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GM Arturs Neiksans' Advanced Study Guide (1800+ Elo)

GM Arturs Neiksans' Advanced Study Guide (1800+ Elo)

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Editor's Note: We are proud to present this study guide from GM Arturs Neiksans as part of our 2025 Chess Improvement Challenge. We encourage interested improvers to sign up for the challenge, set their goals, and join the official Improvers club!

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Greetings, chess fans! Let me introduce myself to you—my name is Arturs Neiksans. I'm the leading Latvian chess grandmaster, a four-time Latvian champion with a career-high Elo of 2631. Not only have I been playing chess professionally for a long time, but I also have a lot of experience as a coach. I served as the head coach of Riga Chess School from 2010 to 2021; I'm also a certified FIDE coach, and three of my students have become grandmasters. I've also written five Chessable courses (the fifth to be released in the Spring of 2025), done a lot of tournament commentary, and run YouTube and Twitch channels. I've created this study guide for 1800+ Elo players to share my knowledge and help you become better players. I hope that you will find some of the tips helpful.

First, I want to say that you're living in a very privileged age! When I grew up, there was no Chess.com or Chessable, Twitch, YouTube, Zoom lessons, or Google—the Internet itself was an extra you should dial in. Today, there is so much information that you might have difficulty choosing. Use these opportunities—it's never too late to improve your game!

This guide's information mainly comes from Chessable, Chess.com premium features, and YouTube videos. While the latter is free, it might not always meet the same quality standards as other sources, but it often contains a lot of beneficial information. Even if the information is free, appreciate the time the creators have put into them and support them if you enjoy the content!

Always start by checking what learning resources Chess.com offers. Many players might not know that you can have practice drills against engines in various positions, so check it out! Have you ever practiced Vision? Ever tried AimChess? Before looking for resources elsewhere, use the best that Chess.com can offer!

There are a lot of valuable features lurking in the Learn menu!

It's a good idea to form your list of chess experts and authors whose names guarantee that the quality of their work will be excellent and well-tested by a broad audience. Among book authors, I would immediately name Jacob Aagaard (and everything from his publishing house, Quality Chess) and Jeremy Silman. Some of the best world-class coaches are GM Jacob Aagaard, Ramesh R. B., and Artur Jussupow, and when it comes to openings, GMs Boris Avrukh and Sam Shankland. The best Chessable authors are typically mentioned in their yearly awards—check out the winners and nominees of the past years.

Openings

Strong openings will be a big part of your road to becoming a better player. Before building an opening repertoire and purchasing any courses or databases, ask yourself how you describe your playing style. Are you a purely positional player, a tactical genius, or an endless improviser? We're all different, and we have our preferences—very often, they form from our first contact with a chess coach who teaches students what they know best. This usually reflects on your early opening choices and your playing style.

Aggressive players mostly choose 1.e4 because there are more chances to lead the game to an early confrontation. You should look for open Sicilians, play 3.Nc3 against the French Defense, use the Advance Variation against the Caro-Kann, and perhaps play the Scotch Game against 1.e4 e5, although nowadays, not many people play it, and you might have to choose the Ruy Lopez instead. With Black, the typical combo of an aggressive player is any Sicilian or the Scandinavian against 1.e4 and King's Indian/Grunfeld and Dutch Defense against 1.d4.

Positional players often choose 1.d4 for long-term pragmatic play. You can play the Queen's Gambit Accepted or Declined, Catalan Opening, or the (Jobava) London System—many choices exist. With Black, the most popular approach is to fight for the center and good development— meet 1.e4 with 1…e5, 1.d4 with 1…d5, or go for the Caro-Kann against 1.e4 and the Slav/Semi-Slav against 1.d4.

Improvisers are artists in chess, and they mostly don't want to play the mainstream theory but something off-beat. They often like the quiet Reti opening with 1.Nf3 or something unorthodox like 1.b3 or maybe even mix both. With Black, they frequently play less explored variations to steer the game away from well-trodden paths and to positions where the standard rules don't apply.

