Is It Time For A New Opening?

From a Chess improvement perspective, the answer is most likely no. It simply takes up too much of your time for limited benefits.

Unless one of three things apply to you:

1) Unsound Openings
2) Wrong Style of Opening
3) You get out-prepared

🧵 1/ You Play Unsound Openings

Playing unsound openings might be fun, but is bad for your chess.

An unsound opening is an opening that heavily relies on tricks. The most famous example is the scholars' Mate.

A Gambit that leads to long-term compensation e.g. the Benko is fine.

How To Study Openings Without Overwhelm

To get the most out of the little time you have, you need to simplify your opening work.

1) Start with a Small Repertoire
2) Learn the plans & ideas
3) Play & Analyze one move further

Here is exactly how you can do that for yourself 🧵 1/ Start with a small Repertoire

Studying 40-hour repertoires will only overwhelm you and waste your time. Keep it small and simple. Here is how:

- Get my Free Beginner Repertoire (Lichess study)
- Filter on Chessable for "Opening+Free"
- Check out @ChessMood Starter Repertoire

I recently published a free eBook, and people went crazy. So much value for free?!

Things only got better. For 10 days, you can watch all the highest Quality Chess courses for free.

@ChessMood unlocked all courses! Need more clarification on where to start? A quick guide 🧵 Beginner up to 1000 Rating:

- Opening: 'Opening Principles course, excellent intro into what to do in the opening.

- Middle game: 'Tactic Ninja'. The best and most thorough course on Tactical patterns; includes puzzles.

- Endgame: 'Endgame Roadmap' Find a plan in the endgame.

Getting better at Tactics is the biggest game-changer in chess improvement.
The question is, how can you do it effectively?
Ever heard of the 5 Steps to Mastery?

Let me explain🧵: Step 1: Learn a Tactical Motif

Before improving anything, you need to learn a new motif. Be it a basic Skewer, Fork & pins, or a bit more advanced mating motifs like Anastasia’s Checkmate.

This step is best done with a good book or online course.

Good focus is key for chess improvement. Want to know how to focus better?

Here are 5 super simple chess habits that will improve your focus & thus the quality of your chess training immediately

A thread: 1) The one-tab habit:
It is super easy to get distracted when studying on a screen. You need to prevent possible distractions beforehand. So whenever you study chess, only open ONE tab/window. No exceptions.

Additional tip: disable pop-up messages to prevent further distraction

chess.com/news/view/ches…

Crazy news. Great move by @chesscom, but is it really good for chess players?

Some initially thoughts of what this might mean: @chesscom 1) Better this way than the other way around.

My personal experience with chess.com staff is much better than with chess24/PMG staff/executives.

The risk of them going broke seems also much lower. Chess.com will lead the chess world now.

1/x Chess Strategy Tips For Beginners (A Thread):

#1: Control the center of the board.
By controlling the center you can always switch to both sides if needed. Your pieces are much stronger in the center: A Knight on e4 has 8 squares under control, a knight on a8 only 2. 2/x Chess Strategy Tips for Beginners

#2 Play with all your pieces (pawns are not pieces!)
Don't attack with one piece only. Use your full army.

#3 Move every piece only once in the opening
Don't waste time moving the same piece twice before you developed all your pieces.