Elevate My Chess is excited to introduce Online Group Lessons for all levels – Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced level players. Our group lessons are like no other as our class sizes are intentionally designed to be small (groups of 6 to 12 students) for better learning through more one-on-one online interaction between students and our…
Key Focus Areas To Improve Your Chess
As with most activities, it takes intentional practice and mastery of key aspects of the activities to see improvement. It’s no different in chess. Our goal at Elevate My Chess is to see every player improve so below are some of the suggested areas we encourage new and fairly new chess players to focus on…
2018 Chess & Fun Summer Camp Comes to a Successful end
The 2018 Chess & Fun Summer Camp was successfully completed last week from July 16 to July 20, 2018. The kids had a lot of fun playing basketball, soccer, chess and learning the building blocks for money management. Click here to see pictures from the one-week camp: For parents of kids that attended the camp,…
Veselin Topalov misses win against Ding Liren
In round 3 of the Shamkir Chess open played earlier this year, Veselin Topalov had a big chance be the first to score a win in the tournament against Ding Liren. The position in the picture above is one of the rare situations in which Black’s two knights are clearly superior to White’s pair of…
Don’t Make the Mistake of Leaving your King in the Center
As you prepare for the upcoming Waterdown Chess Challenge, let’s review the danger of leaving your King in the center. While this may be seen as a beginner’s mistake, it really isn’t. Players of all strengths prefer to develop their other pieces if their King looks safe in the center. As we’re about to see,…
Don’t make the mistake of reacting to your opponent
In this article by GM Damian Lemos, he looks at one of the mistakes club players make all the time is reacting to what their opponent has just played. He advises that while you should try and understand what your opponent is up to, you shouldn’t let him/her dictate play. In the image above, Emanuel Lasker (Black)…
The 4-Step Thinking Process
As we approach the upcoming tournaments beginning next week, this article on the 4-step thinking process published on ichess.net may be useful for many players as they prepare to compete in the coming weeks. Your opponent has just hit their clock and now it’s your turn to move. Out of all the possible options on…
Important Scholastic Coaching Tips by Susan Polgar
In this article, Susan offers some chess coaching tips for parents with young children who are just starting out in chess Coaching Tips Since I started attending scholastic chess events some years ago when my children began to play chess, I saw things in a different light and there were routines my sons and…
Fit body, fit mind, better chess!
Chess and Fitness is nothing new for members of the SPICE team. If one wants to be a top notch chess player, fitness will for sure play a very important role. While we train extremely hard in chess, we also pay a lot of focus to physical training. In the US, most Swiss Open Chess…