GM Swapnil Dhopade leads the October edition of Tactical Thursday with a pair of themes that address the two ways calculation fails in real games: the conditions you calculate under, and failing to notice there was anything to calculate.
Almost every player calculates well in the comfort of home analysis. Unlimited time, no consequences, a board that waits. The skill that decides tournament games is different — and it is rarely trained directly.
A position is not only a set of pieces. It is also a clock, a tournament situation, and a nervous system.
The same player who finds a four-move combination in training will miss it with eight minutes left, or with a draw enough to secure a norm, or immediately after a long think that produced nothing. The calculation itself has not become harder. The conditions have.
This half of the camp trains the skill in the circumstances where it actually matters: deciding how much time a position deserves, recognising when a long think has stopped being productive, holding a line accurately when the clock is the loudest thing in the room, and keeping judgment intact when the result matters more than usual.
You will learn how strong players:
The second theme is the one that precedes calculation entirely.
Most missed tactics are never calculated at all. They are never seen. The position looks quiet, nothing is obviously loose, no king is exposed — and the opportunity passes unnoticed, because nothing in the position announced itself.
Here the training is about perception before analysis: the signals that something concrete exists, the motifs that hide inside positions that look strategic, and the discipline of checking for tactics in the moments when you have decided there are none.
You will learn how strong players:
They are the two halves of the same failure. Seeing without the conditions to calculate accurately produces blunders. Calculating well without seeing produces nothing at all — you handle brilliantly the position you noticed, and walk past the one you did not.
Tactical Thursday takes place over two Thursdays — 15.10.2026 and 22.10.2026 — with two sessions per day. After each training day, participants receive test positions designed to reinforce the concepts introduced during the lectures, with solutions included in the final PGN file.
Tactical Thursday is part of the Modern Chess Academy: Academy members receive free access to the live lectures and to the complete digital product released afterward.
✓ Dates: 15.10.2026 and 22.10.2026
✓ Platform: Zoom
✓ Coach: GM Swapnil Dhopade
15.10.2026 – Paris | New York
🕒 17:30 – 19:00 | 11:30 – 13:00 – Calculation under Pressure – Session 1
🕒 19:30 – 21:00 | 13:30 – 15:00 – Calculation under Pressure – Session 2
22.10.2026 – Paris | New York
🕒 17:30 – 19:00 | 11:30 – 13:00 – Spotting Hidden Tactics – Session 1
🕒 19:30 – 21:00 | 13:30 – 15:00 – Spotting Hidden Tactics – Session 2
🕒 21:00 – 21:30 | 15:00 – 15:30 – Q&A with GM Grigor Grigorov & GM Petar Arnaudov
This camp trains the part of tactical skill that puzzle books cannot reach — not whether you can solve the position, but whether you solve it when it counts, and whether you notice it at all.
This event is completed.