Chess Tips, Articles and Guides to Help You Win Chess Games

For most chess players a tournament is a chance to show what they’ve learned and proved those hours spent in training. However, competitions don’t always go as planned and this usually depends on many factors, some of which will have absolutely nothing to do with chess. It could, of course, also be that your training hasn’t been consistent or focused on improving your chess weaknesses and this can all be identified after a thorough analysis of your own games. But besides adjusting your training plan, what else could you do to enhance your tournament performance? From my experience as a chess player and a trainer, there are a few things that can affect your play.

The tactics and calculation training is the most important type of training a chess player can undertake if he or she is serious of his or her chess improvement. The reason for this is that all chess games are decided by tactics. You cannot win if the opponent does not make a mistake – hence you have to take advantage of that mistake. While the mistake can be of various types, from the one-move blunders to a “small” positional detail 4 moves into a line, the mistake is always tactical in its essence. Something was missed and the opponent can take advantage of that miss.

Every chess player trains hard in order to see improvement in their play and, after all the hours invested, the accumulated knowledge is tested in tournaments. As we have mentioned in some of our previous articles, it is important that you choose strong tournaments where you are able to measure your forces with players who are stronger than you.