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OPENINGS |
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Practical Opening Tips for
White (90 minutes)
Speaker: GM
Larry Christiansen
Audience: Player Rating 1200—1500 |
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Opening theory in chess is a
science unto itself. For professional players, often the opening
analyses ends at move — or even move 30 at times. That's
a very difficult task for anyone! Even constant study of openings
is no guarantee that you will get an advantage out of an opening.
If Black plays accurately, Black
and White will equalize. On the other hand, there are numerous
solid openings which lead to interesting games without the need
to memorize a multitude of variations. In this course, we will
cover:
• Opening principles
• The most popular club-level
openings
• Tricky, tactical-based
openings |
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Practical Opening Tips for
Black (90 minutes)
Speaker: GM Larry Christiansen
Audience: Player Rating 1200-1500 |
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A Black opening is one move behind,
giving you less leeway in your approach. While White can almost
get away with purely following the basic opening principles,
when you play Black you've got to know exactly what you
are doing. You'll learn how to choose your opening based
on your personality and style:
• Choices against the
King Pawn start
• Choices against the
Queen Pawn start |
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Opening Disasters (90 minutes)
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin
Audience: Player Rating 1400-1600 |
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You don't have to put in
long hours studying opening theory, but you must develop a sense
of sound, principled opening play. Examples of openings gone
horribly wrong will illustrate the deadly sins that cause such
calamities. The culprits will include:
• Running around with
the queen
• Failure to castle promptly
• Inattention to threats
• Improper or slow development |
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Hypermodern Opening Strategy
in Action
(90 minutes)
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin
Audience: Player Rating 1700-1900 |
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See the development of a modern
opening system through a visit to a grandmaster's opening
laboratory. This course will detail the birth of an original opening
idea inspired by established variations followed by subsequent
practical trials. The logic behind the restrained central approach
will be revealed along the way. |
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TACTICS/STRATEGY |
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Winning Won Games (90 minutes)
Speaker: GM Larry Christiansen
Audience: Player Rating 1200-1700 |
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Gaining a winning position is
just half the battle. Actually overcoming your opponent's
stubborn resistance and forcing resignation is an essential
skill for the complete chess player. This class is designed
to improve this vital skill or “technique” by:
• Understanding how to
evaluate positions so that you know when, and when not, to take
risks to close out the “won” games
• Comparing your options:
finishing the “won” games in style versus taking
the sure bet |
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Traps and Counter Traps
(90 minutes)
Speaker: GM Susan Polgar
Audience: Player Rating of 1300-1600 |
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The average club player is able
to set up basic one- or two-move traps. One of the differences
between these players and the Masters is that the more advanced
player often sets up a counter trap. In this session, we shall
see examples where one side makes a cute-looking trick but stops
the calculation a move or two short. This incorrect evaluation
of the
position causes the loss of the game. |
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Ideas to Save a Hopeless-Looking
Game
(90 minutes)
Speaker: GM Susan Polgar
Audience: Player Rating 1300-1700 |
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One of my coaches used to say:
"Nobody ever saved a game that he resigned!" and "It's
never too late to resign!" In this session, we shall discuss
ways to save games that seems to be lost. Winning is the goal,
but drawing a lost game is another reasonable goal. We shall
see
numerous examples of Stalemates, Perpetual Checks, Theoretical
Draws, and examples where we turn the results completely around
-- by setting up traps to even win lost games. |
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The Art of Attack (90 minutes)
Speaker: GM Larry Christiansen
Audience: Player Rating 1300-1900 |
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This course is geared toward
intermediate players who wish to hone their chess attacking
skills and increase their understanding of tactics.
In this class, we will go over
two different approaches to attacking chess:
• More-structured attacks
(examples from Botvinnik and Kasparov)
• Personal intuition
(examples from Shirov, Topalov, and Tal) |
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Bishop v. Knight (90 minutes)
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin
Audience: Player Rating 1500-1800 |
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When is one better than the other?
This course will examine positions that favor each minor piece
and good moments to swap one for the other. Grandmaster Benjamin
will share insight on piece values gained from his experiences
working on the Deep Blue project. |