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I’ve never seen a GM more understanding of how beginners think than Igor. All of his content is excellent.

This had better not be clickbait Igor. If I'm not 2000 Elo by tomorrow then I'm complaining. Only 1000 Elo to go 🤣 Puzzle answer: Qf7, Qf8, Rf8.

the puzzle solution is one of the typical themes of backrank puzzles, first you give a check with the queen to push the king to A1, then you sac the queen and mate with the lined up rook.

In the last Puzzle: 1. Queen to F7 for Check : King has to move over to the corner 2. Queen To F8 for Check: Rook must take 3. Rook to F8 for Mate

So what I understood : 1. Don't head down to a strat and keep being open minded and adaptative 2. Always check for counter attacks instead of backing ("attack is the best defense" Anonymous) from another of your videos : 3. Trade for trade is a bad move, trade must be relevant in a way 4. Try adding the one more threat before performing your plan ("the straw that broke the camel's back" Anonymous) And I will add some more for beginners : 5. Rethink every good idea in case you would be missing a better one 6. Don't let you being intimidated by a menacing move, as your emotional will gain the upper hand over your intellect, stay focus and unaffected

That first example is such a good teaching experience. I obviously found that checkmate and wanted to make it happen. I looked at other options - but just removing that knight with my knight seemed so easy. I thought I was being smart, but I walked right into your trap.

This video was actually really useful to realize a weakness in my games. I tend to fixate on the first idea that catches my fancy, and try to force it through, rather than subordinating my thought process to the objective requirements of the position. This is, as he mentions in the video, largely a question of mindset. Possibly, I've reinforced my own lazy approach through pretty much only playing blitz for the last number of years. I'm actually already basically a 2000 player (peak 2384 online) and I feel just shifting my mindset like he says can help me to get much stronger. Thanks for this video!

1. Always be on the lookout for other attacking ideas. 2. Evaluate objectively and don't give up if the main idea is defended

Really good teacher. I have seen some of nakamura's videos and carlsen's videos but they are talking like the all of their viewers are GMs. Igor really understands how beginners would play such positions and he is really trying to make all of us understand what is going on

I actually eventually saw the move Rd8 for white, but I missed the follow-up move of Qe7 (after Qf7+, Kg8), attacking the rook and threatening the fork. Also saw the knight trade, ruining black's pawn structure and half opening the h file. Pretty proud of myself. For the puzzle: Qf7+ Kh8 Qf8+ Rxf8 Rxf8#

► Chapters 00:00 2 Ideas to Double Your Chess Rating 00:26 Stuck at 1400-1800 Rating? How to progress? 01:04 Pursuing an idea and wishing it works 03:21 1) How to go forward & attack the opponent 04:15 2) Golden Rule of Attack in Chess 05:39 Example-2 08:00 Secret to reach 2000 chess rating 10:02 Can you find the winning move?

You are always a good teacher, Mr. GM Igor.

this was a brilliant analysis, thank you!

Qf7+, Kh8, Qf8+, Rxf8, Rf8# Great video! Good pointers on looking for forcing moves and pressing forward despite the opponent's pressure on your attacking pieces

thx! your concept was very clear and insightfull i'm sure to improve after this!

fantastic vid. you earned a new sub. ive been stuck at 1800 for years. will look into your course...

I wanted to let you Know that these simple concepts have already improved my play. Thank you so much for sharing these simple but impactful ideas to help me improve my chess game.

Super helpful, thank you for the content

Your methods and ideas mean a lot to me. I never think out of the box. I limit myself with one fixed idea and I want to make it happen instead of trying to find other idea because clearly I can not hope my opponent will make a mistake. This is a great video and thanks.

Amazing tips! Thank you

Very very interesting and useful. Thank you

Qf7+ ..grateful to see this .. Using a daily combination tester has allowed me to learn just how blind I am in chess sense. Consistent weakness in lateral vision of the board .. failing to use in-between moves .. not able to see deflecting a defender .. using interference ..etc .. I'm and elder now ,, and wished that I had these tools when I was young about 55 years ago. I briefly looked at Rg3 and discarded it because I was sooo hungry to checkmate on either b7 or a8. Blind blind blind.

Very helpful thank you!

I indeed would try to make Nf5 work… after the video I immediately lunched a chess site and played one of the best games of my life! Magic. Thank you so much for sharing this

Your videos are by far the best I have ever watched to learn chess, I have progressed so much in a short amount of time. Keep up the amazing work and thank you ;)

What an amazing video. I paused to analyze when you told us to and was surprised when I resumed that you went through my exact thought processes and showed the problems with them. So informative. Thank you!

Great thank you very much !

