Fresh off the back of the 2023 Chessable Awards, we’ve got another round of awards to be announced, the winners of the 2023 Create Your Own Course contest.
The CYOC awards are rather unique in that these are the courses that you as Chessablers have submitted and which we’ve judged to be the best.
The decision process was not easy. Chessable community members submitted a plethora of excellent courses. And even those that have not taken home a prize may still go on to flourish. One example is Can Kabadayi, whose courses were so popular they went on to be converted into full video courses, even though he never won the contest.
The winning course will be made into a video course, which will be donned with video presentation by none other than Grandmaster Maurice Ashley.
So without further ado, here are the best courses from the 2023 Create Your Own Course contest.
The Winners
First Place: Advanced Chess Patterns by Benedictine and Killer Kings by Icebreaker
The submissions we received were so strong that we could not pick just one winner. This year we have a two-way tie between First Place Advanced Chess Patterns by Benedictine and Killer Kings by Icebreaker!
Benedictine is no stranger to making chess courses, and Advanced Chess Patterns builds upon a previous course of theirs, Common Chess Patterns.
Advanced Chess Patterns isolates certain tactical topics and drills you on them, focusing on the pattern at hand without any other distractions, so that you can later identify them in your games.
The other first-place course, Killer Kings by Icebreaker, focuses on an often neglected topic in chess: the king. The idea of the course is to “enhance our chess knowledge by exploring how the majority of tactics and positional ideas are connected to the kings.”
Runner up:
Static Shock: A Full Benko Gambit Repertoire by Benkologist
AlyoshaKaramazov69’s course is a full Benko Gambit repertoire, which they have developed after years of play and have found fresh novelties not found anywhere else.
The recommendations are engine-backed and 100% sound, with a focus on playing not “on explosive dynamic play, but rather Karpovian maneuver warfare on the queenside.”
Best Beginner Course:
Mastering Chess: Tactics, Strategies and Triumphs by Stephane Lam
Stephane Lam’s Mastering Chess: Tactics, Strategies and Triumphs takes home the award for Best Beginner Course.
It’s a comprehensive manual on how to do things right in chess. It walks beginners through the very basics of the game, without presuming they have prior knowledge, thereby laying a solid foundation for future success.
It’s also valuable for intermediate players to help them smooth over any cracks they might have in their game.
We hope you enjoy these winning courses by fellow Chessablers. There’s something really special about courses authored by the community, as they seem to do it for the love of the game.
And remember to check out the wide variety of courses authored by the Chessable community. There are plenty of gems in there to be discovered on all manner of topics.
