Self-Improvement Course for Advanced Players + PGN Apr 24, 2026 Chessable

A 10-Point Program For Overcoming
the Sub-2000 Plateau

…and ultimately push past 2200! You’ll sharpen your opening prep to target specific opponents, zero in on the one factor that decides the middlegame, and turn your biggest endgame gaps into Elo gains.

If you used to improve the simple way — solve tactics, drill openings, play games, and your rating climbs — until you closed in on 2000 and progress stopped cold…

If you’ve spent another year — or 5 or 10 — putting in real work, but your rating says you’ve gotten worse…

If a clubmate made NM while you stayed put, and this question has started to surface:

“Was this as good as I’d ever be at chess, and no better?”

…then this course is built for you — Self-Improvement for Advanced Players.

This chess course trains the 10 skills already-strong players like you need to grow stronger still.

Inside, you train under Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov…

The man who defeated Garry Kasparov, Magnus Carlsen, and 4 more World Champions in classical chess.

With a peak rating of 2706, a world ranking of #12…

Plus 1st place finishes at the Reykjavik Open, and the inaugural European Rapid Championship…

Sokolov belongs to a rare breed of players.

Yet rarer still is…

His ability to build the same strength in others.

He coached Uzbekistan to gold at the 2022 Olympiad — one of the biggest upsets in chess history.

He coached Alireza Firouzja from under 2500 to the world’s top 3.

Jorden van Foreest won Wijk aan Zee.

Nodirbek Abdusattorov won the FIDE World Rapid Championship.

Iran won the Asian Nations Cup, while Romania won the European Team Championship.

All under Sokolov’s watch.

Normally, training with him means flying to Europe, booking a hotel for the week, and paying 3-figure rates by the hour… assuming his packed schedule has room for you.

But you don’t have to go through any of that, because Sokolov comes to you through 568 MoveTrainer® lessons and 14.5 hours of video.

Here’s What You’ll Be Able to
Do by the End of This Course

After the chapter on opening preparation, you go from drilling lines to tailoring your prep for maximum winning chances.

You’ll learn how to:

✅ Profile the player, not just the position. Play through your opponent’s games. Watch for these 3 tells Sokolov flags. Then choose your line accordingly.

✅ Spring novelties beyond the engine’s top 5. These moves look reasonable but they lead to positions your opponent is all but guaranteed to misplay.

✅ Force your opponent to burn the clock with lines that demand ultra-precision — without ever “going to the casino” yourself.

In the middlegame chapters, you:

✅ Develop your inner radar, which tells you whether to keep building up your attack or “cash in” now. You lunge for the enemy king even when your position looks off-balance… because you know for certain you have the firepower to end it.

Rook sleeping in the corner? King still
on e8? Not a problem, when you have
enough pieces to checkmate White

✅ Sharpen your vision for chess board geometry. You see the attack forming before it starts. Then you find the square, file, or diagonal to intercept it from, and launch your counterplay.

✅ Fine-tune your radar for stranded enemy pieces. Then you strike where the opponent is effectively playing a man down.

You isolate two pieces and create a gap
in activity so wide, you don’t need to
calculate the full line to know
you’re winning.

Sokolov also devotes a 101-lesson chapter to critical middlegame decisions. The kind that goes beyond spotting tactics or routine positional improvements.

These forks in the road decide whether you spend the rest of the game pressing for the win or trying to survive.

Like changing the character of the game to throw your opponent’s mental game off…

What starts as a straightforward fight over
a pawn becomes an asymmetric battle — where
the tactics are all in your favor

Deciding which way your pawn chain leans, so you pieces can take over that side of the board…

And accepting a worse pawn structure in exchange for a surge in activity.

You can’t break into 2000-2200 without good endgames.

But instead of drowning you in reams of theory, Sokolov zeroes in on just 4 areas. So both your strategic thinking and your move-by-move execution gain a massive boost.

Sokolov trains you to:

✅ Build fortresses that hold even when you only have a knight vs a queen.

✅ Ace strategic endgames by dominating enemy pieces and keeping an eye out for unusual solutions.

✅ And handle Rook vs Rook endgames — plus Rook vs other pieces — like a master.

Rooks show up in more endgames than any other piece.

Yet most players dismiss them as “drawish.” And that’s exactly where you’ll convert half-points into full ones!

Wasted half-points on Rook-vs-bishop endings
like this? The surprising idea on Chapter 10
forces Black to give up their only piece

Stop wondering if you’ve already hit your ceiling.

Train under Sokolov. Lock in these 10 higher-level skills. Prove that you have what it takes to break 2000 and ultimately push past 2200.