That being said, you can probably also be an aggressive player and play 1.d4, be a positional player and play 1.e4 and some Anti-Sicilians, be an improviser with 1.Nf3 and then switch to mainstream theory with the d4 lines. The opportunities are endless, but don't get headaches from the choices. Don't be afraid to try and experiment with different opening setups. I was an e4 player for a very long time, and when I discovered the simplicity of the Reti opening, I instantly felt that it suited me much better than the 1.e4.

Where to get resources for openings:

Chess.com Lessons—This should be your very first stop. Check what resources and video lessons are available on the Chess.com Lesson page under the Mastery level.

Chess.com has many opening courses available with premium memberships.

Treat these videos as an introduction to the opening. If you like what you see, look for more. However, be warned—these short videos won't be enough for a competitive player, and you will need full courses.

Chessable—this is the most popular opening library in the world. Take your time to learn to use the filters and navigate the site. The flagship of Chessable products is Lifetime Repertoires (LTR)—this means the course offers you an entire repertoire, either with one starting move for White or for Black.

However, it does not mean the other courses are not great. You might seek smaller, more targeted courses and build your complete repertoire yourself. After all, it's entirely normal not to agree with all of the views of an LTR author, and you feel that in certain variations, you'd like to make different choices. Building your repertoire is a fascinating process! An author may give you his recommendations, but there are always alternatives!

You can watch a few videos to familiarize yourself with Chessable. The first playlist is a tutorial:

NM Robert Ramirez has a great guide showing how he gets the most out of Chessable.

Before investing in a course, check the author's profile, reviews, and other courses he's published. Use Chessable sale campaigns for considerable discounts, and I strongly recommend purchasing the video versions. They are pretty pricey, but it's much easier to learn the material when you watch it on your giant TV screen while eating popcorn. If you are very serious about your openings, advanced players often purchase multiple courses to build customized databases in Chessbase. We're going to talk about them later.

Modern Chess is where I often direct my students. You can also find my first works here while making my first steps as an author. While Modern Chess lacks many of the advanced features that Chessable has, they offer courses for downloading in PGN, which works very well for ambitious players who have Chessbase. They also organize regular online training camps on specific topics.

YouTube—invest some time and bookmark your favorite Youtubers who offer educational videos for advanced players. There are so many good channels, but they are not necessarily the most famous YouTubers with hundreds of thousands of followers. Sometimes, you can find excellent content on a chess channel with fewer than 1,000 followers! From time to time, chess Redditors compile a list of educational chess channels and give them shoutouts—keep looking!

I'll list several channels for you, but there are many more. Of course, I must mention my very own YouTube channel as well. I've been making a lot of educational streams, titling them GM Neiksans Boot Camp. The list is not ranked by popularity, and the order is random:

Middlegame (Strategy and Positional Play)

Studying the middlegame is much more complicated than learning openings because theory can be vague. There are plenty of best practices, but often, there is nothing concrete. Most importantly, you can't just choose a few choices like the openings—you must learn it all. I list some of the most important themes of the middlegame that you should focus on and what learning sources I would recommend using for starting out:

Pawn Structures and Pawn Play

Space Advantage

Initiative

Defense

Outposts

Weaknesses

Prophylaxis

Converting an Advantage

Positional Play in General

There are many more middlegame topics that you can look for sources: positional sacrifices, how to trade pieces, material imbalances, time management, intuition, the bishop pair, knights vs. bishops, position evaluation, etc. Don't despair and do all of these topics one by one! Remember, this will take time.

Endgames

There's a famous saying in the Russian language: "Take the youngsters to the endgame." Indeed, this is the phase of the game when different rules apply. Often, you can no longer use the same logic as in the openings, and the margin for error is small. Devote a lot of time to endgames, perhaps even more than openings, as you will make a lot of points here or save them from being lost. Endgame theory is well-known, so it won't keep changing and evolving like opening theory.

