Most players consume chess content.They:
Yet their results fluctuate — because their training lacks structure.
Modern Chess Academy was built to solve exactly that problem.
This is not a content platform. It is a monthly training system where every element supports the others.
Everything is connected.
Each month includes:
Strategy Wednesday → Positional understanding & long-term planning
Tactical Thursday → Disciplined calculation & practical sharpness
Repertoire Builder → Building an opening identity based on understanding
Guided Practice → Weekly curated training with structured repetition
Opening Radar → Modern theory & elite-level trends
Inside Your Games → Analysis of real member games
Mentorship Program → Personal direction & accountability
✔ All lectures recorded
✔ All material organized
✔ A system that builds month after month
Improvement in chess is cumulative.
The Academy provides the structure that makes that accumulation possible.
Modern Chess Academy does not offer shortcuts. There are no magic formulas here. The Academy will not replace the work you must do. It will only structure it.
This is a serious training environment. This environment is not designed for everyone. Before subscribing, ask yourself:
Am I ready to work systematically?
Am I willing to improve gradually, not emotionally?
If the answer is yes — you belong here.
November is the Academy's second birthday. Two years ago we ran the first live session, and the programme has not missed a month since — the camps, the Guided Practice cycles, the six-month Builder projects, and the members who have followed them from the start.
The work continues as it has done, and November deepens what October began.
Decision Making with Papaioannou — Part 2
👤 Coach: GM Ioannis Papaioannou 📅 Dates: 11.11.2026 & 18.11.2026 🔗 Event page: https://www.modern-chess.com/event/decision-making-with-papaioannou-part-2/93210/
October addressed the factors a player has to weigh — the permanent advantages that outlast a game, and the temporary ones that expire. Part 2 turns to the calculation itself, and to the decisions nobody teaches: how deep a line should go, which candidates deserve a look, when a variation has been checked enough, and when to stop calculating and trust judgment instead.
The point is not that strong players calculate faster. They allocate better — and that allocation is a trainable skill almost nobody trains. A player who calculates everything runs out of time; a player who calculates nothing relies on hope.
Strategic Calculation and Calculation from the Games of Kasparov
👤 Coach: GM Swapnil Dhopade 📅 Dates: 12.11.2026 & 19.11.2026 🔗 Event page: https://www.modern-chess.com/event/strategic-calculation-and-calculation-from-the-games-of-kasparov/43243/
Two themes, approaching the same skill from opposite directions: a concept, and a teacher.
We are taught that strategy means long-term plans and quiet moves, and that calculation is what happens when the position sharpens. Strategic advantages frequently have to be calculated for — the structure you want appears not because you understood the position, but because you found the sequence that produced it.
The second half takes Garry Kasparov, whose games are the right material not for the depth of the calculation but because it was always in service of something: an attack prepared, a structure steered toward, an initiative refused. The combinations are famous; the preparation behind them is what repays study.
French Defense for Black: Fundamental Structures in the Exchange Variation
👤 Coach: GM Grigor Grigorov 📅 Dates: 17.11.2026 & 24.11.2026 🔗 Event page: https://www.modern-chess.com/event/repertoire-builder-french-defense-for-black-fundamental-structures-in-the-exchange-variation/83276/
August covered the closed chain of the Advance, September the principled 3.Nc3, October the isolated queen's pawn of the Tarrasch. November turns to the move that refuses the argument altogether: 3.exd5 exd5.
Symmetrical pawns, an open e-file, and a reputation for dryness — which is exactly why it is dangerous. Many Black players have no plan in it at all: they reach a balanced position, develop reasonably, and discover there is nothing obvious to do, while White chose the variation knowing precisely what he wants. Symmetry does not mean equality of understanding.
And when White plays c2-c4, the game leaves symmetry and enters the isolated-pawn structures covered in October — so last month's work applies immediately.
📅 Program Schedule
17.11.2026 — Paris | New York 🕒 17:30 – 19:00 | 11:30 – 13:00 — Session 1 🕒 19:30 – 21:00 | 13:30 – 15:00 — Session 2
24.11.2026 — Paris | New York 🕒 17:30 – 19:00 | 11:30 – 13:00 — Session 3 🕒 19:30 – 21:00 | 13:30 – 15:00 — Session 4 🕒 21:00 – 21:30 | 15:00 – 15:30 — Q&A with GM Grigor Grigorov
Fundamental Pawn Structures II — The Ruy Lopez
👤 Coach: IM Siegfried Baumegger
October was devoted to a single structure across four unrelated openings. November reverses it: a single opening, and the four distinct structures it produces.
The Ruy Lopez is not one formation but several, and they behave nothing alike — the slow manoeuvring of the Closed, the pawn-for-initiative bargain of the Marshall, the open central play after ...Nxe4, and the endgame the Berlin reaches before the middlegame has started. Each asks a different question.
📅 Weekly Structure
Participants receive training positions each week, in-depth explanations, video summaries, and a final annotated PGN collection.
👤 Coach: GM Ivan Cheparinov
Modern opening ideas, practical novelties, and answers to member-submitted questions.
Format
✉️ Submit your opening questions to academy@modern-chess.com
👤 Coach: GM Ioannis Papaioannou
GM Papaioannou selects 15 anonymized games submitted by Academy members and analyzes them deeply, extracting practical lessons and recurring mistakes.
Submission guidelines
Publication includes
✅ Free access for all Academy members.
A structured, personalized improvement path with an assigned mentor, a 30-minute kickoff session, and monthly follow-ups built around your submitted games and your progress over time.
Most chess training is content consumption. The Academy is structure — the work is connected month to month, and every pillar reinforces the others. Live GM-led sessions every Wednesday and Thursday, weekly structured practice, modern opening updates, real game analysis, and a long-term repertoire-building project, all within one integrated system.
Improvement is cumulative. The Academy provides the structure that makes that accumulation possible — and two years in, the members who have stayed with it are the proof.
This is not random content. This is chess training — the Modern Chess way.
