In my last post, I was studying GM Igor Smirnov’s course The Grandmaster’s Positional Understanding to develop better relationships with my bishops and various other pieces. You can read about it HERE. Since then, I have completed the course and it has made an enormous difference in my playing abilities. Not only did it help me with my bishop issues but I was also pleasantly surprised at how much I learned about pawns. With this new knowledge, I was able to increase my rating but then it happened, again. I started struggling in games played against higher rated players. This time, the problem was my Endgame.
The endgame, to me, was daunting. It was slow and the board seemed like nothing but an endless bunch of empty spaces. I needed to change my endgame attitude so, I started studying GM Smirnov’s course An Endgame Expert. WOW! Once again it was just what I needed and once again, it was chock-full of amazing information. There are a total of 8 lessons in this course. I have completed only three of them but what a difference it has made. I like to study a bit and then practice everything until I have a solid~ish grasp on the new concepts. At the time of writing this, I have completed 50 games on chess.com and have obtained my highest rating of 1156. You can find my current stats HERE. I also feel that I’ve reached a good place to resume studying. I will soon begin Lesson 4, How to use your pieces in an end game. I took a quick look at the lesson and it seems to have details on using whatever pieces you have preserved or are stuck with. This is just what I need. That’s all for now.
Happy Chessing,
Michelle