Extra Module: Openings

Dvoretsky: "in our day, the study of many typical positions is CLOSELY linked with the study of openings."

The Opening Module is a 12-month training program to help you build an opening repertoire for high performance and which prepares you to play against strong opponents.

This module offers you a complete preparation on openings, but not only. A good opening preparation doesn't mean only some variations, but much more. Besides theory and opening variations (with clear and large explanations), you will get a complete training including middlegame preparation with specific strategies and tactics related to these opening systems, a lot of instructive games, quizzes and problems.

Why opening preparation

Nowadays, the importance of a good opening repertoire is essential for high performance. This is because no human being is able to know all strategies and tactics specific to all positions that may appear in a chess game. Very often, inaccuracy during the opening may lose the assets of the position leading to a flat or bad middlegame or to an unwanted endgame. For performance, players need to be exact and to know the plans for the middlegame and the particularities of the position, even from the first moves of the game. Therefore, only in this way, one can know the positions for developing the pieces (knowing their future paths too) in order to get them ready for the battle to follow.

Probably you know that even grandmasters do not know how to play every kind of position at the same level. Mortal grandmasters may even play badly some middlegames resulted from openings they are not usually playing. Chess is very vast so that one cannot learn everything, and very often, a chess game between equal opponents is won due to a better plan and very subtle moves which work only in an exact given position. One more example in this regard is the work that professional players do "at home" for the opening, trying to guide the game on a territory unknown by their opponent. A better cognition of the character and the essence of the resulted position offers an important advantage.

The knowledge of playing a certain position and strategies, which are tightly connected to it, are much more valuable in practice than the knowledge of general strategy rules. This is why knowing the opening and the plans for the middlegame is very important for the entire game.

Opening Lessons

Our 12-month training program on openings is organized and focused on one system at a time. We start with the opening repertoire for White by presenting 2 different opening repertoires, with both 1.e4 and 1.d4, in order to meet all players' styles of play.
Then, we will treat the openings for Black against 1.e4, 1.d4, 1.c4, and 1.Nf3. Against the main first opening moves (1.e4 and 1.d4), we will also present 2 opening systems, the main ones being Sicilian Najdorf and Nimzo-Indian, and the secondary ones being French Defense and Dutch Defense.

For your convenience, the lessons and games are presented in 3 common file formats: 1. PDF document (printable version); 2. Browser version (see directly in your browser), and 3. ChessBase file (you can download and use a free program).

Introductory lessons
At first, we present the opening systems by a set of introductory lessons so that you can get a global picture on the whole. This will also help you understand the main ideas for each system. Download a free sample of introductory lesson (in .pdf format) (Note: "CQS" = consequences of a move; "TO DO" = what you have to do in that position).

Study of games and plans
After the introductory lessons, we will start analyzing instructive games, plans and middlegame typical strategies and tactics for every system. You will also get the selection of the most instructive or good games played by strong players. After this stage of preparation, you should already know how to play that opening system very well, being able to deeply understand the subtleties and ideas behind every move.

Exercises and problems
To make sure the information is well digested and correctly understood, there are some sets of exercises with many and different kinds of questions, some of which are even tricky. Afterwards you will have to solve some more difficult problems as like playing against a good opponent, well prepared too. The given solutions are comprehensively explained and very instructive.

At the end of this course, you will master the openings and, more importantly, you will know how to play at a high level the middlegames resulted from your openings.

Cost
The Opening Module monthly fee is 15 USD.
The price includes 2 complete opening repertoires, for both White and Black.

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