the reason for the blunder and find out why exactly Qc7 was better, and to arrive at a more general conclusion than “this is the strongest move in this particular position”.

When making brief notes after a tournament game, you can already write down your concerns and the problems you have encountered. However, since your time and energy during the event are limited and should be spent in a more efficient manner, it is better to come up with a list of mistakes when you are back home and have analyzed your games in detail.


Unless you are an experienced player, it may be hard for you to create your own classification of the categories of chess mistakes. There is no universally accepted one. You can find some examples of such classifications in the books by GM Axel Smith, IM Mark Dvoretzky, and other respectable authors. The most recent example that I have encountered was presented in GM Davorin Kuljaevic’s highly instructive book “How to Study Chess on Your Own: Creating a Plan and Sticking to It” (New in Chess, 2021). I won’t be reproducing all his suggestions and just give you a sneak preview of what the “Calculation”, “Time management” and “Psychological mistakes” tabs may look like:

Calculation
• Lazy calculation, not calculating deeply/concretely enough, not overcoming resistance
• Not considering relevant candidate moves
• Not considering relevant candidate moves for the opponent – missing the opponent’s resources

Time management
• Wasting time in positions with several non-forcing possibilities
• Mistakes due to time pressure

Psychological mistakes
• Overestimating opponent’s chances (unreasonable fear of counterplay, avoiding risk)
• Avoiding imbalanced positions/tendency to force balanced positions
• Rushed decisions/not improving the position patiently

The other tabs he mentions are “Tactics”, Endgames” and “Openings” with a further breakdown of possible issues.

It is preferable to have a small database of at least 30-50 games of yours in order to obtain enough statistics and to come to a conclusion on which areas you should improve in. However, if you don’t play that many tournaments, you may have to do with a smaller sample (sometimes even nine games – one tournament) since it would take too long to collect the desired number of games. While it is tempting to add your training rapid/blitz games to the mix to solve this issue, I wouldn’t recommend doing that since your mistakes will probably differ depending on the time control. If you have enough patience, you may want to create separate lists of mistakes for classical/rapid/blitz or focus on the format you believe is the most important for you.

Once you process all the games in the database, you should calculate how many times each type of mistake has occurred.

For example, let’s say that you end up seeing “Not considering relevant candidate moves for the opponent – missing the opponent’s resources” pop up in 37 games out of 50 and being the most popular chess mistake you make. Clearly, this means that you should work on your prophylactic thinking. One of the possible solutions could be to work through a book such as “Recognizing Your Opponent’s Resources: Developing Preventive Thinking” by IM Mark Dvoretzky.

Let’s say the next item on the list, 28 games out of 50, is “Not considering relevant candidate moves”. You may want to check out a section in the Magnus Trainer app about chess calculation, where you will find tips on how to improve your calculation methods and to make the most of candidate moves, as well as solve a number of exercises to develop the optimal thinking habits.

Rinse and repeat as long as you have items left on the list, as well as time and willingness to study.

One common problem with most chess books is that they leave the human factor out of the equation and treat chess players as if they were chess engines: emotionless, tireless, perfectly fit, etc.

In reality, having the right chess skills is no guarantee whatsoever that you will perform well in the game if your body or mind fails you for some reason at a critical moment. Therefore, it is useful to assess the outcome of each tournament critically and to suggest a “cure” for each “disease” you have encountered. To give you a better idea of what I am talking about, here is an illustration of how a list of an inexperienced chess player might look like after an event:

When it comes to top pros, they usually have a stringent regime that they follow during tournaments. It is tailored specifically towards their needs and works like a Swiss watch. However, even they encounter hiccups from time to time and would benefit from doing a quick self-check after every tournament. And if we are talking about club players, they typically make a huge number of general mistakes, eliminating which could potentially significantly improve their tournament performances.

Creating a perfect list of mistakes and proposing adequate solutions is not something one can expect right away from an average tournament player. However, please don’t be dismayed by the daunting task in front of you. Take one step at a time, consult a chess coach or other credible sources of chess information, and one day you will become a much stronger player than you are now!

Acknowledging the mistakes that you make at and away from the chessboard is critical for your improvement as a player. 