I recommend one chess bible to all my students: Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual. It's a challenging book to read, but I can guarantee it's worth it. I once attempted to read the book from cover to cover. I did the first 50 pages, and then I stopped. It was too heavy, and I was exhausted. Ever since I've read it "diagonally"— at least several times, I have chosen and repeated the most interesting topics. You can get a physical copy, but it's available on Chessable in a digital format as well.

The Endgame Manual is so good that Chessable built a feature just for this book.

Another popular book is 100 Endgames You Must Know by Jesus de la Villa. It is much lighter than Dvoretsky's book, so maybe you can start with this one. It also has a digital version on Chessable.

If you work on these two, you're set for a long time. However, I still advise you not to stop working on your endgames, and below is a list of some of the resources that I recommend for extra learning:

Tactics and Calculation

When discussing tactics, I'm mostly thinking about solving puzzles, but you can also check out the interactive lessons Chess.com offers. Once again, select the Mastery level filter and use the available resources. There are many videos about the most spectacular games of the strongest players in the world.

Puzzles are where online chess shines through, and print media can't compete. Compared to books, online sites can regularly update the pool of the puzzles you can solve, plus you immediately get feedback on your attempt, whether right or wrong. In books, you must jump from one part of the book to the other to get the answers to the puzzles.

Use Chess.com Puzzles regularly. I suggest maintaining a regular chess improvement schedule. If you can devote at least 15 minutes to puzzles daily, that's already fantastic. When an OTB (over the board) tournament is approaching, use puzzles more intensely to be tactically sharp.

Do the rated puzzles as much as possible; eventually, you will hit your ceiling when it's not easy to progress. My puzzle rating is over 4000, and the puzzles are constantly challenging. You can also do Puzzle Rush, but then be honest with yourself: What is the purpose of the session? If it's learning, do Puzzle Rush Survival; it's excellent since you can also do some easier puzzles as a warm-up.

You don't have to do only challenging puzzles to become a good player. Don't do 3-minute or 5-minute Puzzle Rush runs if you want to practice—you're not improving by doing this. If you want to do it for fun, it's an entirely different story! Chess can and should be played for fun. And remember, playing bullet games is not training!

Which puzzle mode are you using?

Learn to use Custom Puzzles. You can select specific themes, practice them, and select your desired rating range. I enjoy that the site allows you to solve your failed puzzles!

The more you do, the better you become. Ultimately, you want to solve thousands of puzzles to improve your pattern recognition.

If you want to practice your calculation, start by watching some videos for advice:

My advice on how to improve your calculation:

  • Practice Chess.com Vision training and do it a lot. Do the coordinates and moves, flip the board, and practice this relentlessly. It's also a lot of fun, and you can make a contest with your friends to see who can get the best score.
  • Whenever trying to solve a position or puzzle, never make the first move until you've figured out the entire solution. If you make the first move without calculating the whole thing, you have essentially failed that puzzle.
  • Set up the position from Chess.com on a physical board. Look at the diagram for 30 seconds and then, without looking again, recreate the position on the physical board. By doing this, you will practice your memory.

One of the most famous books on Tactics is the Woodpecker Method. As they advertise, the method is straightforward: solve a set of tactical puzzles repeatedly, aiming to complete them faster each time. This process of repeated solving, or "woodpecking," trains your brain to recognize tactical patterns more quickly and accurately. The book was released by Quality Chess in 2018 and has also been brought to Chessable.

One of the most-loved tactics improvement courses.

Recommended Books And Additional Resources

Have the following books at home and find time to read them. They're not meant only to look nice on your shelf. They're gold mines of chess information!

