My Advanced Course Implemented With Lichess Studies

Continued from
jomega's Blog • My Chess Courses Implemented With Lichess Studies • lichess.org/

Today I'm going to talk about my Advanced Course. This course is a work in progress.

Learning order

The Advanced Course has the Intermediate Course as a prerequisite. If you skipped any of the Beginner or Intermediate Courses, then you may find that you have to go back to them for certain topics. Use the Chapter list in the Advanced Course study for topics until a table of contents gets created. The Beginner and Intermediate Courses have table of contents to find topics.

There are multiple learning orders for the Advanced Course material. If you have a mentor, they can help you plan a learning order. The courses are written so that almost always things are defined before being used, presented in order of easiest first, and "building blocks" are given first. If you do the topics in a different order than the linear order, then you'll have to backtrack more often. By linear order, I mean that any time there is a link in the studies you should probably follow it first! To get a global view, use the chapter list.

How long does it take to learn the material in the Advanced Course?

The answer is that it varies widely, but I'd say that with 5-10 hrs of study and playing a week, it will take between 2 to 3 years. Hence, if starting with the Beginner Course, a total of 7-9 years. By the time you finish the Advanced Course and know it well, you will probably be 1700-1900 ELO.

These numbers are my best guess. I have included them only because people ask. They may not apply to you at all! There are just too many variables in the process of learning chess.

What might be different than other courses for advanced chess players?

In the Advanced course I address building calculation skills. Chess is a game of exceptions to any rules of thumb or theories. Hence, unless you just know the position at hand, calculating well gives the best results. There are studies in the course that explore how you can acquire the skills needed to calculate well.

There are also studies in the course on how to annotate games. Annotating your own games and reviewing them with a strong player is one of the best ways to improve.

For the more advanced player, board visualization includes the ability to recognize features of positions; most of which are determined by the pawn structure and the pieces relation to that. The Intermediate course presented these features in detail. It also laid the ground work for the Advanced course by introducing a well-known categorization of pawn structures and their themes. In the Advanced course there is practice recognizing these features and structures in games. These so called positional features help in playing the entire game; including the opening.

The Advanced Course looks closely at the concept of a plan, the move selection process, and how to improve these.

The Advanced Course continues to look at several non rote methods for the opening: 1) Critical examination of openings, and 2) Opening systems. Specifically the course looks at the Colle and the King's Indian. These are the same opening systems from the previous courses, but in the Advanced Course I look at them much more deeply and critically.

Other Topics You'd Expect Are Included.

Tactics and endgames

The two biggest bangs for your study time continue to be tactics and endgames. It is critically important to analyze all your games with a strong player. From that analysis, you will find where you personally have problems; like which tactics you miss and which endgames are your weak points. This activity gives you focus when you study tactics and endgames.

The endgame material includes:

• KNBk so as to learn to coordinate the Knight and Bishop,
• King destinations and paths,
• King and pawn endgames, including races to Queen,
• several Rook and pawn endgames, including the Vančura Position, KPRrk 5th Rank Rule, and 4th Rank Rule,
• Queen versus 7th rank Bishop pawn and 7th rank Rook pawn,
• KBPPkb with opposite color Bishops and general cases, and
• fortresses in Bishop up endgames.

Annotated games

As in the other courses, there are many instructive and entertaining games from the literature that are annotated and presented in context of some topic.

Application from real games

Instead of ending the Advanced Course with a study containing tests, the course ends with a study on applying what has been learned. I use the Lichess Interactive lesson study facility, but on real game examples. Since real games don't always have a best move at each point, I ask questions where the answer is not just a move. For example, the "puzzles" may ask you why an opponent is playing a move, or what the plans should be for both opponents. My intent is that in these "puzzles" cover a wide range of topics from the first 3 courses.

Advanced Course
Advanced Course Table of Contents (TBD)
https://lichess.org/study/VHcKZ37M/

Next Blog in This Series

In the next blog in this series I'll discuss the pros and cons of implementing a course with Lichess studies.

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Table of Contents for all my studies

I have written many other Lichess studies. All my studies are cross linked. Here is a table of contents for all my studies.
Jomega Studies Table of Contents (lichess.org)

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I hope you enjoy this blog series. Likes are really appreciated.