Chess Assessment

Chess Assessment Plans

Chess coaching pic 2 If you’re serious about improving your chess, at some point you’ll need someone to work with you on how to improve your chess training, identify your weaknesses, tell you how your opening repertoire could be sharpened, assess how good your endgame knowledge is, evaluate your tactical ability and also highlight your main strengths so that you can put them to good use.
Does your opening repertoire really suit your style? Choosing an opening which doesn’t suit your style is a common mistake which a lot of people make (I should know, my first opening was completely inadequate!) and it can be a little painful, because often you´ll regret the positions that you keep getting on the board, when in fact all you had to do is choose a different opening more suited to your true style.
Perhaps it’s time to polish your repertoire? Weaknesses… yes, you know you have them, everyone does, but sometimes we’re a little reluctant to admit our own weaknesses and it’s much easier to have an expert point out what those weaknesses are.
How good is your endgame technique? Do you have the minimal knowledge required to take part in competitions with confidence? We can tell you.
Chess coaching pic 1 Which things need to work on a little and which need a lot of work?
Everyone knows tactics, but how does your tactical ability compare to that of other players of around the same level as you?
Time management during a game. How do you deal with time trouble? Do you get into time trouble often?
What about your strengths? Do they need to be empowered?
These are just some of the questions which our assessment plans try to answer.
The 3 pillars of a good assessment plan are:

  • Testing,
  • Games review and
  • Interactive practice

A good online test will give us a pretty clear picture of patches in your knowledge, common errors, weaknesses and defects in your play.
The review of your games will be of great help also, as we`ll learn a little bit more about your thinking process, the openings that you play, what positions you’re good at (and the opposite!) and so on. Please note that “game review” is quite different from “game analysis” (a service also offered by chess.clinic). In “game review” mode, the goal is to find weaknesses and strengths in your play, moves are not annotated, but we do highlight those moments in a game where defects and virtues in your play become apparent.
Interactive practice (you actually get to play pre-selected positions on-line) measures how well you respond to direct pressure, your reflex, time management, tactical resources and so on.

For more information, please fill in our information request form, and we'll send you a .pdf file with all the details.


And here's a selection of 3 clasical games. Please use the arrows only if you want to see the following game:

  • Alartosev-Capablanca, Moscow 1935. A classic game where the Cuban GM seems to be doing very little. But small advantages tend to pile up and this game is no exception.
  • Capablanca-Levenfish, Moscow 1935. Meran variation. What makes this game a little special is the accuracy of white's attack: not even a modern computer could have handled it better!
  • Rubinstein-Hirschbein, Poland 1927. A wonderful attacking game by the "Uncrowned Champion", Akiba Rubinstein. Bb1, forcing the creation of a weakness on f6, followed by Ne4! are classy moves.