Blog

The reference sections cover individual openings, tactics, strategy concepts, and endgames in depth. This blog is where the topics that cross those boundaries live — how to actually put a repertoire together, how to structure your study time, and the occasional look at what's happening in the broader chess world and why it matters to an improving player rather than only to a professional following it for a living.

Start with the guide to building your first opening repertoire if you're not sure where to begin — it's the single most-referenced piece on the site and links out to the reference material that backs up each of its recommendations.

What you'll find here

Posts fall into a few recurring categories. Study-process guides cover how to actually structure your improvement — what order to learn things in, how much time to spend on openings versus tactics versus endgames, and how to review your own games productively. Opening-in-context pieces look at a single opening or family of openings from a wider angle than a single reference page allows, including why certain systems rise and fall in popularity over time. And occasional topical posts cover the broader chess world — world championship cycles, shifts in how people study now that online blitz dominates practice time — specifically from the angle of what an improving club player should take away from them, not as neutral news coverage.

New posts are added periodically rather than on a fixed schedule; the goal is a useful piece worth reading, not a quota. Each post is written to stand on its own, but most link back to the specific reference pages that back up whatever claim or recommendation it's making, so you can go as deep as you want on any topic it raises. If you're only going to read one post, make it the repertoire-building guide — everything else here assumes you've at least skimmed it.