Today we are going to study a very interesting and important topic, how to win in opposite side castling positions. And one of the best chess players to learn from is indeed… Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (MVL). Maxime is one of the most aggressive of the super-GMs. With the peak Elo of 2819, he definitely knows a thing or two about attacking in the middlegames.
Catalan is one of the most common opening choices for white. If before it was mostly seen at the top level, its popularity has slowly increased and is nowadays one of the top choices at every level and is a usual guest at almost every tournament. The bishop on g2 is one of the key pieces in this opening, as it supports white’s main plans: the central break with e4 and the attack on the queenside.
In order to get better at chess, one needs to build up and polish a number of skills. All of them are important, but tactics are probably something you can’t do without. No matter how good you get at strategic play, it can all go away with one bad move that overlooks a tactical possibility. Tactics and strategy go hand in hand in chess and to increase your level you’ll need to improve both. First of all, you have to familiarize yourself with the simple tactical patterns, such as double attacks, pins, discovered attacks, elimination of defense, decoy, etc.
Having a well-developed, solid repertoire is an important step in improving your level as a chess player. Middlegame knowledge, endgame knowledge, tactics, and strategy are all very important too, but they all fail if you don’t manage to get a good, playable position out of the opening, where you can actually apply everything you’ve learned.
Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn, us chess players like to say a lot. It can make us feel better after a loss, but this should be more than just a saying to improve our post-game mood. We should, in fact, be always learning, whether we win, lose or draw. Many players think that they can learn something only from their losses, others only like to show their wins to their trainers. Truth is, all games are equally important. There is no perfect game and play can almost always be improved at some point.
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.
Sorry for making you wait so long… but we wanted making it just perfect for you!
We start brainstorming ideas for TCW Academy in early 2019, and by the time we got everything together and start coding and filming, and coding and filming… it was already summer.
Something that we expected to take us 3-5 months, actually took us over 9 months 🙂
Creating a good, sound repertoire that really suits one’s style of play is an important and difficult step for many chess players. If, with the white pieces, it is relatively easier to give the direction of the game and try to take it to positions you are comfortable with, things are a bit more difficult when deciding on a repertoire for black. White is the one who sets the pace, but you can still take the game to roads you are comfortable with. One of the openings that has gained popularity for black against 1.d4, both among amateurs and Grandmasters, is the Dutch Defense.
This is one of the most problematic aspects of learning when it comes to playing good chess. If the acquisition of tactical skills is more or less straight-forward: just solve an infinite number of tactical puzzles and you will be fine, the study of positional chess and improving your understanding is less concrete. I will write here about what worked for me. There are probably other ways to achieve a high level of understanding and positional play, especially involving modern technology, but it is always best to talk about something that is personal and actually worked in practice.
2020 is almost here… and with just 2 more days to go, it is time to look back at 2019 for a quick flashback of the year.
We’ve covered a LOT of stuff.
Publishing over 100 articles and 30 premium courses we touch-base on many different topics from Positional Chess to Opening Preparation, Endgame Mastery, and Calculation.
