Answers.Body: <p>The more you learn about chess, including openings, tactics, and other patterns, the easier it is to visualize, think many moves ahead, play blindfold, and remember games played. I don't have a source, but I remember reading about a study where average players and master players were each told to memorize the placements of some pieces on a board in a short amount of time. When the pieces were placed as in the middle of an actually played game, the masters remembered much better, but when the pieces were randomly placed on the board, the masters did about the same as the average players. So, it's not just a feat of pure memory. The memory is supported by years of recognizing certain chess patterns.</p>
  <p>So, I guess I would advocate to just learn chess, and not focus directly or solely on the skills you mentioned. As you study, play long games, and analyze your games, you will be practicing visualization along the way.</p>
  <p>You could buy the book, Cognitive Chess: Improving Visualization and Calculation skills, and train with it parallel to learning and playing chess. I have the book and would recommend it. But the exercises in the book would be very difficult for a player who isn't already well-trained in chess patterns.</p>
  <p>Other ideas include trying to play blindfold, learning the colors of all the squares (like when you hear &quot;c4&quot; you think &quot;White&quot;), and trying to memorize some classic games, like the Opera Game.</p>
  
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Answers.UserDisplayName: Leonard Blackburn
Answers.Body: <p><strong>Calculation</strong>: lichess.com is free (as in beer and speech) and has all the resources you need to work on calculation, openings, and principles. The most of important feature to help with calculation would be its puzzle trainer. You can customize what types of puzzle you want to solve based on several variables (difficulty, opening, theme). It also has a public library of thousands of studies which are created by the community.<br />
  <strong>Visualization</strong>: There are some accessibility controls on LiChess catered specifically toward blind people. You can use these to work on your visualization skills, as the you can play online games without the board. There is also a coordinates trainer to help internalize the algebraic coordinates of the board.<br />
  <strong>Memorization</strong>: This will be different for every individual, and probably requires finding resources that are not chess-specific. It is known that some grandmasters use all sorts of memorization techniques that may or may not be specific to chess. LiChess <em>can</em> maybe help a little bit. You can create your own studies of games that you want to commit to memory, then review/drill them constantly.</p>
  <p>All this being said, at 700 (Fide/chess.com/lichess/uscf/whatever) you can improve (alot) by just playing everyday. Try to analyze your games, both with and without an engine. LiChess has free unlimited engine analysis. Check your games with the opening book as well (available on LiChess), as practical chess does not always follow engine analysis.</p>
  <p><strong>Opinion Ahead</strong><br />
  Common wisdom dictates that the beginner should not be memorizing lines. Rather they should focus on learning principles and developing calculation. However, if the novelty of learning to play blind is what drives you to play and improve, then that is what you should work on. The odds of any adult improver reaching the upper echelon of chess is so low that most people shouldn't bother if chess doesn't bring them joy. Therefore, you should focus on what interests and entertains you, regardless of whether it is the most efficient path to improvement.</p>
  
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Answers.Text: "It is known that some grandmasters use all sorts of memorization techniques that may or may not be specific to chess" Like what?
Answers.UserDisplayName: pie
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Answers.Text: @pie The "Memory Palace" technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci is at least common enough in chess that this guy wrote a book on it https://johnden.org/chessmemorypalace
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Answers.Body: <p>At your level, I think that the most important thing you can do is to just <em><strong>play</strong></em> a lot of very slow games, I.e. 15 + 10 and 30 + 0 on chess.com or anywhere else. Every game will help you in some way. Try to calculate some moves yourself. Over time you will improve.</p>
  <p>Fast blitz games don’t help you very much.</p>
  <p>Chesscom has a pretty solid visualization exercise feature: <a href="https://chess.com/vision" rel="noreferrer">chess.com/vision</a></p>
  <p>Set the training mode to <em>moves</em> and see if it helps.</p>
  <p>Drawing from my own experience (my current skill level is about 1500), I developed pretty solid calculation and visualization just over time by playing 30 min and 15 + 10 games. I also watched tons of educational chess videos about various topics, maybe that helped me as well.</p>
  
