Kingscrusher's Chess Tactics Training - Volume 1
What you'll learn
- Be able to fit in tactical training in your schedule. Lectures are usually relatively small but add insight a little bit at a time
- Be able to find chess tactics and combinations without a clue of the specific tactical method to help simulate uncertainty in real chess games
- Be able to practice visualisation and calculation skills especially on the "play and mate" - like Beth Harmon in the Queen's Gambit Netflix series
- Be able to see the philosophy behind tactical combinations to apply to a wider range of positions
- Be able to find the most effective solutions for key positions in a variety of different pawn structures
- Be able to train from the core foundation course of Kingscrusher the tactical methods recommended
- Be able to understand the solutions through Kingscrusher's annotations and general insights
- Be able to take takeaway points from each puzzle to apply to a wider range of positions
- Be able to appreciate "pawn programming" concept in many examples - pawns don't go backwards - and captures count towards this aspect!
- Be able to appreciate "Super-limiting" as proof of "Super-forcing" and work that way around for finding truly forcing moves
- Be able to often search the underlying game to see how the positions arose and which openings used
- Be able to learn from relatively short instructive and fun "challenge lectures" where you are encouraged to work out the solution as much as possible
- Be able to practice core skills including Visualisation, Calculation and Evaluation
- Be able to see the real beauty of tactics and combinations
- Be able to visualise clearer and clearer if you really try hard to visualise especially the "Play and mates" fully from the earliest challenges.
- Be able to practice Magnus Carlsen's Evaluation tip with the "Play and wins" - ensuring your final position visualised is steady for playing from
- Be able to practice tactics that involve exploiting pins
- Be able to practice tactics that involve decoys and deflections
- Be able to practice tactics that involve back row mate related issues
- Be able to practice tactics than win material
- Be able to practice a variety of mate in x puzzles ranging in difficulty from relatively easy to relatively hard for most club players
- Be able to practics tactics that involve X-ray attacks
- Be able to practics tactics that involve creating mating nets
- Be able to practice tactics that involve quiet key preparatory moves
- Be able to practice tactics that involve exploiting loose pieces
- Be able to practice tacts that involve exploiting a number of potential downsides of opponent's position
Requirements
- Knows the basics of playing Chess
- Ideally student would have studied the Kingscrusher tactics primer course "The complete guide to Chess tactics"
Description
Structure of the course
Kingscrusher presents hundreds of challenges in these tactics Bootcamp to help sharpen your tactical skills and help you find winning tactics and combinations in your real games when you play them with the clock pressures. The Bootcamp features two major sections - play to mate or play to win. Play to win maybe winning a piece in some cases but also does not exclude the possibility of mating the opponent. The first 100 of each section are relatively easier in general than the rest of the section to help you get some confidence and reassurance before getting into the really tough positions.
No pain no gain!
In this Bootcamp, it is advised to spend as much time as you can to really exercise your visualisation, calculation, and evaluation skills with the view of maximum accuracy as a priority.
Revisit as required!
Later when revisiting the exercises you can try and speed up your ability to find the solutions but try and maintain accuracy. Additionally, one should try and get as many valuable philosophical points and takeaways from each exercise as possible to give a better sense of intuition and direction when playing one's own chess games later.
Core chess skills trained
Visualisation
Calculation
Evaluation
It should also be noted that a cynical and brutal winning perspective should be employed when using these skills in real games when there is pressure against the clock. For example, playing practical moves is often a requirement in real games until one really senses there is something there and then it becomes more justified to find a winning combination.
Who this course is for:
- Chess beginner and intermediate players
Instructor
![Tryfon Gavriel](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.6 Instructor Rating
- 2,210 Reviews
- 10,339 Students
- 28 Courses
Tryfon Gavriel, also known as "Kingscrusher" on the Internet. I am a FIDE Candidate Master (CM), and British Regional Chess Master, and run a popular Youtube channel for many years with over 114k+ Subs as of 2021 and a Silver Button Award.
I have done many shows on commercial chess servers. I am also the Webmaster of the correspondence-style chess server Chessworld which emphasizes game quality and research.
Playing experience
Over 35 years of playing activity both online and offline. Peak ICC blitz rating of 2625 (18-Jun-1999). Peak ICC 5 min auto-pairing of 2383 (29-Jun 2012). ECF Grading peak classical: 212 (A) ECF. Peak Rapid rating: 217 (C).
Lichess marathon top 10 finishers in 4 marathons so far. Top 50 finisher in 7 marathons so far. Top 100 finisher in 4 marathons so far. And top 500 in 1 marathon so far. Won quite a few tournaments at lichess - in fact giving me 3rd rank overall behind Lance5500 and papasi in a recent detailed statistical blog analysis titled "Lichess Marathon Statistics".
One of my earliest Over-the-board achievements in Chess was winning the Lloyds Under 18 national UK tournament in 1989. My trophy was awarded to me by Grandmaster and Ph.D. Mathematician Dr John Nunn.
Teaching experience
I have done teaching in Schools and also have done teaching online with several Lichess students on a regular basis, and have a very good coaching rating at lichess.
Other experiences
Played twice in the main British Chess championship. Many of my Youtube viewers claim big rating increases after watching my videos.
Best skills
I particularly love attacking chess, chess tactics, and combinations, and it is probably no accident that my "Complete Guide to Chess Tactics" has been a best-seller shortly after its release here at Udemy.
In general, I will try and give you greater enthusiasm for the game and in particular the dynamic attacking, aggressive tactical aspects of playing chess. My favorite heroes are mainly Attacking style tactical players: Paul Morphy, Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Tal, Bobby Fischer, and Garry Kasparov. if you want to be a dynamic aggressive attacking style player, I may be able to encourage you and find you relevant resources on that path. The dynamic aggressive attacking players were particularly strong tactically and would often trade off pawn structure neatness and material to try and checkmate the opponent's kings. Checkmate does win the game :) They were masters of finishing combinations naturally as they sought to reduce the king's safety of the opponent in various ways including bringing the King out for often beautiful mating combinations.
Chess Openings
In terms of concrete openings to make use of potentially teaching here at Udemy through courses. I like Solid openings on such as the London System. I also like provocative openings like the Knight's Tango systems to encourage weaknesses from opponents. I am also at faster time controls especially, particularly fond of aggressive openings and gambits. For example, the Smith-Morra Gambit vs the Sicilian Defence, and other gambits can be used aggressively even with the black pieces such as the Albin Counter Gambit. Gambits vary of course in soundness and it is important to teach what "ticks many boxes" for use in various time controls. Also, I like surprising opponents with openings such as the Nimzo-Larsen attack, the King's Indian Attack, The London System, and Queen's Knight attack system 1. Nc3, all of which I have courses for here at Udemy.
In the search for the ideal courses to provide you, I like to search within myself for my core strengths and passions within the passion of Chess.
I truly hope you enjoy my courses and they improve your chess and your enjoyment of chess generally - and life generally :)