The caveat: You must follow the order. Randomly jumping into The Art of Positional Sacrifice without the calculation matrix is a disaster. You will lose games and blame the course.
Your rating increase is not a matter of talent. It is a matter of having the right blueprint. This is the blueprint.
This article breaks down every single new course in detail, explains how they connect, and reveals why this holistic system is different from everything else on the market. Before diving into the nine courses, you must understand why Smirnov rebooted his entire curriculum. gm igor smirnov all 9 chess courses new
If you have been stuck at your current rating for more than a year, stop buying cheap chessable courses. Stop watching Hikaru’s blitz streams for "learning." Stop memorizing gambits.
For years, amateur chess players have been trapped in a frustrating cycle: memorizing openings they don’t understand, losing won endgames, and freezing under time pressure. They buy random courses, watch hours of content, yet their rating remains stagnant. The caveat: You must follow the order
And Smirnov is honest about this.
Most chess courses are "horizontal"—they teach you a little about openings, a little about tactics, and a little about endgames. The result is a Swiss cheese knowledge base. Your rating increase is not a matter of talent
However, for the dedicated player (1200-2000 ELO), represents the most coherent, efficient roadmap to advanced chess ever produced. It removes the guesswork. You are not learning "tips and tricks." You are learning how a Grandmother thinks about time, space, force, and psychology.