Dominating Closed Positions with GM Mikhalevski

Dominating Closed Positions

The closed position is perhaps one of the most complex types of positions at chess. Many amateur players choose to stay away from those positions simply because it appears crowded, over-complicated and plain unfriendly.

A majority of club players have difficulty coming up with a game plan and gain the initiative in such positions. And that’s not surprising.

Most materials teach us how to play the open positions. It is indeed important.  However, a good understanding of closed positions is as important, if not more important, because it’s where most amateurs struggle. Closed positions are an Achilles’ heel for many chess players.

Those players label it “inferior” and prepare for a long-lasting defensive struggle. No surprise the game, oftentimes, ends not in their favor. They simply shrug their shoulders and complain “a closed position, very tough game”.

Sounds Familiar?

You are not alone. Many club players are in the same boat of not knowing how to treat these kinds of positions.

The good news is we have a solution for you. It’s really not as complicated to learn those as you may think.

In this 3 hour course, a closed positions expert GM Mikalevski teaches you all the winning strategies, plans, and ideas you’d ever need to know to never struggle with a closed position again. Not all of those are his own. Some are borrowed from very strong players like Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. They’ve been tried and tested in the most competitive environment but at the same time are easy-to-understand and easy-to-use. By simply learning this ideology you’ll start making a better judgment, coming up with a good plan and begin making strong moves.

After carefully studying this course and going over the training exercises, you will never look at the closed positions the same way again. If it was something you stayed away from, it may become your new favorite and a very powerful Middlegame weapon!

Why is it important to master closed positions?

The inability to play closed positions leads to…

• Rating stagnation and lack of confidence
• Poor coordination of chess pieces
• Inability to correctly evaluate positions with a locked center
• Misjudgment of opportunities and threats
• Major problems in the endgame

Those are terrible things we all want to avoid.  Even a bit of knowledge and experience would bring you significant results. Dominating Closed Positions course is here to help!

You’ll learn :

• Carlsen’s clever idea of exploiting doubled pawns in a closed position that was enough to literally destroy Kramnik
• What you need to do to dominate against a pair of bishops with the knights in locked up positions
• Understanding the pawns chains to snowball your tiny advantages into a massive Middlegame edge
• Classical “two-weakness” idea allowing getting a strong initiative and converting space into a permanent advantage
• A trick that allows gaining control over important squares that Carlsen used to neatly outplay Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Contents:

• CHAPTER 1 Dominating the Queen’s Gambit Declined
• CHAPTER 2 Dominating the King’s Indian
• CHAPTER 3 Dominating the Reti Opening
• CHAPTER 4 Dominating the Ruy Lopez with the Black Pieces
• CHAPTER 5 Dominating the Anti-Slav
• CHAPTER 6 Dominating the English with 1…c5
• CHAPTER 7 Dominating the English with 1…e5

About the Author:

GM Victor Mikhalevski (FIDE 2610)

is a strong International Grandmaster with a peak rating of 2632, making him the 7th highest rated playing in Israel.  He has won many elite tournaments including Calvia Open, Canadian Open Championship, Tel Aviv Open, as well as becoming U20 Israeli Champion and a member of the bronze-winning Chess Olympiad Team. GM Mikhalevski has been teaching chess for over 20 years and his students won North American championships and were medalists in the World and European Championships in different age categories.