It is no secret that most of the best-selling products released in the chess industry are dedicated to openings.Magnus Traineris no exception when it comes to user preferences. Today, we have the following categories of lessons in the app: Foundation, Tactics, Strategy, Calculation, Opening, Endgame, Highlights. Still, even though the legendary World Champion Jose Raul Capablanca and many other chess titans argued that one should study chess from the endgame, very few people follow that advice. In fact, I don't recall a single message from our users requesting to cover some instructive endgame topic. What we do get in bulk numbers, though, are suggestions to add new openings to the mix or to expand on the already existing series. Don't get me wrong: there is nothing shameful about wanting to know more about the opening stage! Still, I wish the other categories were duly appreciated and respected as well.

"In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else, for whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame."


Let's try to ponder this situation and come up with some ideas on why chess players are obsessed with opening knowledge.

First of all, some of them are mimicking the world's best. However, the top players have walked a long road before arriving at where they are. In their games, there are few mistakes, so obtaining an edge from the beginning of the game is important. On the contrary, in amateur confrontations, both opponents tend to blunder a few times per game. Having half a pawn advantage (+0.5) out of the opening is a significant achievement for a Grandmaster, but amateur's duels are typically decided by blundering pieces or even checkmate. Therefore, why not focus on middlegame/endgame instead of going all-out on the opening? And, of course, never forget about tactics!

Being booked up goes in and out of fashion. For instance, for my generation, the ultimate role model in chess was Garry Kasparov. At his prime, he, being an excellent analyst himself and aided by a strong team of seconds and a computer lab that his competitors simply couldn't afford, was often able to achieve winning positions right out of the opening. Some of the lines that later happened on the board were analyzed in his home lab till mate. Some colleagues were so envious/pissed about it that they started claiming that Garry's main strengths were preparation and memorization!

In the 2010s, however, chess opening fashion has somewhat changed. Chess players picked up the narrative of Magnus Carlsen being a fantastic positional player and an endgame virtuous who could dispatch super GMs left and right without getting any opening advantage whatsoever. Back in the day, opening knowledge was indeed probably not his strongest suit. However, nowadays, in my opinion, most people don't give enough credit to how well-prepared, versatile and skilled at picking the right weapon against a particular opponent Magnus is, even though the revolution in computer chess has largely changed the way people prepare and the positions that are considered promising. It is more about the surprise factor nowadays than getting a position with a high engine evaluation.

Secondly, we associate our openings with ourselves. No one says "my middlegame", "my endgame", but you can hear about "my Slav" or "my King's Gambit". Also, building upon the idea of mimicking the world's best, some players feel happy about copying the repertoire of their chess heroes. Even if the skill level is vastly different, they still feel like openings form a connection between the role model and themselves. In fact, when you ask someone why he started playing a certain opening, you often hear something like: "My coach, whom I deeply respect, taught me that" or "The best player from my country, whom I admire a lot, used to play it, so I decided to pick it up as well".

Thirdly, many novice chess players search for a magic pill in chess that will help them achieve great results with minimal effort. This has already been mentioned in the column about studying the main lines. It is tempting to think that you can quickly master an obscure line and bamboozle a much stronger opponent due to the surprise factor. In reality, this approach does not work particularly well, but one can always hope!

I recall a funny story that goes back to the time when I was attending a chess club in London, Canada, back in 1999. One of the guys, a cheerful lad with long hair, was sipping one soft drink after another and loudly advertising that he was ready to challenge anyone for a small stake since he knows a chess opening that can't be countered. I smiled and asked if he would play me. Knowing that I, despite my young age, was the chess champion of the college, he laughed and shook his head, saying, "No, anyone but you!". In case you are wondering what his weapon of choice was, he was a big fan of Scholar's Mate and actually managed to beat some fellow rookies using it! Ah, the joys of discovering the game of chess…We have all been there.

Fourthly, quite a few chess players approach the game as science and, quoting Sir Francis Bacon, live by the "knowledge is power" motto. Being diligent, responsible, and striving for perfection, they feel more comfortable if they "do their homework" and play a more or less model game for at least a dozen opening moves. Even when things go downhill for them in the middlegame, they claim that next time they will prepare better and know what to do.

Fifthly, there is a "gotta catch them all" approach. It is common for some chess players to be interested in experimenting with openings to get new exciting chess positions and feel like they have become more well-rounded in the game. These guys usually like to think of themselves as "opening experts" and take pride in maintaining huge opening files full of analysis borrowed from external sources and obtained by doing some intense research on their own.

