My 3 favorite Chess improvement Resources
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[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. I'm Grandmaster Noel Studer, and in today's podcast, I want to present my three favorite chess resources to help you improve your game. Now before we get into them, here are three important things to help you get most out of this episode. 

Point number one, I have a huge bias for simplicity. What I realized with most students and readers is that they don't train if the training becomes too difficult, too complex, too scattered. So I mainly favor things that keep your training simple. The goal isn't that these are the non plus, ultra perfect, impeccable, amazing, super GM-like resources, but they should be simple [00:01:00] resources that help you actually improve your chess. Simplicity over fanciness. 

Point number two. Most of my students and the people I work with in courses and the people I write for are rated between 1000 and 2200 online. If you are above 2200 rating, especially in over the board chess and working towards a chess title, these resources might not be ideal for you. In that case, write me an email and I might make an episode on 2200 plus resources.

And then the third point is, you know your personal situation best. Big budget or rather tight budget. Prefer OTB book study or online courses? I don't know what are your favorites. You know yourself best. So I'm giving you three [00:02:00] options and you'll have to pick what suits your situation best.

Okay, let's get into the first resource, which is totally free and I'm sure you've heard about it and probably use it. My first resource is Lichess. While this is no secret tip anymore, I believe most improvers can use Lichess more effectively to get the most out of this amazing free resource. There are four main ways I recommend using Lichess, and I teach my students to use these ways, these things the right way.

Way number one is puzzles. As I mentioned, I favor simplicity, especially when working with students who have difficulty solving puzzles frequently, I use Lichess. It is totally free, easily acceptable, accessible, and has a super simple user interface. What I like is that you can choose puzzle themes [00:03:00] to personalize them to what you need in this very moment.

If a student has an obvious leak in their game, I will make them solve many puzzles from this leak. Mostly that's hanging pieces or a specific tactical theme like the fork or the pin. For more general puzzle solving, I like mixed puzzles, which are the standard. So if you just go solving puzzles, you will get mixed puzzles.

Many say that Liche's puzzles aren't amazing because they are AI generated, and sometimes the solution isn't super sensible or human. And I partly agree with that. There are better ways to solve tactics. And more on that later on. But what matters most is that you solve tactics frequently. And if Lichess is the tool that helps you get this habit going, that you solve tactics very often, daily is very good, but even every second day is great. [00:04:00] This is an amazing way to start and create a tactics solving routine 

Now, way number two to use Lichess is puzzle survival. And this is very similar to the puzzles, but it's just with a little difficulty added. You get a streak for every puzzle you solve correctly and these puzzles start easy and then they get harder and harder and harder. And once you fail one single puzzle, the streak is destroyed, it finishes. This is a way of adding a little bit more pressure in your puzzle solving routine, and I like that to do with my students from time to time, because it forces them to fully focus and avoid the very often seen try and error for puzzles. So you're just trying something when it looks nice, oh yeah, this must be the move, and you just play that move. If you do Puzzle Survival, you will care about the amount, the streak that you can get going, so you [00:05:00] really want to focus, you really want to make sure that you have the right solution before you execute.

Way number three to use Lichess the right way is studies. I use studies for all my lessons and I recommend my students and, I have to say I forced them, to create their own studies. Most improvers need at least three separate studies. You have one study for your analyzed games, one study for your white openings, and one study for your black openings.

Whenever you play a game and want to analyze it, by the way, I recommend whenever you play a game, you should analyze it, copy it into your analyzed game study. Then over there you can start the analyzing process. When you look at the opening of this game, compare it with your opening study, if you already have one.

If you don't have one yet, use what you knew about the opening to [00:06:00] start a new opening study. If there's something new, copy it over to the opening study, so let's say you played a certain Najdorf line and you go into your opening study and this line that your opponent chose is not in there. Then you copy that over to the opening study and you add one move, the first move that you would have played different.

This is your new opening idea in that line of the Najdorf. And if you do that for every single game, you start slowly building up your opening repertoire without overwhelm, without having to study a 50 hour opening course. This is very, very simple process. If you simply misremembered your opening line, so you see, Oh, I played the wrong move here in the Najdorf, but actually in my opening study, there was the right move.

