Middlegame Courses (173)

The arithmetic is deceptively simple: three points for a bishop, five for a rook, nine for a queen. Yet as GM Efstratios Grivas observes in his latest course, The Art of Exchanges - Part 1, the gap between knowing what pieces are worth and understanding when to trade them represents one of chess's most persistent challenges. His central insight crystallizes the developmental leap all improving players must make: "We will realise that exchanging pieces purposefully can be a very powerful weapon!" This focus on irreversible decisions—the trades that permanently reshape the position—addresses what he identifies as "the hardest ones to make" and those with "the highest impact" on the game's trajectory.

The Stonewall structure has long divided the chess world. Critics dismiss it as rigid, even passive. Advocates see something deeper: a strategic laboratory where pawn tension, piece coordination, and long-term planning converge into a coherent positional system. GM Evgeny Romanov belongs firmly to the second camp—and his new course, Middlegame Understanding - Stonewall Structures, makes a compelling case for why.

When Emanuel Lasker wrote that "chess is a fight," he wasn't referring to the board alone. The psychological dimension—managing losses, navigating fatigue, choosing when to press or consolidate—has always separated strong players from champions. Yet while opening theory evolves daily, tournament psychology remains chess's least systematized frontier.

GM José Martínez Alcántara (Jospem) and GM Pier Luigi Basso address this gap with Life of a Tournament Player, a course that dissects competitive reality through the prism of the Fujairah Global Chess Championship 2025—a GM-only event where José scored 6.5/9 and finished sharing 2nd place.

Tigran Petrosian, the ninth World Champion, built his reputation on prophylactic mastery—neutralizing opponent ideas before they materialized. Yet even Petrosian understood what many players miss: the strongest defense often involves creating threats of your own. GM Ioannis Papaioannou's Preventing and Creating Counterplay explores this duality, examining how the interplay between suppression and initiative determines the outcome of complex positions.

In chess, true tactical mastery is not about finding flashy combinations — it’s about developing the thinking process that leads to them.
In his new course, Candidate Moves and Long Calculations, GM Swapnil Dhopade reveals how to structure your calculation, organize your thoughts, and identify the critical moments that separate masters from club players.

In My System, Aron Nimzowitsch elevated the concept of space advantage from a tactical convenience to a strategic imperative — the idea that controlling more squares isn’t about comfort, but about systematically restricting your opponent’s possibilities.
Nearly a century later, GM Ioannis Papaioannou revisits this classical principle with modern precision. His course Strategy Wednesday: Space Advantage – From the Opening to the Middlegame explores not just what space advantage is, but when and how it transforms into tangible winning chances.

Modern Chess proudly presents the debut course of IM and psychologist Nikola Nikolovski — The Chess Thinking Process – Static Factors and Planning.
This innovative work bridges cognitive science and chess understanding, offering a structured framework for evaluating positions long before concrete calculation begins.

Every great chess thinker has a system—an internal architecture that explains how the game truly works. For GM Efstratios Grivas, that system has unfolded step by step through his lifelong mission to connect classical wisdom with modern understanding.
The first two courses of the Grivas Chess Lab series—Endgames with Opposite-Colored Bishops and The Principle of the Two Weaknesses—established the foundation: technique, conversion, precision.
Now comes the course that unites them all. Strategic and Tactical Education represents the core philosophy of Grivas’s work—a comprehensive framework that transforms fragmented chess knowledge into a single, coherent method of thinking.

Modern Chess presents the second installment in the Grivas Chess Lab series: The Principle of Two Weaknesses. Following his definitive work on Endgames with Opposite-Colored Bishops, GM Efstratios Grivas provides a systematic examination of chess's most reliable winning principle through 68 carefully selected and extensively annotated games.

When we think about chess brilliance, our minds instinctively go to sacrifices, tactical storms, or forcing attacks. Yet some of the most profound moments in chess history are born not from noise, but from silence. The quiet move – a move that looks almost invisible at first glance – can completely reshape a position, dismantle counterplay, or reveal hidden harmony.