Sixthly, studying openings seems to be a leisurely pastime if you do it the wrong way. Chess players opt for the path of least resistance: they grab a book and keep flipping pages, mechanically going through the lines and not giving the variations much thought. This study method is less demanding than, for example, working on one's technique of converting winning positions or learning how to avoid time trouble. How should one study the opening? That is a different question of paramount importance that deserves its own blog post.

Why are many amateurs dedicating the lion's share of their chess time to studying openings? 

Why are Chess Players Obsessed with Openings?

What do you think about get-rich schemes? You know: “Sign up here, spin the wheel, win a prize and become a millionaire…after you pay a small commission for processing the payment!” Obviously, most of such schemes are organized by fraudsters with the intent of milking money from gullible people. The same can be said of quite a few chess products that target casual players and promise great returns with minimal effort. The next time you hear about a “new great risky opening line that can be mastered in 15 minutes and that will help you catch your opponent off guard and win quickly”, ask yourself: What is the catch? If the opening is so incredible, why are not everyone and his grandmother playing it already? Do a quick search on the Internet and check whether the line is sound or not. If possible, ask an expert whom you trust. Find out whether strong Grandmasters employ this line nowadays. Use your chess engine or some online tool to see how the computer evaluates the starting position and the main lines of the variation.

Also, if you are still in doubt after the steps suggested above, make sure to check a few credible sources instead of relying on a single opinion. After all, there are plenty of ways to make terrible openings look smooth and shiny, including:

• Providing flawed or biased analysis. First of all, some authors, intentionally or not, fail to mention the most critical lines that pretty much refute their weapon of choice or at least take the sting out of it. Instead, they showcase lines where the opponent “cooperates” by taking all that’s on offer in the style of amateurs from the 19th century and goes on to suffer a humiliating and swift defeat. Unfortunately, when you try to replicate this scenario over the board, your opponents turn out to be less obliging and start making different moves as compared to the ones you have been served by the author, posing problems for you. Secondly, some of the authors offer faulty lines that have probably not been checked with a chess engine. For instance, according to the opening guru, White should be winning there, but a reality check with Stockfish reveals that Black has a witty resource that completely turns the tables! Thirdly, sometimes when the editor asks a highly-qualified and responsible author to create a course about a dubious opening, the latter’s conscience doesn’t allow him to advertise the lines too much, so he has to resort to such vague statements as “the position is unclear”, “with mutual chances”, “you get a playable position of your liking”, etc., in order to conceal the fact that you are outright worse at the end of the line.
• Hand-picking model games to make a favorable impression. A common trick is to neglect all the painful losses that the author and other fans of this variation have suffered in this line and demonstrate a few magnificent victories, especially if those were achieved against eminent players. This ploy creates an illusion that all you need to do to beat a tough opponent is to employ this fantastic opening. However, if you check out the author’s overall performance in this line, it turns out to be quite modest.
• Argument from authority. Another typical gimmick is to pick games by top players who at some point deliberately used inferior openings for trolling, due to being under the weather, for friendly fun, for giving odds to a lesser opponent, and so on. Basically, the author shows you a game played by a super Grandmaster and goes on to claim that if he can get away with employing such an opening, then you definitely can. The truth is, if Magnus Carlsen, who is known for such merry experiments, plays something atrocious such as the Grob (1.g4) in bullet to assert his dominance and tilt the opponent, it doesn’t make the opening good enough for a competitive club player who wants to improve in classical chess.

The problem with playing offbeat openings is that they are primarily based on exceptions from the rules, while an improving player needs to learn the rules and principles of chess. Indeed, there are masters who keep playing the same dubious systems all life long and even recommend doing so to others. However, the truth is that one of the reasons why they got stuck at master level is probably directly connected to the fact that they failed to familiarize themselves with other important types of positions and pawn structures. Instead, they had to resort to mending their semi-broken opening weapons year after year, wasting time and hindering their progress.

Why keep beating a dead horse and playing so-so lines when you can go for the main lines and study the games of the very top GMs, thus enriching your knowledge of the game? Moreover, you will be getting better positions this way. The “play mainline openings” approach is being advocated by the prevailing majority of the opening experts, from GM Gennady Timoschenko (“An Opening Repertoire of an Upcoming Master”) to the slogan of Quality Chess’s “Grandmaster Repertoire” series – “Tired of bad positions? Try the main lines!”

Of course, what I have been preaching above doesn’t mean that you should be as strict on yourself as not to employ any crazy lines at all under any circumstances. Just imagine that you are on a diet: an occasional ice cream from time to time is probably OK for most of us, but eating it every day in large quantities is not recommended for anyone.