Then take a short moment to review the correct way of playing, and then try to also understand the reason behind the correct line. Most [00:07:00] often when somebody forgets their opening theory, it's because they're just Memorizing the moves, but not understanding the idea behind the moves. Once you understand the idea, it's way easier to remember your opening lines.

So, over time, with this analyzed game study and your white and black opening study, you will get a treasure trove of chess knowledge that is specifically for you. So whenever you go back to your analyzed games or your, to your white or black opening study, you just have all the knowledge that you want to remember the ideas that you had, the mistakes you made and why you want to do better, what you want to do better next time. And that's just an amazing way of learning by playing games and analyzing them. 

Lichess, this amazing free resource, the best way possible is playing games. Now, this is the most obvious part, but also here, I believe. [00:08:00] Some of you can profit from two great tools Lichess has, or two great settings. I highly recommend switching on the Zen mode.

What the Zen mode does, basically, when you play a game, it just shows you only the board. And the clock for each side, but there is no chat, there is no top bar of other things on Lichess. There is nothing, there will be no notifications. There's just the game and the clock, even no ratings. And this helps you to fully focus on your game.

If you want to go full hardcore mode, and that can be super useful, especially if you care too much about your rating, you can simply switch off all ratings. That means you're playing rated games, but you don't see your rating graph, you don't see the rating of your opponent, and you don't see how many rating points you win or lose after each and every game.

Every month or so, [00:09:00] you could go back and switch on the ratings, see where you're standing, if you went up or down, how things are going, and then you can switch it off again. and focus on the process. It's very easy to switch on these two settings. Just click on your profile, go to preferences. Go to display, scroll a little bit down and you find both of these settings.

Okay, guys, that's enough for Lichess. Just a small reminder, Lichess is totally free also because people, or just because people are supporting Lichess. So if you're profiting a lot from Lichess, just consider supporting them with a monthly donation, it doesn't have to be a lot, it's people supported, so Lichess can be great if we are supporting them.

Let's go to resource number two. And resource number two, we go away from Lichess, an online tool, to an old school tool with books. The Chess Steps Method. These workbooks were [00:10:00] my go-to as a young player and remain a timeless resource. I recommend them to so many students and as I mentioned, I used them my own when I was coming up when I was an up and coming young chess talent.

Their simplicity and structure make them ideal for building up your tactical skills. Each step includes a workbook and a learning manual. Covering ratings from beginner up to 2100. So step one will be up to 800, step two, up to 1400, step three, up to 1600, step four, 1750, step five, 1900, step six 2100. This is everything also outlined on their website so you can just check them out there and then you'll see which book might be for you.

Now the whole idea of these workbooks is that you just get a workbook of positions and you have [00:11:00] to solve them and then you have to download the solutions online. This allows you to focus fully on solving with the book and not going in front and behind searching for solutions, maybe seeing the solution of the next puzzle already that you didn't even solve yet.

So it's just super easy. You solve in the book and then later on you take the PDF and you see the solution, if you've done everything correct. If you want additional material, each step features a workbook plus, workbook extra, and workbook mix. So there's really so much to solve for you. And especially the workbook mix is very interesting because you don't know if you're supposed to solve a tactic or find a nice developing move.

So this is just like in the game where you just have a position in front of you, you need to make the best possible move, but you don't know what you're looking for. 

If you want to use the step method effectively, here is how I would do it. Step [00:12:00] number one, solve positions consecutively for 15 to 45 minutes, depending on how much time you have and how long you're able to focus.

So you solve a position, then you write down the solution, then you solve another position, you write down a solution, you do that for 15 to 45 minutes. Once your time is up, you can set a timer. Then you go check answers and analyze your mistakes. So you will just compare with what you wrote down and the book solution. And then you see, Oh, I made a mistake here. Why did I make mistake?

A big advantage of solving positions in a book is that it allows you to eliminate digital distractions. If you are suffering from opening 15 tabs at one time when you do your online chess study, then having a book can be super simple because it's way easier to get away from your PC, put your phone away and just focus on that chess book and these [00:13:00] chess positions.

Is that old school? Absolutely yes. But it's proven, it's affordable, costs around five dollars a piece, and it's very effective. You can get them at chess-steps.com or via any reasonably large chess retailer. Basically, everyone should have them. I know they are super, super famous in Europe, a little bit less famous in the U. S., but they should have it in the U. S. as well. 

