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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.

Have you been struggling to find the perfect Black opening against 1. d4?

With so many openings to choose from, it’s hard to find one that suits your chess style.

Though the Dutch Defense isn’t as commonly played as other openings, it can provide you with a new, lasting, and simple-to-learn setup that can provide you with the tools necessary to finish the game!

These days engines have become a chess player’s best friend. Its influence is mostly felt in the opening phase, where every line is analyzed in detail and everybody, regardless of their level, knows a fair amount of theory. If you want to avoid in-depth preparation, it is a good idea to add to your opening arsenal a system that doesn’t require so much memorization and is based on middlegame understanding. There are many interesting systems that you can study and this article is dedicated to the Double Fianchetto System. Here are some of its important characteristics.

Are you looking for new, grandmaster-level techniques to play as White? GM Jacek Stopa is back with a new and powerful weapon against the Nimzo! This course provides you with many of the essential attacking ideas and strategies necessary to beat your opponent.

Interested? Keep reading for more info about how you can transform your game as White!

The Caro-Kann is one of the openings that has become more and more popular in recent years, as many strong Grandmasters have decided to include it in their repertoires.

For a long time, this has been considered an unambitious and boring opening, suitable for those players whose only goal was to equalize with the black pieces.

However, recent games and its rise in popularity are now proving that things are not exactly like that.

The popular French writer/reformer Voltaire once said, “The danger which is least expected soonest comes to us.”

When it comes to chess, this quote is especially relevant. In order to limit the danger potentially thrown at us by our opponent, how can we ensure the best safety for our king? [hint: castling]

For any player who is trying to improve, finding the right opening is an important step. Especially if the time you can allocate to studying chess is limited, choosing the opening has to be done wisely. Ideally, you shouldn’t dedicate this time entirely to studying and learning endless opening lines, but divide it between all the phases of the game. Most of the time, it is in the middlegame and endgame where the decisive mistakes happen, so make sure you give them their due attention.

A beginner may easily feel overwhelmed when facing the choice of what to play at the beginning of the game. There are so many openings, so much theory!

What is he or she supposed to do?

What are the best openings for beginners?

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The game can be divided into two big parts – chess strategy and tactics. There are games that can be classified as positional and games where the tactical, attacking ideas dominate. However, most of the times, the two go hand in hand, and a game that had a slow, quiet start, could finish with a beautiful sacrifice. In the same way, a game that started in a dynamic way could be finally won with the use of strategic ideas. Moreover, tactics can be used to gain a certain positional advantage.