♟️ VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Double Olympiad gold medallist and 2018 US champion Sam Shankland explains his ideas in our instructional synced video - available only on Chessable
It's one small step for a pawn, but it can be one giant leap for the player moving the pieces.
As pawns can only move forward, mastering how to use them is a vital skill in chess. Games at all levels are won and lost on pawn advances alone.Double Olympiad gold medallist and 2018 US champion Grandmaster Sam Shankland returns to Chessable with his second, fully-reappraised investigation into the often neglected subject of pawn structures.
What will I gain from Small Steps 2 Success?
Small Steps 2 Success sheds light on the vital topic of passed pawns which - whether connected, lone or protected - frequently crop up in middlegames and endgames.
As the author argues, there are far more subtleties to passed pawns than simply getting them promoted. This course uncovers those game-winning ideas.
Almost every decisive game that is played that is not decided by a direct tactic or a direct attack will feature passed pawns in some way...
- GM Sam Shankland
GM Shankland wrote Small Steps 2 Success to continue drilling down further into a topic that he wanted to understand better, in the hope it would help him become a better player.
Use his knowledge in the same way and your effectiveness in playing with or against passed pawns will, undoubtedly, make the difference.
How is Small Steps 2 Success structured?
Just like in his previous course Small Steps To Giant Improvement,
which is also available on Chessable, Shankland breaks down each topic into a series of crystal-clear guidelines he believes has helped him improve and will help you boost your chess-playing abilities.
GM Shankland has identified three broad categories of passed pawns: connected passed pawns, lone passed pawns and protected passed pawns.
These very common occurrences are dealt with as follows:
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Chapters 1 and 2 focus on playing with and against connected passed pawns in the middlegame;
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Chapters 3 and 4 are about playing with and against lone (isolated) passers in the middlegame;
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Chapters 5 and 6 are dedicated to playing with and against protected passers in, you guessed it, the middlegame;
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Chapters 7 through 12 cover all the same kinds of passers, but in the endgame instead of the middlegame;
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Chapter 13 covers outside versus inside passers in the endgame;
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Chapter 14 deals with split passed pawns.
The course is rich in annotated games and instructive examples taken from elite-level games.
Do I need to have studied Small Steps 1?
As GM Shankland says, the widely-acclaimed Small Steps to Giant Improvement and his new course Small Steps 2 Success are very different. GM Shankland's debut was all about pawns not being able to move backward, and seldom moving sideways.
It focused on times that players mismanaged their pawns, creating weaknesses in their own position, as well as how to provoke an opponent's pawn forward to make them suffer from the same weaknesses we were trying to avoid.
While this is undoubtedly a very important topic, Small Steps 2 Success covers the polar opposite situations. GM Shankland concludes that studying his first course "is not exactly a prerequisite but I do think it will help you".
Will there be a third Small Steps course?
GM Shankland has promised that if Small Steps 2 Success proves as successful as Small Steps to Giant Improvement, both in terms of sales and helping his own development, he will write yet another volume to make it a trilogy.
Sam Shankland is a world-class Grandmaster and a mainstay of the US national team. He won the 2018 US Championship and is a double Olympiad gold medallist with a 2700+ rating.
