Chess Strategy - Complete Training Course

The most common way to evaluate a position is by counting the pieces and looking at which side has more. This is natural, but probably not the best way to start analyzing. As we’ll see in this lecture, having the better king can be even more important than material.

Another very important thing to consider when evaluating a position is the configuration of the pawns, also known as pawn structure. The pawn structure not only impacts the pawns but the whole position, as we’ll study.

Here we’ll learn what chess strategy is, which is often contrasted with chess tactics.

Additionally, we’ll analyze a few positions on which one side has a strategic advantage and study how each side should try to approach such cases.

Knowing when you should prioritize strategic play over tactical play is by no means trivial. Here we’ll try to answer that question and we’ll also learn how tactics and strategy can also influence each other.

Having a safer king can sometimes decide the outcome of a game in a few moves. While many factors can affect king safety, here we’ll study what you should look at first and foremost, to make sure that your king is safe.

Having the safer king might not be a permanent advantage, or we might have a better king in exchange for other advantages, such as having less material or having a worse pawn structure.

Therefore, in this lecture we’ll learn how to exploit this advantage.

Moving the king very often in the opening and middlegame is normally very risky. However, here we’ll learn on which cases this can be done.

While in the first stages of the game, it is normally important to safeguard the king, activating the king can be very important later in the game, as the king can participate in the action.

In this lecture we’ll try to figure when the right moment to activate the king is.

In this lecture we’ll learn the most common way to estimate the value of each piece but we’ll also see why this is not enough to know the real value of a piece in a given position.

Knowing the standard value of chess pieces is not enough to assess their real value. Here we’ll learn to most important things to look at when evaluating if a piece is strong or not

Based on what we learnt in the previous lecture, i.e., how to evaluate the real strength of a piece, we’ll try to understand how the value of a piece can be affected through the stages of the game.

Positions on which we have the same material but different pieces than our opponent are what we call material imbalances. Here we’ll learn how to evaluate them and what the key factors to evaluate these positions are.

A very common imbalance is to have the bishop pair against a bishop and a knight or two knights. Here we’ll learn what makes the two bishops so powerful but we'll also analyze a situation on which they can be outplayed by two knights.

Here we'll study how to play against isolated pawns but we'll also evaluate if an isolated pawn can be useful.

Here we´ll study another type of pawn: the backward pawn. We´ll learn how to play against them and when it can be justified to create them.

Hanging paws are 2 pawns of the same color on adjacent files. Here we´ll learn their main weakness and when they can be used to our advantage.

Doubled pawns are 2 pawns of the same color on the same file. While they are very often considered a weakness, here we’ll also study when they can be useful or compensated by having other advantages.

Here we´ll study another common type of pawn, passed pawns, and learn when they can become strong.

Since pawns are the weakest pieces, sacrificing them can be very common. Here we´ll study many ways on which we can get compensation for sacrificing a pawn.

Here we´ll analyze another very common sacrifice that can be done for strategic advantages: the exchange sacrifice.

Giving a full knight or bishop for one or more strategic advantages is rare but giving a minor piece for one or two pawns plus some strategic advantages can be more common. Here we´ll evaluate some model games to try to understand these complex sacrifices.

Strategic rook sacrifices are rare but can lead to very exciting positions. Here we´ll learn the most common ways on which this sacrifice can be made.

Here we´ll study some common positions on which a queen is given for some material and strategic advantages.