Every piece, every rule, every square it can reach — the complete beginner's guide.
The six pieces are the whole game. Everything else — tactics, openings, endgames — is a consequence of how these six move. Most players learn them once, badly, and spend years half-guessing whether a bishop can reach a square. This guide fixes that properly.
Forward one square, or two from its starting rank, and it captures diagonally — the only piece that moves and captures differently. It cannot move backwards, which means every pawn move is permanent. That single fact is why pawn structure decides most games.
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.
Two squares one way, one square across. It is the only piece that jumps, which makes it the best piece in a closed position and the worst in an open one. A knight always lands on the opposite colour square to the one it left.
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.
Any distance along a diagonal. It starts on one colour and stays on that colour for the entire game — which is why the bishop pair is worth more than the sum of its parts, and why a lone bishop cannot control the whole board.
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.
Any distance along a rank or file. Rooks are weak early, when the board is full, and devastating late, when files open. Getting your rooks to open files is a plan in itself.
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.
Rook and bishop combined. The strongest piece, and the easiest to misuse — bring her out too early and she gets chased around while your opponent develops with tempo.
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.
One square in any direction. He is a liability in the middlegame and a genuine fighting piece in the endgame. Learning when that switch happens is worth several hundred rating points.
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.