With the summer in full swing, you might be busy on vacation or hanging outside and not up to date on the latest Chessable happenings.
That’s okay, we’ve got you covered with our July edition of Roundup.
Even if your chess study falters in the warm months, there’s nothing to fret about. Our authors continue to work hard to make sure you’ve got plenty of courses to come back to once you decide to hit the proverbial books again.
We’re highlighting 8 new courses released this month, including by Magnus Carlsen’s coach, some truly innovative opening ideas, and a hybrid opening/strategy course.
Check them out!
Techniques of Positional Play
By GM Peter Heine Nielsen
Magnus Carlsen’s Personal Coach is now on Chessable! His debut course is him covering a must-read classic near and dear to his heart: Techniques of Positional Play.
The extremely thorough and eloquent video walkthrough by Nielsen will teach you 45 crucial positional techniques every serious chess player must know – distilled from the very best play in the rich Soviet chess history.
Co-authored by IM Valeri Broznik, who touched up Anatoli Terekhin’s original work and translated it to English, this is a classic if you’ve ever been interested in the famously effective “Soviet school of chess”.
Lifetime Repertoires: Jones’ 1.e4 e5
By GM Gaiwan Jones
Just last week, GM Gaiwan Jones, the two-time British champ, released his double-king’s pawn repertoire for the Black pieces.
It might sound like it’s been done before, but this repertoire is truly unique. That’s because Jones recommends fianchettoing your dark-square bishop after the usual opening moves in just about every variation. How many 1.e4 e5 repertoires recommend that?
It’s not just an offbeat course either – inside Jones shows that you can make this your main response to 1.e4 e5 and provides a lifetime of interesting games of this underrated way of playing.
Starting Out: The Scotch
By WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni and IM Alex Astaneh
The Scotch Game has been a favorite weapon of many a player for some time now, though it still lags far behind the popular Italian Game and Ruy Lopez. That’s a shame too, because for players rated 1000-2000, the Scotch is actually the best-scoring 1.e4 e5 opening for White
Now is your chance to learn it from two of the best. WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni has everything you’d want an author to have – a gold-medal-winning Olympian, streamer, and columnist for Chess.com. Is there really a better presenter?
She’s teamed up with IM Alex Astaneh, who authored his first course for Chessable earlier this year entitled My First Grünfeld Opening Repertoire – a down-to-earth way of teaching the often complicated Grünfeld Defense.
What they show you inside is all you need to know to start slaying with the Scotch. It sounds too good to be true, but online databases tell us the Scotch scores so well in over 50 million games played.
The Italian Game: Inside & Out!
By WGM Tatev Abrahamyan
Half-strategy, half-opening… is this some sort of lab experiment gone wrong?
Not at all! While The Italian Game Inside & Out is an innovative approach to learning an opening, it’s no accident. WGM Tatev Abrahamyan wanted to teach players strategic and positional motifs, but doing so via an opening course.
What you get in here is not an opening repertoire per se – but overarching plans featured in the Italian that will allow you to play the Italian by understanding common strategies, rather than memorizing concrete lines.
100 Repertoires: Alekhine Defense
By CM Vjekoslav Nemec
As a former Chessable publishing manager, CM Vjekoslav Nemec knows what goes into creating quality courses.
In 100 Repertoires: Alekhine Defense, he goes into an offbeat opening against 1.e4 that will give you a psychological edge against King’s Pawn Opening players from the very first move.
The great thing about this course is you learn it in under 100 lines. That makes it learnable for anyone – whether you want to keep it as a blitz weapon up your sleeve or are just curious about the ideas of this underplayed opening, the latest in this slim and sleek series has a lot to offer.
Power Up: Visualization
By FM Viktor Neustroev
There’s a common problem among chess improvers – there comes that moment when the lines you’re calculating in your head become a fuzzy mess.
It happens to everyone but expanding how far you can go before things get blurry is key to improvement.
That’s where this course comes in. It helps you calculate further so that you can visualize any position in high definition.
Lifetime Repertoires: Scandinavian Defense
By IM Robert Ris
The Scandinavian is a fun opening to play, and this Lifetime Repertoire adds to that reputation.
After your initial central skirmish, you dare White to challenge bold moves, only to counterstrike when they slip and make their first mistake.
And even if White doesn’t cave under your nagging pressure, you will still have a totally solid and playable position.
Developing Chess Intuition
By GM Raven Sturt
How is your chess intuition? Have you ever stopped and asked yourself that?
This course is all about developing that crucial sixth sense that grandmasters have, by knowing through feeling where the pieces go.
It teaches this via cyclical repetition, common in tactics workbooks, where you get a problem and solve it progressively faster each time it is presented, thereby honing your instincts.
It’s taught by a self-taught grandmaster as well, with the focus being dominating your opponents’ pieces.
That’s it for July folks. Stay tuned to the Roundup and see what’s new at Chessable next month.
