Hello and welcome to Chess Hacks! My name is Leo and I’m on a mission to give you simplified and actionable advice on chess improvement. Chess Hacks was established with the goal to provide ...
Read more »It may sound surprising at first. We’ve all heard about hints and tips to get better in chess, but almost nobody talks about the value of patience. But think about it for a minute: The obvious advantage of being patient during a chess game is that you minimize your blunders. […]
It was Bobby Fischer who famously said: ‘I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.’ While we cannot just disregard one of the greatest chess players in history, research and experience have proved otherwise. Chess is played between two humans facing each other over the chessboard. It is […]
You know what’s the commonest reason two chess players fight with each other? (I’ll let you think for a minute) . . . They can’t agree on the evaluation of a critical position of their game. Yep, that’s correct. They can’t agree on which side has the advantage during a […]
We’ve all been there (some of us more often than others!) We try our best, but the game is not going our way. We have lost a significant amount of material or we’re under a crushing attack or (you fill the blanks). Is it time to resign? Definitely not. Before I […]
Have you heard of this famous quote by Lasker? It may sound surprising at first, but the more you think about it, the truer it becomes. Why is it so difficult to win a game where you have more material or a much better position than your opponent? Well, you […]
There are many different kinds of endgames. When I was starting, I was told that I needed to master the King + Bishop + Knight vs. King endgame with the aim to deliver mate within 50 moves. If you’re familiar with this endgame, you would know that this is a […]
The short answer is no. There is not a good reason to study endgames. The truth is there are MANY good reasons to study endgames! 🙂 1. Endgames will win or lose the game for you. What happens in the first 10-20 moves of a game can be reversed with […]
There’s a lot of ‘meat’ in the endgame, so I’m going to present here some of its basic principles: 1. Use your King We are often taught that King safety is of paramount importance. This is definitely true when the Queens and the Rooks are still on the board. But […]
The endgame is probably the most underappreciated phase of chess for beginners. Newbies tend to like having many pieces to play with. They like moving their Queen all around the board and their Rooks up and down open files and their bishops in long diagonals. Beginners also like to have […]
We’ve all been there many times during our chess life: You start a game of chess (either over the board or online) and you’re faced with some never-seen-before-opening-moves by your opponent. How should you react in such a situation? 1. Do not panic Just because you’ve never seen this opening […]