Tactics Helping Strategy
We're thrilled to introduce Grandmaster Mykhaylo Oleksiyenko's debut course for Modern Chess: "Tactics Helping Strategy". This highly immersive course showcases 50 training positions, explicitly designed to boost your strategic prowess. Within each position, you're tasked with exercising your problem-solving skills to seize a variety of strategic advantages. This dual-approach not only refines your ability to interpret complex positions but also sharpens your calculation skills.
Every training position is complemented with an in-depth answer annotation and a video explanation, creating a comprehensive learning journey. The cumulative duration of the video course approximates around 4 hours.
To extract the utmost benefits from this course, we suggest that you replicate each training position on a real chess board for a tangible, hands-on experience. Take a stab at solving the positions independently and subsequently compare your reasoning with the video explanation. It's beneficial to scrutinize the PGN annotations following the video to consolidate your understanding.
Preview by the Author
Hello everyone! Welcome to my first-ever course for Modern Chess! I decided to share with you a special topic. It exists in between tactics and strategy.
Usually, tactical puzzles lead to a win or to a draw. You win some material, give checkmate, promote a pawn, or restore material balance. On the other hand, strategic puzzles usually do not require any calculation. You need to find the right plan, the right maneuver, or the correct prophylactics. My course differs from both of those cases. Here, you will need to do some calculation; however, at the end of the line, you will not have any material gains. You will get some strategic or positional advantage. Maybe you have weakened your opponent’s king; maybe you got the two-bishop advantage; maybe you compromised your opponent’s pawn structure; maybe you improved your pawn structure; maybe you dramatically improved one of your pieces, etc.
In every puzzle, you must do some calculations to achieve strategic/positional goals. In many puzzles, the advantage would be decisive, not from a materialistic point of view. I hope you enjoy my selection of 50 puzzles.
I have many more puzzles to share if the course is well met with the modern chess family. Although, I must admit I selected the easier ones for this course. The puzzles in the course are sorted in the approximate ascending order of difficulty.
I also want to share my approximate algorithm for finding the best move in a position.
Consider good-looking forcing moves first. I do not have a clear definition of a “good-looking” move, so feel free to interpret it in your own way. If you have three of those, then most likely, one of them is the best in a position. If you are not happy with the forcing moves, then consider significantly improving your position right now. It could be making one of your bad pieces strong or pushing a passed pawn, for example. Only now, you should consider slow improvements (like 2-3 move maneuvers) or prophylactics.
You will see the algorithm “in action” in the video part of the course.
VIDEO INTRODUCTION