Control the centre, develop, castle — and the reasons behind each, with the exceptions.
You can play good openings without memorising a single variation, provided you understand what the moves are for. These are the principles, and — more usefully — when to break them.
Central squares let pieces reach both wings. Occupying them with pawns is the classical approach; controlling them from a distance is the hypermodern one. Both work; ignoring them entirely does not.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
Getting pieces off the back rank is not the goal — getting them to squares where they do something is. A knight on f3 does more than a knight on h3, and that is the whole reason one is a good move and the other usually is not.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
Your king is safer behind three unmoved pawns, and your rook reaches the centre. In closed positions where the centre will not open, castling can wait.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
Every repeated move is a move your opponent spends developing something new. The exception is when moving it again wins material or a clear structural concession.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
She gets chased, and every attack on her is a free developing move for your opponent. The Scandinavian is the honourable exception — and even there, Black spends the whole opening apologising for it.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
When your rooks see each other along the back rank, your opening is finished and your middlegame plan begins. It is a genuinely useful checkpoint.
The Academy has an interactive drill for exactly this — the position is set up for you, you make the moves on a real board, and it tells you immediately whether you have it. Reading about a chess idea and being able to execute it are different skills, and only one of them wins games.
The ideas on this page can be read in fifteen minutes. Making them automatic takes a few weeks of practice — which is why every section here has a matching interactive drill rather than just an explanation.
No. Every item on this page is a pattern or a principle, not a variation. Patterns are recognised, not recalled, and the way to build recognition is repetition on a board.
Work down this page in order. It is arranged from the most immediately useful to the most situational, so the earliest sections will change your results fastest.
Yes. Every lesson in the Grandmaster Gains Academy is playable free in the browser with no sign-up, and the engine will rate your moves afterwards so you can see where the idea broke down.
197 interactive lessons covering exactly these ideas, free in your browser, no sign-up needed.
♔ Open the AcademyCoaches use Grandmaster Gains to assign these drills and see who actually did them. See the trainer classroom.