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Our blog is full of tips, guides and news from our masters and our founder, providing helpful content to take your game to the next level.


How to Convert a Winning Position in Chess Step by Step
Winning a game is not the same as having a winning position. That distinction is where many games are decided—not at the moment the advantage appears, but in what follows. A better position creates possibility, not certainty. It offers direction, but it still demands execution. And execution is where things often collapse. Because once you’re winning, the nature of the game changes. The risks shift, the priorities evolve, and the margin for error—paradoxically—feels both larg
Mike Benavides
4 min read


How to Recognize When You’re Better or Worse in Chess
Learning how to recognize when you’re better or worse in chess is one of the most important skills for making consistent decisions. They begin with misjudgment. A position feels better than it actually is, so you push too hard. Or it feels worse than it really is, so you become passive, cautious, hesitant to act. In both cases, the problem is not what you see—it’s how you interpret what you see. Because every decision in chess depends on one question: What is the position… re
Mike Benavides
5 min read


How To Recognize Critical Moments in Chess Games
Most moves during critical moments in chess are not equal. Some pass quietly, almost routine, maintaining balance without demanding much precision. Others—far fewer—carry weight. They define direction, reshape the position, and often determine the outcome long before the result becomes obvious. The difficulty is not playing critical moments in chess—it’s recognizing them early enough. Because if you treat a critical position like a normal one, you don’t just make a mistake—yo
Mike Benavides
4 min read


How to Think During Your Opponent’s Turn
Time in chess doesn’t belong only to the player who is about to move. Half of the game unfolds while waiting. And yet, this phase is often wasted—spent watching passively, reacting late, or thinking only after the opponent has already made their decision. By then, the position has changed, the clock is running, and clarity is already under pressure. Strong players don’t wait, they prepare. Why Most Players Waste Time During Opponent’s Turn in Chess Attention drifts easily whe
Mike Benavides
3 min read


Why Most Chess Players Use Incorrect Chess Thinking (And How to Fix It)
Thinking Errors Are Invisible Most chess players don’t lose because they lack knowledge. They lose due to incorrect chess thinking. That’s the uncomfortable truth. The real problem is not tactical blindness or opening ignorance. It’s something far more subtle: flawed thinking processes that operate beneath awareness. Invisible errors. Silent distortions. The kind that feel like intuition but are, in reality, shortcuts gone wrong. You don’t notice them. You trust them, and tha
Mike Benavides
4 min read


The Discipline of Candidate Moves in Chess
Most mistakes in chess don’t originate in calculation. They begin earlier, quieter, almost unnoticed. At the moment of the selection of a candidate moves in chess. You see a move, it looks reasonable, maybe even convincing, and without friction, without resistance, you follow it. No comparison, no internal debate, no widening of the lens. Just a single idea advancing because it appeared first and felt sufficient. It feels efficient, clean, decisive. But it’s fragile. Because
Mike Benavides
4 min read


The Role of Intuition in Chess (And When Not to Trust It)
Some moves arrive before thought has time to organize itself. You look—briefly—and something aligns. A weakness reveals itself. A piece seems slightly off, almost out of rhythm with the position. Then a move surfaces. Not forced, not calculated to the end, but persuasive. It feels right. Quietly, convincingly right. That sensation—immediate yet hard to justify—is intuition. And in chess, it operates like a double-edged blade: precise when handled well, unforgiving when truste
Mike Benavides
4 min read


How to Evaluate a Chess Position Without Guessing
Evaluation is where most decisions are won—or quietly lost. Not in calculation, not in tactics, but in the moment you decide what the position actually means. Because every move you consider, every plan you build, depends on that initial judgment. And when that judgment is vague, unstable, or based on feeling rather than structure, everything that follows becomes unreliable. Guessing feels fast, but learning how to evaluate a chess position properly creates more reliable deci
Mike Benavides
4 min read


From Random Moves to Structured Thinking in Chess: A Player’s Transformation
At the beginning, moves don’t emerge from clarity, they surface quickly, instinctively, and almost impulsively. A check catches your eye—you play it, a capture appears—you take it. A move feels active, aggressive, “logical enough”, and that’s sufficient. There is no underlying thread connecting decisions, no stable idea guiding the game forward—just fragments, loosely tied together, reacting to whatever the position throws at you. It resembles chess. But it lacks structure. A
Mike Benavides
4 min read


The 80/20 Rule in Chess Improvement
Improvement in chess rarely fails because of a lack of effort. It fails because of diffusion. You try to do everything—openings, tactics, strategy, endgames, calculation, even psychology—spreading your attention across a landscape that feels equally important everywhere. It feels responsible. Complete. Even disciplined. But underneath that effort, something is off. The work is real, the return isn’t. And that gap—between effort and visible progress, where many players start t
Mike Benavides
5 min read