P.S. Needless to be said, this blog post is written from the perspective of a person who views chess as a competitive activity and wishes to improve in it. I fully understand that some people take immense joy and pride in achieving an upset win now and then by using their trademark offbeat opening weapon, even if they have to suffer a long streak of losses to get there one day.

The Magnus Trainer app has a series of lessons specifically dedicated to the topic of creating a comprehensive opening repertoire for White and for Black based on sound openings. From adventurous gambits to solid, maneuvering lines, all the openings in the app were hand-picked to help you master only those lines that would serve you well for a lifetime regardless of your playing strength. After all, quite a few of the model games featured in the lessons come from Magnus Carlsen’s tournament games, up to the World Chess Championship level.

Remember: when it comes to studying openings, there is no magic pill! 

A shell-shocked Garry Kasparov walking away from the board after losing on time to MVL. Image by Lennart Ootes, Grand Chess Tour.

Today’s blog post was inspired by Garry Kasparov’s recent abysmal performance in the Grand Chess Tour in Zagreb. The legendary 13th World Chess Champion scored 2.5 points out of 18 and finished in clear last place in the blitz event. One of the factors that caused such a disastrous result was poor time management and the inability to play well in time trouble. Notably, in a game against MVL, Kasparov lost on time in an innocuous equal rook endgame where he was at no risk whatsoever on the board.

Kasparov (White) froze in this position and failed to make a move, allowing his time to run out.

Obviously, the recommendations presented below are not aimed at Kasparov since when it comes to chess, Garry can teach pretty much anyone about any facet of the game. Still, I believe that some of the lifehacks presented below will be of use to less experienced players than Kasparov.

Also, it’s easy to offer banal advice like “do not ever get into time trouble”, but it’s challenging to follow it. Here are a few basic tips on what to do if you are in time trouble already:

• Keep your head cool and try to breathe normally. Amateurs start jumping up and down on the chair, hastily scribbling the moves on the score sheet, pulling their hair, knocking on the chess clock, and dropping pieces by trying to place them down with a shaking hand. Seasoned GMs remain solemn and make moves in a reserved and elegant way. They patiently write down the moves as if they had all the time in the world at their disposal. This behavior helps one to remain concentrated and prevents your heart from starting to beat like a drum and affecting your play.

• Avoid glancing at the clock over and over again. When you are in time trouble, every second is precious. You don’t want to waste time and pump up your heart rate by watching the clock tick away. It is easier said than done since you both need great self-control and an inner sense of time that will prevent you from flagging. The latter comes with experience and a lot of regular practice. Rusty players lose this sense and forfeit on time more often than you would normally expect from them.

• Focus on the game. Don’t start blaming yourself for getting in time trouble. Don’t fear that you will blunder something. Just concentrate and make the most of your current position.

Here are a few more intermediate-level tips that are must-know for tournament players:

• If you are on the defensive and hoping to take advantage of the 50-move rule, mark the last capture or pawn move on your scoresheet so that you don’t have trouble later on pondering whether you have earned the right to claim a draw or not. This habit helps one stay calm and collected when fighting for survival.

• If a conflict situation between you and your opponent occurs, stop the clock and call the arbiter. Sometimes people engage in a verbal discussion while their clock is still running. When they forfeit on time because of it, it is much harder for them to negotiate a favorable decision for themselves once the arbiter finally shows up.

• Try to make it to a time control if there is one. Sometimes move repetitions or exchanges can help you a lot. Of course, there’s a risk of trading the wrong pieces, but there’s also a saying: “Exchange more pieces so that you can’t blunder them in time trouble.” It has some truth to it. Generally speaking, even if you are a tactical genius, it is usually a good idea to simplify the position when you are in time trouble. When you are very short on the clock, it is next to impossible to find all the tricky lines that chess engines point out in the blink of an eye. Who cares that you have a winning position when you will either flag or blunder something away in the end?

Finally, here are a few advanced tips that are worth adding to your chess arsenal:

• If you desperately need to go to the WC and can’t leave it due to the prospects of losing on time, you can “pull a Leko”. There was a story involving him where he reportedly called for an arbiter, claimed a three-fold repetition, and rushed to the bathroom while the arbiter was diligently checking the score sheet! There was no repetition, but Peter did save enough time this way. Super GMs are resourceful!