Thanks for your course offer. At the time I can not afford. But i will try when ever possible. Thanks.

Really helpful video!

Thank you for this video

Qf7+. I think I've seen this theme dozens of times in puzzles (always comes up in Puzzle Rush) and once in a game :)

Great explanation ! Thanks👍😘

I just got my fide rating having completed my second ever tournament. Landed on 1646 which is decent but I strive much higher. This is the first time ever seeing your videos and I am tomorrow buying your course. You have an excellent way of teaching which is far, far, far from other people I've seen. Looking forward to it!

You are a great teacher Boris!

Great advice! Thanks!

Brilliant video, as always! For the 2nd example @7:06, I was thinking: Pawn to b4, forking black's 2 knights. Then black captures on e5, recapture with queen on e5, finally black retreats one of his knights and I capture the other with my b4 pawn. Similar result but with an extra piece?

thank you awesome video

That was quite helpful, thanks. Yes, Ben Finegold also said amateurs lose because they're focused on one thing, one area of the board. They are involved in "wishful thinking". Only after you busted the N moves in the first problem, was I able to consider Rb6! Also, yes, aggression counts for a lot, but at the same time, as you said, a successful attack should involve more attackers than defenders. Oh, and the answer to the quiz is simple mate in 3 starting with Qf7+.

Thanks for the video...

This was great!

This truly was the most inspiring chess video I have ever seen. Spot on observations.

The challenge I have is that I lack patience. I play a lot of correspondence chess and I often feel like I have to make all my moves almost like I’m clearing my inbox of emails. So instead of thinking about my opponents plan, engaging more of my pieces, or looking for better attacking chances / ideas, I find myself stuck in losing positions and onlyTHEN do I really start to think critically but by then it’s too late ! Chess is a wonderful teacher of patience focus and discipline in mindset

Thank you coach Igor

Excellent video !

great video, subscribed.

Thank you GM Igor Smirnov!

very clear explanation, Sir. thank you.

Thank you sir!

This is a great mentality to have in the game of chess. I will use this and keep progressing forward.

nice video, thank you

Qf7+, Kh8, Qf8+, Rf8, Rf8#… I think that’s how the notation looks, can’t remember if there is a symbol for “takes”. I should definitely learn more. In the flow of this video, I started off thinking Nf5, and you showed how amateur that was. Then I found Rg6 just as you were mentioning it. Then on the next one, I saw Rd8 pretty immediately. I had considered the pawn push on f right before that, so I figure I was in the right mindset. Solved the last puzzle easily. I’m pretty sure because listening to you put me in the right mindset. I need to default to that. I’m definitely a tactics guy, I struggle with memorizing lines because they look so similar, but I’m alright at creating strange positions and remembering fundamental rules for playing. I’ve never taken learning seriously, I’ve played thousands upon thousands of bullet games on Lichess, hoping to fill my onion with as many variations as possible so that when I go to learn, nothing is really a surprise to me. Thanks for sharing and testing us. Maybe I’ll choose to focus on this some. I started chess in my 20s because an arrogant friend of mine kept tormenting me. I started just playing against a computer until I could make sense of things. Now, I beat him pretty effortlessly and he hates my guts for it. “Grown-ups”😂.

this really changed how I look at chess, and explains why I am stuck at 650 trying to force ideas I see in videos online

Last puzzle check, King moves,Botez Gambit, Takes, Mate

Just found your channel. Love the content. Been studying chess for over 10 years and struggling to get past a long running plateau. This was really informative. I want to become a 2000 elo ish player sooooo badly

Great video, very insightful. Thank you.

Nice video! :)

thank you for this.

Daily puzzle: Queen f7 check to king king goes to h8 queen to f8 blacks rook takes queen and whites rook on f1 takes blacks rook checkmate. A pretty simple one :)

Hey Handsome. Another great video. I saw the rook move. Keep up the good work. I am using your suggestions and raising my rating slowly.

I appreciated the video and the "spot-on" instruction although in the third example I would've just played b4 forking the two black knights, winning one of them. So; I am obviously not a grandmaster in my thinking yet.

The move I found didn't involve the rook at all, it was BishopF3, essentially pinning down the F file pawn. I believe that forces mate in 2 moves, Can anyone say that Bishop F3 ISN'T as strong as moving the rook? I'm no GM but I can play. I tell players in the 1500 range: Just because you CAN take a piece of equal value, doesn't mean you SHOULD. More often than not, it's better not to trade for pieces of equal value.

Thank you so much! Great explanation and really, really helpful! In less than a day, I have increased my score. Thanks again!

