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Get better at chess, on purpose.
Short guides, each with a board you can play on.
How to learn chess openings.
Not a list of moves to memorise. A method: understand the three jobs every opening does, pick one opening per colour, learn its ideas — then drill the moves until they hold.
The best chess openings for beginners.
Six openings that teach you chess while you play them — three for White, three for Black. What each one asks of you, and a finder that picks yours in ten seconds.
How to build an opening repertoire.
A repertoire is a set of prepared answers: one for every serious try your opponent can make. Here is how to choose the skeleton, map the branches, decide how deep to go — and grow it from your own games.
How to memorize chess openings for good.
You don't forget lines because your memory is bad. You forget them because rereading doesn't work. Three techniques from memory research — understanding, active recall and spacing — fix it.
How to get better at chess tactics.
Tactics win most games below master level. Getting better at them isn't about solving more puzzles — it's about learning patterns one at a time, then repeating them until you see them without looking.
How to stop blundering.
Most blunders aren't hard to see. They're one move deep — a check, a capture or a threat you never looked for. A ten-second check before every move catches almost all of them.
How to analyze your chess games.
You improve from the games you look at afterwards, not the ones you play. Here is a four-step review that uses the engine as a referee instead of a crutch — and turns every loss into a lesson.
How chess ratings work.
A rating isn't a grade. It's a prediction of how you'll score against other players — and it moves by exactly how wrong that prediction was. Here is the maths, live, and what your number actually means.
Find your blind spots.
You can't see your own weaknesses by looking at one game. They show up as patterns across thirty: the same fork missed, the same opening left a pawn down by move twelve. Here is how to find them, and what to do next.
Guess the rating.
A strong player and a weak one can play the same first ten moves. What gives the rating away is what happens next: the move that hangs a piece, the endgame converted without a wobble, the clock. Here is how to read the clues.
Openings for Black.
As Black you don't choose the battlefield, you answer it. The right defence isn't the 'best' one in the abstract. It's the one whose positions you understand and enjoy. Here are the main choices, and what each one asks of you.