Aveskulov is a peak-2545 FIDE-rated grandmaster, a Ukrainian national champion, and an online chess coach since 2009. He’s joined by Sergey Tugaj, who specializes in teaching scholastic players rated 1300 to 2100 Elo.
And, in the 50-Day Tactics Challenge, the duo combines their expertise to sharpen your tactics with structured daily sets and establish a foundation for consistent rating gains.
Here’s the plan: Every day for the next 50 days, solve a set of 10 puzzles, complete the reviews if there are any… -and that’s it! By setting a “hard” number, you won’t have to wonder how many positions to study or minutes to spend. You simply solve puzzles until you reach that green congratulatory note — then get on with your day.
The puzzles came from the games of Garry Kasparov, Vishy Anand, Magnus Carlsen, and other legends. So rest assured they’ll push your pattern recognition and calculation skills to the next level.
One of the most important positions to learn is those with opposite-coloured bishops. A chess player, wanting to become strong, needs to improve many different areas of the game. This might include, for example, playing positions with opposite sides castling, making positional pawn sacrifices, and playing with a knight against a bishop. Developing experience in this or that type of position enables a player to become better prepared and more confident when these occur in his games. It is also important as players can then decide to enter particular types of positions that they have studied before, for example, choosing to play with or against the isolated queen pawn.
Developing expertise in middlegames with opposite-colored bishops can be very time-consuming. To do so you can read different manuals about middlegame play; most will have at least a chapter about such positions. There is also useful material on YouTube. You can also study the games of strong GMs and study the critical moments yourself or you can read this series of articles which the Modern Chess team provides you with! Any material is easier to learn if it is properly structured.
ForwardChess: Improving the endgame technique (book 2) is going to help you to become better in the same-colored bishop endgames (SCBE). Being an adherent of Mark Dvoretsky’s method of coaching, author supports his idea about optimal way to study chess endgames. First, one needs to study the theory of a given type of endgame; secondly, a player needs to improve his or her practical skills with exercises.
ForwardChess: The second volume in the series Improving the Endgame Technique by GM Aveskulov covers Opposite-Colored Bishop Endgames
"Pawn endings are to chess what putting is to golf." (C.J.S. Purdy) Pawn endgames are a real headache for many chess players. Due to their outward simplicity, they are often underestimated. If you find yourself jettisoning rating points in pawn endgames due to blunders, missed wins and drawing opportunities, check out chessable.com's
Improving the Endgame Technique: (pawn endgames).
In 2012, Gambit Publications published my book, Attack with Black, offering a comprehensive view of the Black repertoire against 1.d4 based on the Benko gambit.
Modern Chess graciously accepted me to their team. So far I have prepared a few databases ('Learn from Stein’ and 'The Art of Exchanges’) and a few articles for the regular Modern Chess magazine ( Saving Lost Positions, Master the Pawn Play, The King is a Strong Piece, and 'The Danger of Making Natural Moves Learn to Fight Your Reflexes).
ChessAble: GM Valeriy Aveskulov starts his acclaimed endgame course with this short, but sweet, guide to same-colored bishop endgames (SCBE).
Learn to love Opposite Colored Bishop Endgames Learn them, look for them, make them your secret strength. GM Valeriy Aveskulov returns with the second in his series of targeted endgame trainers. Part Two explores one of Magnus Carlsen's big specialties - the OCBE.