• Back in the day, when people used to play with mechanical clocks, there was a dirty trick of not paying attention to the fact that your time ran out and playing on as normal, hoping that your partner won’t notice it in the heat of battle. Then, when the opponent flags as well, one could always point it out, if necessary, and claim a draw since it is impossible to prove who flagged first. Nowadays, however, digital clocks usually display a symbol showing who lost on time, so such tricks are no longer possible.

Garry Kasparov showing that even in 2021, you can still play on after you have run out of time!

• Get into the habit of making as many “short” moves as possible. This is especially relevant for drawish endgames. Let’s say the position is more or less equal, and the opponent is trying to test you by playing on and hoping that he will be able to capitalize on your time deficit. Then, for example, if you have a choice between shuffling your king back and forth and moving your bishop from g1 to a7, you should prioritize moving the king since it saves you a lot of time. I have seen quite a few players lose the game due to making fancy “long” moves over and over again, carefully choosing where to place the bishop, queen, or rook. Famous Russian blitz master Genrikh Chepukaitis took this idea one step further and suggested that in blitz, one should play “closer to the clock”, i.e., try to place pieces in proximity to the chess clock and to move them whenever possible, thus saving precious seconds. This was especially important in his golden days since back then, there was no increment, and the art of flagging the opponent was highly valued among fans of blitz.

• Apply Sun Tzu’s military advice to playing in time trouble: “Appear weak when you are strong and strong when you are weak.” This requires great self-control and good acting skills. Some chess players can send fake tells, bluffing the opponent into believing that they are not happy with their position and have just blundered something. Then when the unsuspecting victim goes for the allegedly winning line, it turns out that the hunter has just become the hunted! Or, conversely, if you blundered something terrible indeed, you should never show it and keep playing normally.

In the video above, Vishy Anand finds himself in an extreme situation, having just one second on the clock, and gives a phenomenal masterclass on handling time trouble. As you watch the video, analyze his actions, and try to recognize some of the principles mentioned above. Maybe you will even find something he could have done better!

If sweating it out and watching your hair turn grey from stress caused by playing in time trouble too often is not your cup of tea, you can always download Play Magnus and face Magnus Carlsen, Judit Polgar, Wesley So and other world-class Grandmasters in a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere. Feel free to take all the time in the world to beat them - but it will still be a formidable challenge!

Playing in time trouble is tough! What are the dos and don’ts when you are low on time? 

How to Play Chess When You Are in Time Trouble

Blindfold chess has been around for centuries. It has always been popular as a handicap tool, allowing the master to give odds to a less experienced player. Also, on some occasions, top GMs duel each other blindfolded on equal terms. The most famous regular event of this type was the Amber chess tournament. It was held from 1992 to 2011 and featured a combination of rapid and blindfold chess – a format that was unique and highly entertaining for the spectators.

Have you ever tried playing blindfold chess? What about your friends? For a club player who hasn't trained this skill, even one board may be too many. However, my conversation with a few 2700+ GMs revealed that for them, 8-10 boards is a normal workload that doesn't require any special preparation. For example, recently, Alexei Shirov, who just turned 49, gave a timed blindfold simul on eight boards against reasonably tough opposition and scored a respectable 6.5 points out of 8. According to him, it was only his second time giving a simul of this type.

Generally speaking, there is a positive correlation between the player's strength and his ability to play chess blindfold. However, it could be possible that some players are particularly gifted in this department. Or maybe the very top guys are not interested in such experiments?! Anyway, the current world record of most games played in a blindfold chess simul belongs not to Magnus Carlsen or some former World Chess Champion, but to GM Timur Gareyev from the US, whose FIDE rating peak was 2682 February 2013. On December 3, 2016, he played 48 opponents with a mask before his eyes and sitting on an exercise bike, resulting in 35 wins, 7 draws, and 6 losses. Can you even imagine how that could even be possible for a human?

Magnus Carlsen giving a blindfold simul in Vienna in 2015

What are some of the benefits of being able to play chess blindfolded?

