Chess Tips, Articles and Guides to Help You Win Chess Games

Strategy and positional concepts are an important part of the chess game and improving our understanding of them can play a major role in the overall improvement of our level. Most of the time, the strategy is what makes the difference between a strong player and an amateur. If with other elements, such as tactics or endgames, the method of training is rather clear – solving puzzles or studying the theoretical positions, we are often asked what the way to train strategy is.

BEWARE: this may change the entire trajectory of your chess career! When you think about studying chess tactics—also known as chess puzzles—you may imagine a set of moves that transform some initial losing/neutral position to a significantly more winning one. Though that is true, the reasons you should study them are not only to help you find those winning combinations of moves. In fact, thinking solely in that way will ruin your chess improvement and strategic thought by making you more prone to find “cheap tricks” to win.

Studying chess can prove a difficult task sometimes and, as much as you like to study by yourself, you might realize at some point that you need some guidance. It could be that you reach a moment when you can no longer see any improvement, regardless of the time you invest in studying or that you need help and advice creating a suitable repertoire or that you simply need a stronger and more experienced player to explain some important chess concepts. In any case, the help of a coach can be enormous. An outside person with a good chess understanding can help you identify the weaknesses in your play and tell you what you need to study, can provide you material or indicate model games.