I think the general problem with books is that they all tend to prepare you for the chess battle as quickly as possible. A little bit of this, little bit of that - and you are ready to play. That's mostly my experience with the US authors.

On the other hand, there are old Soviet-school books. They are much harder and not so applicable. Lot of work is required before you can actualy apply what you have studied in the practice. But they are much much more systematic than nowdays chess books.

Some years ago, I even started to learn basics of Russian language, just to be able to read those Sovet books which are not translated to English... luckly, lots of them are translated to Croatian, since Yugoslavian chess school was oriented on the Soviet model.

What about the "Extra Module: Openings" thing? Do you attend that course as well? I don't quite understand it... Does it mean that you need 2 years to go through all that (strategy and tactics as well as openings)?

Nope, I'm just following the main course, don't know anything about the openings course.

However my understanding is that you can do them both at the same time, should you be so inclined, so it would take "just" one year for the whole package.

OK, I am on!

In the next 24 hours I will recieve my first lessons. I shall keep you informed about my progress and impressions during my study.

Thanks for all the advices!

cool

I am new to these forums, so hello everyone!

I am also very interested in this program, so please keep us informed of how it's going. I may sign up for that after the first of the year...

I need something more then self study, and hiring a chess coach is much more expensive than this.

I look forward to your updates!

I looked at the demo training material from month 1, and also the way the program is going to be structured. I'm a bit skeptical, and the program says it should boost someone who was really serious with the program to 2300 . The problem I see (so far in my observations, perhaps I am wrong) in these posts and possibly in the testimonials, is that the students (not the teachers) have passed the 2300 FIDE threshold from a lower level of playing ability (say from 1800 - 2300). (Please someone let me know if I am wrong here)

The cost is cheap for sure (relative to other methods of chess instruction), but organizing material suited for a specific players needs is probably only in the ~200USD$ a month course.

I can consider that it is a good supplement to regular study, but then the issue is, 6-10 hours a week is A LOT of time as a "supplement", and can possibly put into better use. And also according to the 12-13 month plan, there are no endgames covered. If I am going to have to supplement this with my own endgame materials, it's not so much more of an effort for me to just do the same with middle games, tactics, or openings.

A lot of skepticism is based on the way that I had learned the game, through the systematic study of many classical works by Kotov, Euwe, Botvinnik, Averbakh, Fischer, and some more modern works by Dvoretsky. In about 7 months, exploration of these classical works had led me from just learning the game (hindsight evaluation maybe 925 ELO) to break 1925 USCF (along with a tournament performance @ 2350).

Anyone to rebuke me here? I'm willing to make a small investment of money, but time is another issue. The demo material so far has not impressed me, and I am sincerely looking for evidence that this program will take the serious student to 2300.

When I enrolled on the program a few months ago I was a (roughly) 1600-1700 rated player and did not believe for a second that it could turn me into a 2300 player in just one year (or ever for that matter!). That claim on their part is clearly marketing speek. After all, if such a magic solution really existed we'd all be FIDE Master players, wouldn't we?

My main reason for enrolling was FIRSTLY to finally study chess in a systematic way (devoting it a few hours a week, rather than "studying" in a random and disorganised way as I had previously done). From this point of view I am happy with the course.
SECONDLY, and naturally, I also wanted to improve my playing strength (my aim is to break the 2000 threshold for slow OTB games) and I also have some evidence for this, although I must admit that I haven't played that many slow OTB games since enrolling.

I don't think there is evidence of this anywhere in the testimonials to be honest, as far as I can see nobody claimed to have gone from 1800 to 2300 thanks to the "generic" course, and if they did I suspect that the course would be just ONE of the factors that made this "jump" possible.

Exactly, you cannot expect such a cheap medicine to work wonders... (I certainly didn't when I enrolled, and was not sufficiently motivated or crazy to invest 200 bucks a month for a tailored course).

Now it's my turn to be skeptical...
Don't take it personally, but did you really gain 1000 (!) points after dedicating just 7 months to the classics? If you really did, well, hats off to you! Also, has the 2350 ELO performance confirmed by other results or was it just a one off (one data point does not make a statistic)?

Personally I suspect that either

1) you grossly misevaluated your initial playing strength or

2) you are a very promising budding talent / chess genius, in which case the course would certainly be a waste of time and you should rather seek the help of a personal tutor / chess coach to work on your game and realize your full chess potential.

My two cents,

C.

I am currently working on my 1st month training, and there are some observations I would like to share. Some of which will answer some of zoren's questions.

First of all, I am very happy to have a chance to study chess in the organized and systematic way. I have recieved and studied the 1st month training, and I am very satisfied with the materials and the approach.

As far as I've noticed, this lessons are designed primary to learn you how to discipline your mind, that is how to think. I will compare it to tennis lessons.

Supose one starts playing tennis for fun. And he keeps doing it for years... he reaches some point and cannot go beyond it. Then he goes to tennis school, hires a coach and starts learning tennis from the beginning. What happens? He suddenly realises that every move he used to make is wrong. Wrong not because it gives poor results, but because it's not the way the pro's play. OK, one says, I will try to discipline myself and every time the ball comes on my forehand, I will do it properly. What is the result? His play is now worse than before! But he ignores it, and now he has to THINK every time before he hits the ball. THINK like his coach has instructed him. It is very hard to do it every time, and lots of time he forgets about it and hits the ball like he used to. It takes time... eventualy, he will start hitting the ball in the proper way wihout having to thing about it. As a result, his games will get better and he will finaly make progress.

The point is: this school will learn you how to think in the proper way. It is very hard to apply, you have to force your self not to make a move until you have reached the disciplined line of thinking... asking yourself the proper questions and so on.

As I have understood so far, this lessons WILL NOT learn you openning, nor endgames, nor the ways of attack. That's what the books are for. For the attack take Vukovic, for the variation calculus Kotov and for the end game any book that you fancy (I recomend Averbach).

One thing that this course is promissing as well is that at after 1 year you will be able to play a blind game.

So, this is not "alpha and omega" of chess. It is just a "how-to-properly-think" lession. Add that and ablility of visualization (blind games) and you can really start improving yourself (with the help of Vukovic, Kotov, Averbach, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Fischer, Yudovich and so on).

Stay well!

The best way to improve is by private lessons. GMs have a whole seperate language from your average 2200. 2200 is great, the only problem is that a 2200 has no clue what a GrandMaster is doing over the board.

Although they will pontificate to you all day long on what is best and least. They are simply not qualified to teach at the 2300 level.

Also, there are a great many secrets shared by GMs that Never make it into books. (They won't even share these with you if you simply pay them, you must show very strong promise.)

So, you could spend years and thousands of dollars studying sub-par material, or you could hire a GM to train you, and in six months understand Chess better than the average 2200 ever will.