• Impress your friends. Some people refer to themselves as "chess players" to reinforce their image of smart persons. The ability to play chess blindfolded takes it to a whole new level since amateurs believe that being capable of doing so is some magic. I am not sure it will work in a relationship, but there is a chance that your partner will be impressed if you mention this trick! The creators of the Queen's Gambit mini-series used this feature to their advantage, showing how Beth Harmon was able to play out entire games in her head by staring at the ceiling. From what I have heard, many viewers were mesmerized by the process.
• Improve your game. Such training can be particularly effective if you have trouble visualizing long lines during regular play or you often forget where the pieces are when calculating.
• Have fun. When Alexander Alekhine was in a hospital during World War I, he entertained himself and other patients by playing blindfolded chess against them. This was quite typical of chess players in the 20th century. Nowadays, most of us are so addicted to smartphones that it is hard for us to switch from a source of instant gratification to something more demanding, such as playing blindfold chess. Still, why not try?
• Keep studying in a tough environment. Once again, this is less relevant nowadays since you may read the book on an electronic device when traveling. Still, if you prefer the good old paper books, sometimes it is a nuisance not to be able to visualize long subvariations without having a board next to you. Also, even if you have one, setting it up and replaying each line can be a nuisance. Maybe this was why Magnus Carlsen learned how to read chess books blindfolded from a very young age.

You can find plenty of videos of Magnus Carlsen playing chess blindfolded on YouTube. In the one above, you can see him take on ten opponents at a time at Harvard.

Hopefully, I was able to persuade you to try out this spectacular chess variant. Let's move on to practice. Here are a few exercises that will help you master the art of playing chess blindfold:

When in public transport, perform the following routine in your head: try jumping with the knight across all the board or work out the shortest route from one square to another. For example, what is the best way to travel a knight from b1 to g8?

Check out the "Mind Mirage" mini-game in Magnus Trainer. The objective is to memorize where the chess pieces are placed and keep track of their movements in your head. As you progress through the levels, the difficulty gradually increases, providing a great training opportunity for players of different skills.



Read chess books without using a chessboard. Make sure you can visualize and evaluate reasonably accurately even the longest and most complicated variations. You can start with books where authors give very brief notes and eventually advance to the modern opening manuals where authors are not shy to offer a ton of computer-generated lines that are both long and mind-blowing for a human.

Play blindfolded chess against a friend. Start with a more accessible version, recording the moves and peeking into the scoresheet if you forget the position. The next step is to play the game without any notes (just make sure you don't start arguing over what happened!). If one board is not challenging, try more. Also, you can try to do this online.

Solve studies blindfolded. There are special books where you are given the notation of the initial position and must work out the best continuation in your head. Or you can take a look at a regular study, memorize it and then solve it sometime later throughout the day. Naturally, this exercise may greatly vary in terms of difficulty. For club players, the goal could be to visualize the position and give a simple mate in one or something similar. At the same time, top Grandmasters can take on sophisticated studies that are hard to tackle for untitled players even while looking at the board.

Warning: playing chess blindfolded is a very demanding pastime that is known for sapping your energy. Practicing it excessively can be dangerous for your psychological health and wellbeing! Doing some exercises could be beneficial, but trying to push yourself aggressively and set records, practicing it all day long, is probably not good.

Do you want to impress your friends with a feat worthy of Beth Harmon from the Queen's Gambit series? Learn how to play chess blindfolded then! 

When preparing for a game, we can choose between paying much attention to opening preparation and analyzing/memorizing variations or opting for the “fresh head” strategy.

Many Soviet chess experts blamed Boris Spassky’s loss to Bobby Fischer in 1972 on Boris falling for the “fresh head” approach, playing tennis or blitz instead of chess studies. However, it is more probable that Fischer, a hardcore chess fanatic, was simply a better player at that time. After all, he had a surreal rating of 2785, while Spassky was rated “only” 2660.

In the World Chess Championship match in 2000 between Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik, Garry failed to win a single game. Kramnik recalled that game after game, his opponent was looking more tired, and dark circles under his eyes kept becoming increasingly visible. It was clear that Garry and his team have spent an enormous amount of time on opening preparation, but they failed in destroying the Berlin wall.

So, which approach is better? There is no definite answer. However, there are a few tips worth mentioning. I hope they will make it easier for you to decide which strategy to adopt depending on the circumstances.

The higher the rating of the player, the more theory is typically required to memorize. If we go into extremes, novice players usually don’t prepare at all, while top Grandmasters can spend up to a few hours before the game.

Alexander Grischuk once wittily replied, “My whole life!” to the question about how long he had been preparing for the game against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.

Club players often make the mistake of trying to imitate the actions of top Grandmasters, even though at their level, games are more likely to be decided by tactical errors than by getting a slightly better position in the opening. Or, a polar case, some of them neglect preparation and play something random after rushing to the tournament from work. A golden middle is called for.

