3/28/2025 – In this sneak peek, IM Robert Ris presents a strategic lesson from his course Mastering Chess Strategy Vol. 2 by analysing his own game against GM Praveen Thipsay. He highlights the importance of king safety and multi-purpose moves, showing how he found a secure setup for his king while activating his rooks for an attack. The game showcases how small strategic decisions can lead to winning positions. The course uses an interactive format where viewers try moves, get feedback, and learn through practice. It’s aimed at players ready to go beyond the basics and refine their positional understanding.
Your personal chess trainer. Your toughest opponent. Your strongest ally. FRITZ 20 is more than just a chess engine – it is a training revolution for ambitious players and professionals. Whether you are taking your first steps into the world of serious chess training, or already playing at tournament level, FRITZ 20 will help you train more efficiently, intelligently and individually than ever before.
The Alapin Variation (1.e4 c5 2.c3) offers a simple yet highly effective solution to all major Sicilian lines, by sidestepping them with 2.c3.
€39.90
Robert Ris: Take your piece play to the next level! - Sneak Peek
In his advanced strategy course, IM Robert Ris builds on the foundation laid in Volume 1 by diving into essential middlegame concepts with a hands-on, interactive approach. Rather than relying on theoretical lectures, the course challenges you to think actively — analysing positions, making decisions, and evaluating piece activity just like in real games.
A central theme is identifying which of your pieces are good or bad and learning how to improve or reposition them for maximum impact.
Key topics include improving your worst piece, understanding when and why to exchange pieces, ensuring king safety through smart piece coordination, and activating pieces that are out of play. In a featured game from the course, Ris illustrates how multi-purpose moves — like repositioning his king safely while activating his rooks — can shift the balance of a game in your favor.
Throughout the course, interactive exercises push you to test your judgment and reinforce lessons through repetition and correction. With over 5.5 hours of training content, the course is designed to make you a more intuitive and confident player.
It’s suitable not only for ambitious club players but also for stronger players looking to sharpen their fundamentals. Free video samples such as Introduction and Improve Your Worst Piece offer a taste of the material. The structured format, combined with ChessBase Books and Fritz App integration, makes this course highly engaging and practical.
Ris’s teaching style emphasizes decision-making over memorization — making it a valuable resource for anyone serious about improving their strategic play.
How do you play the Queen's Gambit Accepted? Does White have promising variations or can Black construct a water-tight repertoire? The Powerbook provides the answers based on 300 000 games, most of them played by engines.
The Queen's Gambit Accepted Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 11827 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 240 are annotated.
Rossolimo-Moscow Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 10950 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 612 are annotated.
The greater part of the material on which the Rossolimo/Moscow Powerbook 2025 is based comes from the engine room of playchess.com: 263.000 games. This imposing amount is supplemented by some 50 000 games from Mega and from Correspondence Chess.
Focus on the Sicilian: Opening videos on the Najdorf Variation with 6.h3 e5 7.Nb3 (Luis Engel) and the Taimanov Variation with 7.Qf3 (Nico Zwirs). ‘Lucky bag’ with 38 analyses by Anish Giri, Surya Ganguly, Abhijeet Gupta, Yannick Pelletier and many more.
€14.90
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