Ohhh so cool i found the rook d8 move for exactly those reasons... this is a really great way of looking at chess. Thinking of the possible attacks instead of trying to just control squares and tunnel vision into one idea. Pretty cool stuff!

My first idea was rook b6 and swinging it over to h6 but I did not even notice the sacrifice that was awesome. Good advice sometimes we always tunnel vision on a plan even if it's not meant to be

good educational video. Thanks.

I have noticed that when I do puzzles, I see a certain idea and stare at it. However, some of the times, I have to give up on it to find another parallel idea that readily works. That is value of doing puzzles (besides just the obvious working on a tactic). Puzzles teaches you that you have to be open to consider many things and to give up on lines that just lack the full setup. LOL

Good video. Your teaching style is very good. I really can learn from your videos.

GREAT Video

👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 this was helpful

Oh wow you did get me with the first idea

Nice lesson

Can you do a video on strategic moves of your pawns? How to use them effectively.

Thanks this is so helpful, I’ll now play my chess more like rugby, constantly pushing forward, rather than like football, back and forth.

GM Igor Smirnov is a very good teacher!

At the beginning I had originally gone through with the knight moves like igor said but before he mentioned it I saw that it didn't work as the white pieces could defend in several ways. Then before he mentioned the rook lift I saw that too but I did not see forced mate in 3. I just saw the queen and rook battery potential mate which could also be defended against so I think a big problem with my way of thinking is not so much that I think incorrectly but more so that I rush into trying to find the quickest solution possible without giving myself enough time to go through different moves. It took me like 2 minutes to find the knight move, to then moving on to the rook lift. In bullet games this is simply not possible, for me to expend so much time, I would lose. I think its a matter more of how fast you are at calculating. If I had maybe 3 more minutes I would maybe find the force mate. I think like everything else you first need to practice and then once you get good at it you can then practice on speed. For example if you showed me this puzzle when I started playing a year ago rated 500 I would've definitely have not seen any of the moves, but now that I am 1300 I can see the moves and I know why something works and why something else doesn't now instead of learning mate patterns and stuff like that since I already know them it would just be a matter of practicing my how fast I can calculate the best moveset. When I first started playing I watched Hikaru and I just couldn't all his premoves and arrows all over the place, I couldn't make sense of it during and sometimes even after the outcome, I just knew that he was good and that it looked cool. Now I can watch hikaru and understand even seemingly unimportant positional moves, but I sometimes have trouble of keeping up(again speed). I mean its literally everywhere, another example is my rubiks cube. To start you first got to learn the algorithms and memorize it. When I first solved the rubiks cube it probably took me like 20 minutes, now I can solve it in like 90 seconds. The people who solve it in under 5 seconds just practice and practice speed. Same with my typing I honestly was a senior in highschool only typing on 2 fingers, sometimes 3 and my max stats were like 45 wpm at 87% accuracy ( and I had to look at the board). I decided to start using all of my fingers and when I started I was at 20 wpm, not trying to be fast but just trying to get that muscle memory. I got to 50 wpm but I couldn't break it because I had to look down at my keyboard constantly so then I tried typing again but without looking at the board ( mostly ) and my wpm dropped to like 45 but then after like a week I consistently stayed at 60+ wpm with 95% accuracy. Now I can type without looking at the board up to 100 wpm although on average I type around 70 wpm... I think a lot of us have a problem in chess in moving up because we want to find the quickest solution and get blinded when by whatever the best looking move is when there could be something better, which turns into a dilemma since chess games are timed... I don't know but thats my thought process. I'm not even that good in chess, I was actually a week ago like rated 1000 and went up in like a day to 1250, previously to going into the actual games though I just kept on practicing the puzzles and I would try to do them as fast as possible, I would also never use hints unless I had to and tried to figure them out if I would get them wrong. And I would start to back into my analysis and just see positions where I had the upperhand and it turned around for me after a blunder etc, and I would try to find the best move before looking at the computer. I think that chess puzzles really help though as for almost a year I was stuck at 700 and just in march I got back did like 6 hours straight puzzles because I couldn't go to sleep,( i did not sleep that day at all). And I started playing once I was done, bullet games and consistently won until I got to 1100 in like 2 hours. Like right now I went to check on the trend for my rapid games and the line goes up a bit here and there and then just a week ago it says 1000 and then just shoots up to 1320 ( I did the same thing that day just puzzles ) I don't really know any openings either and aimchess says that I am better in all aspects of the game by a lot compared to players in my rating range excepts openings in which I am down bad. For example my time management is 82% compared to other players at 40% and similar stats for end games resourcefulness, etc. My openings are like 30% while everyone else is around 50%, it says that usually after the opening the computer says I am around 1.9 in favor of my opponent. Pretty interesting how all this stuff works