There is no need to feed yourself page after page of chess analysis if you can’t remember it all that well. You probably saw Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Vasyl Ivanchuk, and other chess titans recall games of other players that took place decades ago. They even remember the player names, tournaments, years, and what happened next! However, there are also top GMs whose memories are less exceptional. And as you go down the rankings, you are starting to see people who can’t remember what they played yesterday!

Suppose you keep noting during the games that you can’t recall the analysis that you have been rehearsing before the game. In that case, it makes sense not only to work on improving your chess memory (this is a serious topic of its own!) but also to reduce the load of theory for now.

Vladimir Kramnik’s opening files are particularly notorious. From what I have heard, if you open a file for a specific variation and start pressing “Page down” in ChessBase, the scroller barely moves at all!

There are some exceptions to this rule, but cramming up theory before the game is not a particularly exciting process for most people. Some pros are getting so fed up that they start promoting Fischer Random, chess without castling (hello, Vladimir Kramnik!), and other variants of the game that cut down on the amount of preparation and memorization.

Therefore, if you are already feeling low for some reason, it is probably not a good idea to become even more depressed by going over theory hour after hour. It may be better to take a walk or relax in some other way that you enjoy.
Also, if you are burnt out and not hungry for chess anymore, you should probably avoid overloading yourself even further with chess theory.

This is very similar to the psychological state. Memorizing variations is tough work. If you are ill or tired, it often makes sense to preserve energy for the grueling game itself instead of extending your workday for another few hours.
Tournaments, where you have to play two or more games per day, are more exhausting than traditional ones, so for these events it also makes sense to cut down on the preparation.

If your opponent’s repertoire is very narrow, i.e., he keeps playing the same lines over and over again, then it makes a lot of sense to dedicate some time to preparation, allowing you to come up with an exciting novelty and to surprise your opponent.

However, if your opponent plays a huge number of different systems and seems to pick them at random, it is probably not a good idea to cram up all of them. This is just too much work, and you will still probably forget most of what you have learned (“chess memory” strikes again!). Still, experienced players trust their gut feelings. Sometimes there is no logic to this, but you somehow KNOW that the opponent will play exactly that. In such cases, you might as well grant the line some attention before the game.

When Vasyl Ivanchuk was in his prime, other players used to joke when discovering that they were paired against Chucky that they got “a free evening” – back in the day, it was close to impossible to predict what Ivanchuk may be interested in playing. Thanks to his phenomenal chess memory and passion for the game, he could choose pretty much any popular opening.

Vasyl Ivanchuk vs. Vladimir Kramnik in 2017. Two chess legends with exceptionally sharp chess memories. Image by Anastasia Karlovich.

As you can see, it is hard to give concrete recommendations. There are many factors involved. However, for a typical club player, rehearsing lines before the game should probably take between 15 to 60 minutes. If you never prepare at all, this probably means that you don’t work on openings seriously enough. If you imitate the top GMs and spend a few hours before the game to digest chess analysis, you are probably shooting yourself in the foot by spending precious energy that you could use during the actual chess duel.

To have something to rehearse, you should start by creating your openings files. How do you build an efficient opening repertoire based on your specific needs and abilities? What opening tiers are there, and how do you tell a sound opening from an unsound one? How do you study openings step by step? Magnus Trainer will help you navigate all these important topics and many more under the guidance of Magnus Carlsen. You will also get to master the openings of your choice, focusing on the plans and typical ideas for both sides, reviewing model games, solving instructive exercises, and familiarizing yourself with cutting-edge move orders.

How long do you prepare for a tournament chess game? And how long should you do it? 

Preparing for a Chess Game: A Fresh Head vs. Studying

The only way to become smarter is to play a smarter opponent.

If you wish to improve efficiently, it’s better to play relatively strong open events with mixed opposition or round robins where the average level is slightly above your own. Why is that the case?

There is a peculiar category of players who hate losing, so they beat their lower-class opponents repeatedly and become “local champions” of their club/city/country. When you face less experienced and weaker opponents, it is tough to learn something new from them. The law of communicating vessels seems to work in chess: if you put a strong and a weak player in a room and force them to play each other over and over again for years, the better one will regress chess-wise, while the weaker one would usually improve. Prisons are an excellent illustration of this phenomenon.

