Chess is a mind game fought on 64 squares of the Chess Board. Players want to outperform each other to emerge as the smartest. This game became much more popular during the Covid-19 lockdown. Students of the game tended to join chess academies, specifically online academies, to hone their skills at the game.
Students have realized that chess skills are much different from chess principles. They involve practical moves for resolving varied problems. Practice rather than theory is the winning factor.
So, what are the top chess skills to be trained at the best chess academy in India?
Visualization
This skill is a player's ability to imagine the chessboard positions in their mind. Without looking at the board, the player can guess the positions of the game. This is the ultimate skill of all great chess players as they help in the task of calculating.
Such calculation in the chess play is the most crucial factor in the game; without it, no tactics and principles can work.
This is why the Grand Masters of Chess devote much time to enhancing their visualization skills to calculate their moves easily. Some good ways to improve these skills are to solve problems involving advanced tactics or play blindfold chess.
Prophylaxis
This is the sister tactic of skills of visualization and calculation. This is a process in which you get ahead of your opponent and anticipate the moves they can play against you. But this process involves more than anticipating rival moves; it makes you view the board precisely as your opponent.
This way, you can predict your opponent's plans and moves, including their probable intentions. You will notice that this skill is part of the strategy for most grandmasters of the game, and the effort is to stop all planned moves of the opponent.
Thus, by cutting off all your rival's options, you can easily predict his move. When you study some of the games of the Grand Masters, they would appear to block all opponents' plans, leaving them with very few moves to play. So, Prophylaxis is a valuable skill for you, and one of the best ways to train in this is to play against yourself.
Administration of time
This is a skill that even the Grandmasters try to improve in their repertoire. This skill seems obvious but is a tricky one to master.
To learn this time management skill in chess, you must also be skilled at determining the critical positions. As such, this is closely related to preparing for opening moves and knowing your playstyle.
The fact is, the tactics to administer time vary depending on the time control. The toughest one is the Blitz, in which players have to move fast, and the time factor is critical without increment. The best online chess academy teaches this challenging skill.
Another common strategy in time controls is to waste a few moves to reach move 40. This is the scenario of time control in the game.
In sum, these are the three primary skills for playing chess taught by experts in chess academies. The training and practice offered at such training venues, online or offline can prove valuable to hone your skills as a great chess player.