Now let's go to my third pick and we'll go back to online tools and this time we'll go to high quality Grandmaster made courses aimed at an amateur audience, which should be you guys.

So resource number three is ChessMood, my favorite chess learning.

Short disclosure, because before I start raving about ChessMood, I am an affiliate of ChessMood. So if you sign up for a paid membership through one of my [00:14:00] affiliate links, you get 20 percent off their subscriptions and will support my work. So I am earning a small commission off of my recommendations.

But I don't recommend ChessMood because I'm earning something, but because I love their stuff, I have recommended them for over two years already. And since I started recommending them, they really just stepped up their game and improved their courses, made more material. And it's just so useful. And many of my private students are working with ChessMood, many of my core students are working with ChessMood, many of my readers are working with ChessMood. And I always get very, very positive feedback. 

Now, you might think why do I prefer ChessMood over a more known alternative like Chessable and Chessable similar platforms. Now, there are a few reasons.

Reason number one is on ChessMood, each course is made by the same Grandmaster Coaches team that ensures high [00:15:00] quality, but also avoids repetition, where Chessable is more like a marketplace where anyone can make a course. ChessMood is a place where only a Grandmaster coaching team is deciding together what course would be useful for our audience.

The second big difference is that ChessMood has a monthly subscription with which you can access all of their courses. Now, this is super useful because ChessMood has no incentive to sell you courses you don't need, while on platform like Chessable, they have a big incentive to sell you more and more courses, even courses that might be similar to each other or might even overlap where one is just an opening, I don't know, a Catalan and then the other one is Catalan, but from another person, from another author.

On ChessMood you only have courses that fit with each other and nothing that overwhelms you or is not useful for you. [00:16:00] 

And then third and probably most importantly is most courses on ChessMood are not about the opening. I'm not a big fan of these long opening courses and ChessMood has simply one white and one black repertoire in a simplified version and in a normal version.

But all of the other courses are about learning to improve your chess, play chess better, understanding, for example, how to play in a winning position, how to save a lost position how to find tactics, how to find checkmate patterns, how to stop blundering. There are so many courses that actually help you improve your game, instead of just teaching you some opening theory you will anyway not remember later on. 

I also know the founder personally, I know Avetik very well, and we share a lot of values and training ideas, and we read a couple dozen of the same books. So it's [00:17:00] very likely that if you like my stuff and my way of teaching, you will also like ChessMood.

And today I can offer you a very easy way of getting to know ChessMood because you can check them out for free. I have added a link in the description. If you activate the link before 20th of December, you will get a free membership that is running out on the 20th of December.

And then you can check out all of their courses totally free. So you can click that link in the description or just go to ChessMood.com/nextlevelchess. And with this gift, you can try all of their courses at absolutely no cost. 

And, in my opinion, there are the three most impactful courses, which I would recommend starting with, which are, number one, "Tactics Ninja". I'm a big fan of tactics. Tactics are so important. Tactics decide most of your games. So work on those. [00:18:00] You can work on "Blunder Proof". That's a course about stopping to blunder, which is so annoying and costing you a lot of games as well. And then the third course would be "Win Won Positions". And there is basically the brother course, which would be "Save Lost Positions".

So you see the game from both sides. When one side is winning, how should the winning side play? How should the losing side play But to avoid overwhelm, I highly recommend you to study one course at a time. So don't go in there and start studying 15 different courses. Pick one course that you seem to like, start studying it, see if you like it, and then finish that course, apply what you learn, take notes while watching the course, and then you will profit so much from their amazing courses. 

Okay, let's wrap this up. My three favorite chess improvement resources are Lichess, Step Method Books, [00:19:00] and ChessMood. As a matter of fact, most of my private students use these three resources, and some of them have nothing else on their training plan. Some of my students, they just play on Lichess, they use Lichess as I've explained to you. When they solve tactics position on a board, they use the step method books. And when they watch courses to improve their chess knowledge, next to my lessons, they watch ChessMood courses. It's super simple, you can use high quality materials, and this will really help you improve your game. 

If you want to know how you can use those materials the best way, so how you can study, how you can focus better, how you can find maybe other recommended resources, then you can check out my course, Next Level Training, which is really about all the things, how to study chess effectively. If you're interested in that, there's a link in the description [00:20:00] as well.

Now, keep improving and until next week.