“Local champs” tend to get stuck at a certain level. This statement is also true of many female players: they get accustomed to playing each other and earning prizes at the 2400-2600 level. As a result, they fail to progress beyond that threshold because they rarely face more demanding challenges. The same can be said about park hustlers: their opposition is usually inferior to them in terms of playing skills, so the blitz masters stagnate even though they keep playing chess day after day.

One of my friends was fond of playing blitz matches online. He would often pick a victim and crush him something like 9-1 or even 10-0 (they call it “adoption” these days), feeling very happy about himself. Then I would approach him, and our conversation would proceed along these lines:

I: So, you found another patzer and whitewashed him, right?
He: Sure! (smiles)
I: And what have you achieved by doing this?
He: Well, I gained some rating points…And it felt good to win! (sounds unconfident)
I: But do these online rating points give you any tangible benefits?
He: Not really…
I: Have you learned anything new?
He: Guess not. He is just a weak guy, so what can playing against him teach me?
I: Do you agree that it’s just a temporary boost for your self-esteem, but it is hardly beneficial for your chess in the long run?
He: Well, I know, but what can I do? The site paired him against me, then he sent me a rematch, and I accepted.

It was quite hard for my friend to get rid of this habit, and from time to time, a relapse occurs. Still, nowadays, he is more aware of whom he is playing and for what purpose.

As you may have already noticed, this post is written from the perspective of someone who wants to improve in chess but doesn’t necessarily have to make a living by playing. As a chess professional, you must reach a balance between earning enough money to make a living and remembering to invest in your future so that you can unlock your chess potential.

Missing worthy opponents? Want to take on world-class Grandmasters, such as World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen or the strongest female chess player ever Judit Polgar? Regardless of your current chess expertise, you will find an exciting challenge for yourself in our popular Play Magnus app!

There is a good quote by Michael Dell: “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.” Remember to reach for more once you are done with your previous goals.

However, it is essential not to become overconfident. Another typical mistake is overestimating oneself and taking only on players who are way more proficient. Such behavior results in a string of painful defeats, losing self-confidence, and a decline of interest in the game. If you are not strong enough psychologically, you may end up devastated to the extent of quitting.

Now that I have preyed on my unsuspecting friend, let me do some self-bashing. Back in 2010, I worked hard on chess and earned 29 rating points in a single event. This lured me into a trap of believing that I was fully capable of playing in a strong IM-norm tournament in Moscow. Apart from picking on a field that was rated about 200 points above myself, I performed all sorts of other mistakes there:
• Spent a lot of time traveling to the tournament hall for each of the rounds, tiring myself before the games even began.
• Played in a heated venue in summer (I can’t stand the sun; my brain starts to melt after some time if the temperature around is too high).
• Didn’t eat well before the game and forgot to bring snacks with me (very important!).
• Couldn’t switch to damage control mode and still went berserk on everyone. For example, in the last round, one IM from the US offered me a draw, but I declined it and lost.
• Made many chess-specific errors that are beyond the scope of this article.

Prior to this tournament, I had won some events in my life with a 100% score. Here the situation was reversed: I lost all 11 (!) games, learning a lot about how not to approach chess events. The findings were well worth the time invested and the 39 rating points that I shed there.

Optimally, you win some, you lose some, but you learn important things and improve along the way. One famous chess coach recommended to me the following ratio: roughly 50% of games played against more or less equal opponents, 25% games against weaker players, and 25% against stronger adversaries. I am not sure that there is any scientific research behind the numbers, so let these figures serve as food for thought for you rather than a dogma.

P.S. Since this blog post is being written in the times of the raging COVID pandemic, it makes perfect sense to say a few words about online chess. My recommendation here will be the same: if possible, set up a filter so that you get paired against opponents of more or less equal or higher skill. Unfortunately, as you climb the rankings, it gets increasingly harder to find a decent opponent, so you should be patient enough to wait for a good match and be prepared to face cheaters now and then. But this is a different story!

Interested in improving as a chess player? What opponents should you prefer to make the process as efficient as possible? 

How Having to Make a Move Can Be a Curse

Tournament Play Secrets: Where to Look For Your Opponent's Games

I Study Chess Very Hard. Where is My Progress?

Lists of Mistakes: Chess and General

Why are Chess Players Obsessed with Openings?

Play Sound Openings

How to Play Chess When You Are in Time Trouble

Can You Play Blindfold Chess?

Preparing for a Chess Game: A Fresh Head vs. Studying

How to Choose Your Opponent in Chess