Love your videos! For me, Chess is a hobby. My top ELO rating plateaued around ~1650. At some point a chess player has to make a decision on how much time they want to devote to the game. I don't think most casual players will approach 2000 ELO without serious study and a large time commitment to the game to study various lines, etc. It's perfectly find to be a casual player of chess and end up with an ELO between 1200-1800. If you do get up near ~1800 ELO, you will be able to beat most other casual players of chess. But getting to 2000 or higher is going to take a serious time commitment in learning opening lines, endgame theory, etc. -- that is time you would have to pull away from other things. Just keep that in mind if you play chess and feel frustrated. Its perfectly fine to end up in the casual player's ELO range and never get higher -- some people just don't have the time investment necessary to break through to higher ELO ranges. I remember a long time ago when I was in high school playing football and asked my coach how I could get better. My coach said, "run faster, anticipate further ahead, but most importantly, practice!" -- Sometimes you just can't run any faster or look further ahead until you spend a lot of time practicing to either increase your core strength or train your mind to see patterns and outcomes much further down the road that it currently can see. That's a lot like chess -- eventually the way you see the game just fundamentally changes and you punch through to a higher ELO range. I will never give an IM or GM a challenging game but I have played IMs and GMs that were nice enough to ask me, "Why did you just do that?" when I made a blunder, etc. Every move you make in a game of chess could be a decent move and yet you will still lose. That doesn't mean you played poorly, just that the other person played much stronger than you. If I could give one piece of advice to lower ranked ELO players, I would say to play online games via chess.com or other sites such that you can play an entire game without making a blunder move. Just try to play consistently without making a blunder and your chess game ELO ranking should move to somewhere between 1450-1800 ELO. Once you get up near 1800 ELO and can play consistently, in order to get to the next higher range of 1850-2200 ELO, you will need to practice, practice and practice more and be able to visualize the patterns much further out.

Think in terms of what attacking option you have. Constantly reevaluate which one works best. The golden rule of the attack says that the attacker should outnumber the defender. A key guideline idea: ask how do I go forward and attack something. If possible, you do want to go in the opponent's half of the board, to potentially cause the most damage. Keep your pieces engaged. Keep attacking. Strong and simple moves. Find the tactic.

My personal trick in chess is to think what my opponent could reply after the move I'm thinking of, or if the move somehow forces him/her to make a specific move ( for example, attacking his king with a queen or a horse .. )

I'm thinking Queen f7 check, king moves and then you back rank mate him after sacking the queen on f8. On the first puzzle I thought of the same first moves, but with a different reason. If you have a good, but insufficient attack, adding more attackers usually opens something up. Great video as always.

Brilliant!

Very helpful video. Been stuck on the same rating for several years and this is (a big part of the reason) why. The solution: Qf7+ Kh8, Qf8+ RxQ, RxR#

Very good advice indeed.

thanks bro

with example 2 id start out with e5 this allows me to gain a tempo by attacking the queen if not defended to double up the rooks, after that i could move my rook to 8 but its defended by a bakc rank mate

el curso se ve interesante, es una pena que no esté en español, me gustaría saber si planean traducirlo, porque actualmente mi inglés no es muy bueno y no los entenderé bien si los veo en inglés

Dammmb nice... subscribed and alerts 🤜

You are very good Chess teacher

Qf7 kh8 qf8 rf8 rf8 mate, Igor. Thanks for another great video, mate ; - )

Thanks. This is good.

in the video at 5.43 I noticed that u could have attacked the blacks knight by keeping b4 attacking Kc5 and Ka5

Wait, in the last situation (at 9:12) isn't there a forced checkmate if the rook is taken? Queen g8 sac into a smothered mate, is there anything wrong with this idea?

6:16, movong the pawn to b4 and attacking both thr knights came to my mind. I know that it isn't going to result in mate but white can win a minor piece. Or am I missong something here ?

what I do is scan for unguarded pieces it took a long time to see before but now I can see it in just a glance. works most of the time queen check, king goes away, queen check then sac, then rook mate

when black knight was on A5 and C5 I saw you could fork both knights by playing the pawn forward two .

IMO you have the best chess content on KZfaq.

Puzzle King g8, Qf7 check, Kh8, Qf8 check, Black Rf8 capture the Qn, and Rf8 capture the white Rook, check mate the black king

Queen to f7 check, King to h8, queen f8 mate because the queen is defended by the rook on f1 👍🏼 great video love to pause and analyze

move the queen on f7 forcing king behind pawns to h8, sac queen on f8, rook to f8 for checkmate

At 5:48, why doesn't white move its pawn to B4 forking the two knights?