Rating: 5/5
Definitely buy this course if you’re looking for a solid foundation in chess.
The course is meant for people with a rating of 0 to 1200.
| Pros | Cons |
| Structured | No exercises incorporated |
| Suited for beginners | It is more expensive than a book |
| Intuitive videos | |
| Available through an app, so accessable wherever you are | |
| Lifetime access |
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If you are just starting out your chess career or want to revise the basics, I would definitely recommend Beginner Chess Mastery from Next Level Chess. As a retired Swiss Grandmaster Noël Studer is an advocate for simple chess and a structured way of studying chess. He has a separate course for the latter for which I will post a review as well in the near future. For now I will focus on his beginner course.
The course follows a building-block approach to teaching chess: starting at the beginning and teaching the rules and strategies needed at the start of your chess journey. Gradually he increases the difficulty by introducing tactics, endgames and opening principles, including how to practice and train everything. But if you already know how all the pieces move, you can just easily skip that part or go straight ahead to the subject that interests you the most. However, even if you think you know everything, Studer can actually surprise you. I found new interesting things in the section about pawns. And even the beginner’s tactics like forks and such, which should be common knowledge when you’ve been studying chess for a while, are taught in an engaging way. You will actually be forced to practice for 15 minutes and solve the puzzles in the way Studer always recommends to all his students: write down every solution before you move the pieces.
If you follow his advise to the tee I actually think you will fulfill Studer’s promise: that with only using his course you can reach 1200 on Chess.com easily without searching for more study material. It won’t teach you traps and shortcuts, but a stable base for and approach to chess that you can take with you for the rest of your chess career. I can’t guarentee this however, as I haven’t reached 1200 on chess.com yet (or 1600 on lichess), but that is because I haven’t played enough lately. Follow this blog to see when I’ll reach that point!
I actually went through the complete course twice. I try to do that with every course, book or resource I come across, but in this case it actually really felt like it was worth it. And I might go through it a third time. The video’s are very engaging and insightful every single time.
So if you are looking for a beginner course and are below 1200 on chess.com or 1500/1600 on lichess, you should definitely pick up this course!
Costs: $97 for a lifetime of access.
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