Middlegame Mastery Decision Making with GM Damian Lemos + PGN 16 Jun 2024

There are two main types of decisions in chess.

First, the major ones – like castling, trading pieces, and modifying your pawn structure.

Mess these up, and you’re setting yourself up for failure. Why? You can’t just undo a castle or bring back traded pieces.

Then there are the smaller ones, like relocating your pieces or making prophylactic moves.

Slip up here, and your position will start degrading, move by move (Ouch!)

Imagine getting the major decisions right, and setting the right course for the game.

And then, with every move, you keep improving your position by nailing those smaller decisions!

GM Lemos is here to help you with this.

Damian builds on the experience of the world’s top players… Tal, Kasparov, Carlsen… and develops a thinking method to help you make the best decisions over the board.

Here is what you’ll learn:

• Tal’s ‘Small Decisions’ Masterclass – It’s all about those small moves. Individually, they don’t do much. But add them all together, and they can turn the tables on your opponent. GM Lemos will teach you to implement this powerful approach into your play (see Chapter 2)

• Magnus Magic – forget about retaking the pawn and just castle! You’ll get two powerful bishops eyeing the King’s Side and tons of attacking possibilities. (Quick spoiler: Aronian lost quickly, see Chapter 3)

• Bishop vs. Knight Reloaded – Sometimes a Bishop in the center is waaay more powerful than a Knight. And Kasparov made the right decision by keeping the bishop leading to a win. GM Lemos will give you all the theory (see how it unfolded in Chapter 4).

• Method of ‘Equal Exchanges’ – After what seems like a series of equal exchanges Leko’s position went from equal to bad. His pieces got pushed away from the King and he is in deep trouble. How did Ivanchuk pull it off? GM Lemos breaks it down in Chapters 8 and 9. 

This is just a few of a dozen of very important concepts you’ll learn in this course.

Master those, and decision-making will become second nature to you.

You’ll learn to make both major and tiny decisions, taking control of the game and gradually improving your position until you win the game.

Outline:

Chapter 1 Kupper-Tal I
Chapter 2 Kupper-Tal ll
Chapter 3 Carlsen-Aronian
Chapter 4 Kasparov-Sutovsky
Chapter 5 Slipak-Lemos
Chapter 6 Kasparov-Andersson
Chapter 7 Dreev-Bareev
Chapter 8 Ivanchuk-Leko I
Chapter 9 Ivanchuk-Leko II
Chapter 10 Jussupow-Carlsen I
Chapter 11 Jussupow-Carlsen II
Chapter 12 Leko-Shirov