  • Mark Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, your endgame bible.
  • Garry Kasparov's My Great Predecessors series of five books. To become a better player, you should study the classics and know chess history. I can't name a better source.
  • All six books from the Grandmaster Preparation series by Quality Chess: Positional Play, Strategic Play, Calculation, Attack & Defence, Endgame Play, and Thinking Inside the Box. 

Most of these books are available in digital form on Chessable, but if you want to have some proper chess literature at home, they are also available on hardcover.

You can use these books to plan your training sessions and have a regular schedule. For example, I've been using Calculation for my students a lot. Set yourself a goal: determine how many puzzles a week you should do, and then do it. Spend 15 to 20 minutes on a puzzle, and move on if you can't solve it. You're already improving by attempting to solve them, and you don't have to solve every puzzle correctly. The same applies for every book. Set a goal for you to read this book in a few months. Calculate how many pages you must read daily or weekly and keep up with the schedule. 

Extra interesting resources for advanced players:

Always look for more interviews with some of the greatest players, coaches, and authors. Their insights are invaluable. YouTube has so many videos!

Chessbase

If you're serious about improving and plan to play many OTB tournaments, consider getting Chessbase. I recommend the mega package. If you're not planning to play OTB, you probably don't need Chessbase. Mega Database, which comes with Chessbase, is the largest OTB game database in the world, which will allow you to prepare for your games very profoundly.

One of my favorite features of Chessbase is that you can form many databases (openings, your games, etc.). Again, it's pricey, but the features are well worth it. If you're interested in what one of the world's greatest experts says about preparing for a tournament, watch this video!

If you do this, I recommend organizing folders with your opening theory in PGNs. You can manually copy the Chessable courses to use them on Chessbase. It's a painstaking task, but it could be well worth it. I have created many folders for each of the openings I play so it's easy to find the topic and quickly repeat the variations before a tournament game.

Make sure to download the latest version of the Stockfish engine, incorporate it into Chessbase, and start analyzing your games and openings in earnest. However, when it comes to engines, analyzing your games, and making this process as efficient as possible, use them only to check if your assessment and calculations are correct.

This means analyzing the games without an engine first and only then turning it on and comparing your analysis. Also, remember that engines can't offer you strategic advice, and following the top line of an engine might not always be the best choice. Watch this video for some extra insight.

If this is too sophisticated for you and you're just looking for a simpler alternative to store your OTB games or some of the most significant online games, you can use Chess.com's Library. It's great to start, but it doesn't have some of the more advanced features that Chessbase offers. Below are some videos you can watch on how to work with Chessbase. After all, it's a big decision, and not everybody needs it.

Getting A Coach

Finally, if you want to have someone to overview your training process just to be sure, or if you're not very good at planning your improvement schedule, get a personal coach! Check out the Chess.com Coach Directory and message the coach you'd like to work with.

While many improving players are approaching exclusively grandmaster coaches, you might not necessarily need such a high-level coach. They tend to be very busy (speaking from experience), and their hourly rates will surprise you. Plenty of titled players with more affordable rates are great coaches and might be able to help you.

Unfortunately, there are no reviews for the coaches on Chess.com or any reputation ratings, so you'll have to research online. You can use Chess.com's Classroom for your training sessions. By the way, this is where I've been working with IM Levy Rozman.

Online training has never been easier than with tools like Chess.com/classroom.

In your training sessions, ask the coach to identify the weaknesses in your training methodology, and they will give you recommendations. Analyze your games with them, absorb their thought process, and play sparring games, but don't ask them to teach you any openings. That's why there are online resources like Chessable. Learn to work by yourself and use the coach to guide you in the right direction. This is much more effective than the so-called spoon-feeding.

Final Considerations

Becoming better at chess will take a long time. Arm yourself with patience and try to enjoy the process. Make small goals, accomplish them, and set new goals. Sometimes, you can work on chess seriously for months, but the results still won't show, and it's very easy to throw in the towel. You'll have to take my word: The information is slowly absorbing, and the results can appear when you least expect it. Happy hunting!

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