Our Coach’s Corner chess improvement series continues ahead of the Chess Punks Finals on October 22, and today’s featured coach is none other than GM Arturs Neiksans. 

GM Neiksans’ resume is impressive: 4-time Latvian Chess Champion, head coach at the historic Riga chess school, FIDE-accredited trainer, seasoned commentator, and of course, Chessable author!

Sure enough, his chess improvement tips are also very impressive. Here’s GM Neiksans’ top tips for improving your game: 

What is your coaching philosophy?

Make chess lessons engaging and alive. Otherwise, it can be challenging to properly digest a really good chess meal which is served with a boring sauce!

Suppose a player has only 3 hours a week for chess training? How should they spend their time?

Definitely don’t overdo openings - their value is overrated. Be pragmatic and choose easy-to-remember systems that can be applied against most opponents’ moves. Focus on studying things that are constant and don’t evolve all the time - they are the pawn structure plans of the openings that you play. Do a lot of puzzles! Being tactically sharp can make all the difference. Plan your training ahead of time. Have long-term and short-term plans, and evaluate the results from time to time. 

What is the biggest factor for improvement for players under 1200 (Chess.com)? Under 2000?

U1200: Having complete board awareness - not blundering pawns or pieces is a great start to becoming a better player! Always pay close attention to why your opponent made the last move and what’s the threat. 

U2000: I would say enhancing tactical vision and improving calculation. I see a lot of players who are pretty good positionally but collapse pretty quickly when a tactical struggle begins. To become better, analyze a lot of sharp games, played by our greatest predecessors, and pick up ideas. For calculation improvement, do anything blindfold chess-related. 

What is your preferred way to improve at tactics and strategy?

For tactics, do thousands and tens of thousands of puzzles - there’s no easy way around it. The more you do, the better you become, the more likely it is that you will recognize the motif. For strategy, focus on studying pawn structures, at least in the openings that you play. What pieces stand best where, what are the typical plans, and what are the counter-plans for the opponent? Don’t forget to study possible alternatives for some variety.

What is your preferred way to improve your openings? What approach to chess openings do you teach your students?

Research what’s available on the Internet and get a commercial opening course! It’s a very good long-term investment for your chess improvement. If you have doubts, put it this way: it will still be much cheaper than hiring a coach to do it for you!

Chess course authors typically invest hundreds of hours into creating the course, they care for their work reputation. Sometimes also I just buy a course instead of researching everything on my own - this saves a lot of time. Dear reader, you’re blessed with the information available today - when I was a kid, there was no Google or YouTube and the Internet was only making baby steps!

What is your preferred way to improve your endgames?

Study some serious literature, like Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual or Shereshevsky’s Endgame Strategy. I think Quality Chess and GM Jacob Aagard have some new or at least planned releases on the topic, and he’s one of the greatest authors in chess. Studying endgames can be tedious but it’s worth it. This is where you will either win or save a lot of points. 

Arturs’ Courses

If Arturs’ advice resonated with you, be sure to check out his Chessable courses! They’re filled with more of the same great advice above, and you can try them for free here: 

Short & Sweet: Reversed Sicilian Struggling against the English Opening (1.c4)? Learn to extinguish the English with dynamic, fighting lines that are anything but boring! 

Short & Sweet: Kan Sicilian GM Neiksans takes this tried-and-true Sicilian and amps up the aggression to 10…all while teaching you the pawn play critical to success in this opening