How to Keep Focused During Long Chess Games
Focus in chess doesn’t behave like a switch. It’s closer to a tide—advancing, retreating, sometimes steady, often unpredictable. You feel it when it’s there: positions look clearer, moves connect, ideas flow with a certain quiet logic. And then, without any obvious trigger, it slips. Not dramatically. Just enough. A slightly rushed move. A detail overlooked. A decision accepted too quickly. And in long games, that subtle shift is rarely harmless. Because the real opponent, mo
Mike Benavides
5 min read


Why Improvement Feels Slow — And Why That’s a Good Sign
Progress in chess has a peculiar rhythm. You show up, study, then play through positions that once looked chaotic and now feel slightly more familiar. Not easy—just less foreign. And still, when you step back and try to measure it, nothing seems to have changed in any obvious way. Ratings drift, results oscillate, good games appear, then disappear. Patterns you thought you understood slip through your fingers at the worst possible moment. It doesn’t feel like progress. It fee
Mike Benavides
5 min read


How to Stay Calm After a Blunder
Every chess player knows the moment. It doesn’t arrive slowly. It doesn’t warn you. It just happens. One move. A lapse—barely a second. And suddenly, the entire position shifts beneath your feet. A piece is hanging. A tactic was invisible until it wasn’t. What felt stable now feels fragile, almost lost. And here’s the uncomfortable truth. The blunder could be what decides the game, but what follows is still important. Why One Mistake Rarely Stays Alone Blunders have a kind of
Mike Benavides
4 min read


How to Build Calculation Discipline in Chess from Scratch
Many chess players believe their main weakness is calculation. They imagine that stronger players simply possess a sharper mind—one capable of instantly seeing deeper variations, hidden tactics, long forcing sequences unfolding effortlessly inside complex positions. But when you observe real improvement closely, a different pattern appears. Most players do not fail because they cannot calculate. They fail because their calculation lacks discipline. Ideas appear and disappear
Mike Benavides
5 min read


How to Develop Strategic Vision in Chess Step by Step
Many improving chess players eventually run into the same invisible wall. At first, progress feels clear. Tactics improve. Puzzle ratings climb. Patterns begin to stick. The board becomes more familiar, more navigable. Then something strange happens. The game slows down. The position becomes quiet. Pieces remain on the board, yet nothing seems urgent. No tactic jumps out. No combination appears. You stare at the position, searching for direction, but the board offers no obvio
Mike Benavides
6 min read


How to Study Chess When You Have Limited Time
“I want to improve, I just don’t have the time.” That sentence carries more frustration than almost any blunder. Work stretches. School demands. Family obligations expand. Days compress. And somewhere between responsibilities and exhaustion, the idea of serious chess improvement begins to feel unrealistic—almost indulgent. But here is the uncomfortable truth, most players don’t suffer from a lack of time, they suffer from a lack of structure. Time is finite. That will not cha
Mike Benavides
4 min read


Why Talent Is Overrated in Chess — And What Actually Predicts Success
Spend enough time in tournament halls—under fluorescent lights, beside ticking clocks, across from nervous hands hovering over pieces—and you’ll hear the same story recycled with different names. “He’s just gifted.”“She has a natural feel for it.”“I don’t have that kind of brain.” It sounds authoritative. Almost scientific. As if some invisible committee distributed chess ability at birth and sealed the envelope. But after years of coaching children, late-starting adults, amb
Mike Benavides
5 min read


What Your Child Really Learns in Their First 6 Months of Structured Chess
When a parent enrolls a child in chess, the question is rarely about ratings. It is quieter than that. More personal. “What will this actually do for my child?” Not in ten years. Not in theory. In the first six months. Will they just memorize how the knight moves? Will they shuffle pieces online and call it progress? Or will something deeper begin to take shape? What your child really learns in their first 6 months of structured chess is not simply how to play a game. They be
Mike Benavides
4 min read


Why Learning from a Master Changes How You See the Board
Have you ever stared at a chessboard and felt a strange contradiction — everything is visible, yet nothing is clear? The pieces are right there. The squares haven’t moved. The position isn’t hidden. And still, you sense that you’re missing something fundamental. Not a tactic. Not a trick. Something deeper. Most players respond to that frustration by doing more. More puzzles. More opening videos. More blitz. More content. The effort increases. The clarity doesn’t. Here is the
Mike Benavides
4 min read


Time Management in Chess: The Skill That Separates Winners
There is a precise instant in almost every serious tournament game when the air changes. The position gets harder. The clock ticks louder than it should. Your breathing shortens. The board, once orderly, now feels volatile. Ten minutes remain. Fifteen moves to reach time control. Variations multiply, branch, fracture, collide. And without realizing it, you are no longer playing only against your opponent. You are negotiating with time. Most players attribute their losses to t
Mike Benavides
5 min read
Most of the content is written by our Head Coach and Founder, Misha Vilenchuk, as part of our montlhy newsletter
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