Learn to Play Chess Like Bobby Fischer

In this lesson you will learn how to get your pieces out as efficiently as possible without creating any weaknesses in your position. You will also learn WHY it is so critically important to make every move count in the opening, and punish your opponent for any inaccurate moves.

Following up on the previous lesson, we will look more deeply at the critical importance of not wasting a single move during the opening and throughout a game of chess. As we will see in the game analyzed throughout the course, only one or two very small mistakes or "inaccuracies" can lead to a completely lost position.

Bobby Fischer's play in The Game of the Century is brilliant, but he also follows basic chess fundamentals. If his Grandmaster opponent had done the same, the result may have been different. In this lesson you will learn some of the most important fundamental principles in chess that you always want to keep in mind when considering different candidate moves and analyzing a position.

One of the reasons Bobby Fischer was able to create such brilliant tactical combinations in this game is because his opponent had allowed small weaknesses to creep into his position. In this lesson, you will learn how to setup your pieces in order to avoid any weaknesses that will allow for tactical opportunities that can be exploited by your opponent.

While analyzing this game, you may feel that you don't have the ability to see some of the tactics used by Fischer to destroy his opponent. But in this lesson, you will learn how to see tactical opportunities as they arise, so that you don't miss them in your games. 

Calculating deeply is one of the most important aspects of being a strong chess player. There are no shortcuts to developing this skill as it generally comes from much hard work solving chess puzzles, like the ones in this course. However, there are methods you can use to learn how to calculate deeply and accurately. In this lesson, you will learn how to do it.

In addition to calculating deeply and accurately, a strong chess player also needs to know how to calculate quickly without making mistakes. In this lesson, you will learn an easy way to calculate several moves ahead without having to "count" moves, which often leads to costly mistakes over the board.

Knowing when to sacrifice a piece is another very important concept in chess. In this lesson, you will learn how to evaluate whether a piece sacrifice is sound or unnecessarily risky. You will also learn a specific form of sacrifice that often works well and that we can use in many different positions without having to do any deep calculations.

In addition to tactics, openings and sacrifices, you need to have a strategic plan to succeed at the game of chess against strong opponents. In this lesson, you will learn how Bobby Fischer used his strategic plan to devastating effect against his strong Grandmaster opponent.

Every opening structure leads to different kind of position, so it is of critical importance to understand the patterns that each opening leads to. In this lesson, you will learn about different opening structures so that you can choose the most suitable openings to use as well as to understand the thoughts behind your opponent's moves. 

Before you get to the endgame, you need to be able to visualize the board so that you can make evaluations as to whether or not to trade pieces as well as where to position your pieces. In this lesson, you will learn how to visualize the endgame in order to make the strongest possible moves in the opening and middle games.

Bobby Fischer was the best player of his day because he was the most well rounded. He excelled at every aspect of the game and had no clear weaknesses. In this lesson, we will once again look at his Game of the Century to better understand how to develop strength in all aspects of our chess game.