Year 3 Preview added. Sounds............awesome!

They have just added the following preview to my account for Year 3. I'll just copy and paste for you all here. Sounds great plus as a bonus it includes 12 videos per month!!! all about attacking the King.

Poor Nad Petra is going to be locked in a basement for the year making all these!



Year 3
A: What really matters for YOU in Strategy

The third and final year of our chess school is meant to be closer to you. It is almost like analyzing your own games.

After studying the theory of chess in an almost exhaustive manner, there are still common, simple strategic mistakes that you surely do.
What can be done? First of all, you’ll need to accept that chess would never exist without mistakes. Here is all the fun. Your opponents also make mistakes and, if you know how to identify them and then to exploit these weaknesses, you’ll get closer to the victory.

This new 1-year course is designed to get you closer to the most common mistakes made by the common chess player. We select 12 games per month played by chess players of all levels, starting from amateur level. We analyze almost every move and, of course, there are lots of mistakes. Some are really awful (from strategical point of view), but most of them are, in fact, typical for that level of play.
When we explained strategy and pawn structures, we rarely had the occasion to look so closely into the player's mind. Now we do it.

So, here is how we chose the games: we selected games played by players of different levels with 200 rating points difference. This way, you can also see how and why the better rated player usually succeeds to win against the lower rated player.

* Month 1: players of 1600 rating against players of 1800 rating
* Months 2 and 3: players of 1800 rating against players of 2000 rating
* Months 4 and 5: players of 2000 rating against players of 2200 rating
* Months 6 and 7: players of 2200 rating against players of 2400 rating
* Month 8: players of 2400 rating against players of 2600 rating
* Month 9: how top grandmasters (>2750) win against 2600 grandmasters
* Month 10, 11, 12: the evolution of elite grandmasters from the beginning of their career up to the top.

All the games are chosen to be instructive in all the phases of the game, from the opening to the endgame. There are no short games, but only real fights. We analyze the game in all the important moments, often move by move. Most of our analysis constitute chess lessons on their own. We also comment the psychological mistakes, decision taking process and we offer a wealth of practical advices for the real game.
B: What really matters in Chess: to Checkmate

You may ask yourself, how can we go back to such "simple" thing, like the checkmate, after we have studied the strategy in its most subtle aspects. Because NOW it's the best time for this. Your positional understanding will greatly help you build the attack using all the forces, to build real strong attacks.

Pieces coordination is essential in both Strategy and Tactics. Pieces must cooperate together for an objective: from some minor weakness in the opponent's pawn structure until the enemy KING.
In chess, if you want to destroy your opponent's defense, you must bring all your forces. In this section of the course, we do bring all our forces for one main objective: the king. 12 videos per month for 12 months represent our bonus for this course, all about ATTACKING THE KING. We start by explaining the best attacking techniques and go up to teach very subtle ideas of attack and defense.

After almost 150 video lectures on this subject, you will surely be a fierce attacker and, at least as important, a strong defender when the case.

Holy crap, that sounds awesome. These guys keep improving the course, that's for sure.

The material certainly looks interesting and instructive, but... I am deaf and am unable to follow in general what's being said on video. If there were transcripts, then that might be fine...

Someone else said it, but now that I think about it, it would be a lot better if they did endgame for year 2. Main endgame strategy, important positions, etc, and stuff from real games. Opening analysis is so damned overdone in the chess instruction world, and for most people so relatively unimportant. Every GM seems compelled to drain his opening sewer once or twice a year with another dump of useless opening material that ultimately the average club player simply doesn't need. And they know this. They tell you not to study openings, but produce such a high proportion of opening books it is just a weird obsession we have.

I'm in a mood tonight.

I tend to agree. You can devote a lifetime to opening study if you want to and your opponent can stray from it all on move 2.

I'm hoping they continue to update the year 1 course with basic endgames as they have begun with the month 5 updates. That's clearly where the chess fundamentals belong.

It seems the third year will also talk about endgames

B1: What really matters in Chess: to Checkmate
Bonus offered in Months 1,3,5,7,9,11.

You may ask yourself, "How can we go back to such a 'simple' thing, like the checkmate, after we have studied strategy in its most subtle aspects." Because NOW is the best time for this. The positional understanding you have gained will greatly help you build an offensive using all your forces, resulting in really strong attacks.

Piece coordination is essential in both strategy and tactics. Pieces must work together towards an objective: from exploiting some minor weakness in the opponent's pawn structure to attacking the enemy KING.
In chess, if you want to destroy your opponent's defense, you must bring all your forces. In this section of the course, we do bring all our forces with one main target: the king. 12 videos per month for 6 months represent our first bonus for this course. All are about ATTACKING THE KING. We start by explaining the best attacking techniques and go on to teach very subtle ideas of attack and defense.

After 30 hours of video lectures on this subject, you will surely be a fierce attacker and, at least as important, a strong defender when the need arises.

B2: Where the moves are critical: in ENDGAMES
Bonus offered in Months 2,4,6,8,10,12.

You can win a game of chess by king attacks or by entering into "technically won endgames".
Our second bonus for this course consists in 30 hours of video lectures on endgames. We will discuss not only the "technical endgames", but we will cover complex endgames and we will study the STRATEGY of the endgames and, in general, strategy when just a few pieces remained on the board. We will also study the transitions from middlegames to endgames.

In the first part of this course (section A), we study only long games so we comprehensively do cover the late middlegame and endgames. Beside a lot of practical advices, every time when a common situation arises, our comments constitute in real endgame lessons.
Now, in these 30 hours of video lectures we will follow a Structured program of the endgame study and endgame strategy. In the end, you should have a good understanding and a good handling of the complex endgames.

More than that, a better confidence for the endgame and a better "endgame visualization" will help you think more purposely in the middlegame and even in the opening. Knowing which endgames are good for you, you will be able to add more elements into your TO DO lists also.

So, you will receive as bonus almost 150 video lectures: 6 months (in the odd months) we study the king attack and 6 months (in the even months) we study the endgames.