Opposite-coloured bishops have a reputation for drawishness — but that verdict only holds in the endgame; in the middlegame, the same imbalance turns the bishop into a devastating attacker with no opposite number to stop it. In this Guided Practice course, IM Siegfried Baumegger works through all four faces of the position across carefully selected exercises and annotated model games: the middlegame attack, strategic play to increase an advantage, converting an extra pawn, and defending the ending. Drawing on games from Rubinstein and Smyslov to Carlsen and Ding, it teaches you to recognise when the opposite bishops draw, when they win, and how to steer the play so they do what you need.
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2h 5m PGN Download Interactive Tests
After 4.Bxc6 bxc6 in the Rossolimo, both sides sign a long-term contract: Black takes the two bishops, White the healthier pawn structure. Which way the imbalance tilts then depends on a handful of small pawn decisions. In Middlegame Understanding – Rossolimo Structures – Part 1, GM Evgeny Romanov treats those structures as the real protagonists of the game — the frame inside which every plan either works or quietly fails.
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2h 23m PGN Download Interactive Tests
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A course built on plans, not theoretical lines
Romanov's starting point is that concrete variations matter less here than in almost any other Sicilian. The doubled pawns fix the position early, so progress comes from knowing the plans rather than recalling moves — which is why the course is organized around eight of them instead of around opening lines.
He is also honest about where the balance actually sits. He points out that several of these plans hand Black the easier game in practice, and notes that White has lately moved away from the sharp long-castling lines toward quieter setups with short castling. What you get is a strong grandmaster's working assessment of who stands better and why.
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2h 48m PGN Download Interactive Tests
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For most of chess history, voluntarily handing your opponent a broad pawn center looked less like a plan and more like a concession. The King's Indian Defense turned that instinct on its head. After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6, Black invites White to occupy the center with pawns and then sets out to undermine it with timely counterplay — a hypermodern provocation in the 1930s that, over the following decades, became one of Black's most trusted ways to play for a win against 1.d4.
GM Mitrabha Guha builds the course around that evolution rather than around a wall of theory. He traces how understanding of the King's Indian deepened across nearly nine decades of practice — from the foundational games of the 1930s, through Fischer's win over Korchnoi in 1970 and the Korchnoi–Kasparov clash of 1992, up to Praggnanandhaa–Giri in 2022. The structures repeat and the ideas accumulate, so that following them in order teaches you to feel the opening rather than memorize it.
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4h 33m PGN Download Interactive Tests
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A complete strategic guide to the most fundamental minor-piece battle in chess: knight versus bishop. IM Baumegger's course teaches you to recognise which piece is stronger and how to prove it — across endgames and middlegames, from the bishop's strengths to the knight's — through 60 test positions with detailed solutions.
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2h 16m PGN Download Interactive Tests
A complete strategic guide to one of chess's most powerful and misunderstood advantages: the pair of bishops. IM Baumegger's course covers playing with the two bishops in positional, attacking, and endgame settings — and how to defend against them — through 60 test positions with detailed solutions.
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2h 4m PGN Download Interactive Tests
A practical course on turning a material advantage into the full point in every form it takes. Part 3 of IM Baumegger's conversion series covers unbalanced material imbalances, converting extra pawns, endgame technique, and the typical mistakes that cost wins, with 60 test positions and detailed solutions.
Sequence: Advanced Strategy »
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2h 2m PGN Download Interactive Tests
Not all advantages are converted the same way: static edges reward patience, dynamic ones demand energy. Part 2 of IM Baumegger's conversion series teaches you to recognise which advantage you hold and choose the right method — covering static advantages, dynamic advantages, transformations, and the typical mistakes that cost the win — through 60 test positions with detailed solutions.
Sequence: Advanced Strategy »
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2h 13m PGN Download Interactive Tests
The first part of IM Siegfried Baumegger's series on turning better positions into the full point. Built around the four technical principles of conversion — preventing counterplay, not hurrying, creating a second weakness, and exchanging the right pieces — with 60 test positions and detailed solutions that train you to win won games with a master's precision.
Sequence: Advanced Strategy »
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2h 12m PGN Download Interactive Tests
For most of the last century, the Exchange Caro-Kann was filed under "harmless." It was the line you reached for when you wanted a clear structure and a quiet afternoon — no early sharpness, a position that supposedly explained itself. And yet strong players kept coming back to it, generation after generation, and each one understood it a little differently. What looked like a settled position turned out to be a slow, hundred-year conversation about a single pawn structure.
That conversation is the spine of GM Mahammad Muradli's new course. The Exchange Caro-Kann — Strategic Foundations is the strategic companion to his earlier theoretical work, The Exchange Caro-Kann with 4.Bd3 for White. The first course mapped the concrete lines after 3.exd5 cxd5 4.Bd3 and laid out Muradli's practical answers to Black's many tries. This one steps back from the variations to ask the harder question: once you reach these positions, how do you actually understand and play them?
Sequence: Exchange Caro-Kann According to Muradli »
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4h 9m PGN Download Interactive Tests
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