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Answers.UserDisplayName: Nujraa
Answers.Body: <p>You can't calculate if you can't visualize (imagine) future positions.
  So, work on visualization until you can hold a position in your head after an increasing number of moves, but without calculating. Aim for 5 moves as a first goal. A good exercise is simply to memorize some games. Old master games may be the best, because apart from the occasional surprise, they're mostly straightforward. Fun fact: Masters have reported their play dramatically improved after they started memorizing entire games (not a beginner task).
  Another exercise is to do puzzles that increase in the lengths of the solutions, while not trying to solve them (just visualize the moves and positions in the solutions).</p>
  <p>Another is to visualize transiting a piece from one square to another in a way that involves multiple moves while avoiding obstacles or dangers. Simple: Get a knight from one square to a distant one by the fastest route. Start with an empty board, then populate it with obstacles to force a longer route (defended enemy pieces, and friendly pieces).</p>
  <p>Once you can accurately visualize a position after 5 moves with only the rare mistake, then practice calculating, i.e. finding candidate moves after each given move. One useful source is the Chess Life games column by NM Bruce Pandolfini, in which you pause and calculate at key points.</p>
  <p>For this, you need to use a Move Selection process (MSP). Because that's involved, I can't address it here. Many authors offer advice. My suggestion is to avoid anything encyclopedic, such as Kotov's &quot;Think Like a Grandmaster&quot;. I can recommend Per Ostman's &quot;Find Your Best Move&quot;, but it may be too challenging for the beginner to fully grasp. Skim it for ideas you can use and come back to it later for more as you improve. Or, try Andrew Soltis' &quot;How to Choose a Chess Move&quot;, which is less demanding.</p>
  <p>To get good at finding candidates, in test positions find every move that represents a &quot;Capture, Check, or Threat&quot; (CCT). Do it for both players. To get good at picking the best candidate, you need to:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>develop good judgment intuition about typical moves, from experience</li>
  <li>develop visualization skills</li>
  <li>develop analysis / calculation skills (selecting the most powerful threats and replies, and experimenting with move sequences/ improvements to amplify/ refute them)</li>
  <li>learn to maintain a count of material (pieces captured and remaining) over the length of a variation</li>
  <li>know when to stop (no further immediate threats); this is going to be necessarily limited by your visualization / counting abilities in the early stages</li>
  <li>use 'pruning' to select an initial set of 3-4 candidates to explore in depth, using just a quick analysis to weed out the losers, before calculating the winners to any depth</li>
  <li>find 'improbable moves'; those that look absurd but guarantee some advantage because the apparent refutation fails to an unexpected resource. For this, I recommend &quot;Forcing Chess Moves&quot;, by Charles Hertan, in which he highlights winning moves that chess engines find but which most human players prematurely dismiss.</li>
  </ul>
  <p>Then, to improve you also need to eliminate flaws in your MSP. I recommend NM Dan Heisman's many works, both articles and books, on eliminating mistakes. Try his book &quot;Looking for Trouble&quot;. A key exercise here is finding your opponent's most dangerous reply in every position. Heisman's acronym is the aforementioned &quot;CCT's&quot; for the 3 categories to initially look for. (But that simple rule of thumb overlooks dangerous 'quiet' moves, such as using a rook to cut off the opposing king's escape while setting up a mate, without making a check, capture or further threat with the rook itself. It's not a panacea.)</p>
  <p>Some of Heisman's articles are available at ChessCafe.com (which involves a subscription), e.g. his article &quot;A Different Approach to Studying Tactics&quot; from May 15, 2001, available as a PDF file at: <a href="http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman04.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman04.pdf</a>
  (ChessCafe is a valuable resource on every topic of chess in the form of digestible articles by a variety of expert trainers and master-level players, so if you can afford it, I'm going to plug it.)</p>
  <p>Finally, because there's a bias in most puzzle books oriented towards finding a winning move (or a defensive move), which is not the problem you face at the board until you know you're winning, I recommend finding a puzzle book that doesn't prime you with any information about whether you should attack or must defend. In fact, avoid any themed books, from those that specialize in, say, &quot;Mate in 3&quot; to, say, &quot;Forks&quot;. Instead, I suggest &quot;Practical Chess Exercises: 600 Lessons from Tactics to Strategy&quot; by Ray Cheng. You must figure out the situation, and follow Steinitz's Rule of attacking or defending based only on the needs of the position.</p>
  <p>Don't spend a lot of time studying openings or endgames until your tactics are solid. Just get a plausible opening, and run through a couple of dozen existing game scores by masters in it to learn the themes. Then, play as many quick games with it as you can, just to see where you end up.</p>
  <p>When you're ready for endgames (you'll know because you start surviving until the endgame), I can recommend &quot;100 Endgames You Must Know&quot;, by Jesus de la Villa. To whet your appetite with what surprises endgames can offer (and make sure you don't underestimate them), I also recommend Van Perlo's &quot;Endgame Tactics&quot;. It's a medley of different endgames from real games, in many of which one or both players failed to find the best resources. Because endgame theory is very dry, I'd suggest mixing up your work on de la Villa's theory with Perlo's practical hijinks for entertainment (and stimulating your creativity).</p>
  <p>Good luck!</p>
  
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Answers.Text: Of course, I realize you wanted to avoid paying for paid chess training courses, but I didn't assume that meant you wanted only free material. The books I recommend are generally available for $20 or less, especially if you buy them as ebooks, or as used paperbacks. 
  
  Good free material is hard to come by, because chess writers have to make a living, too. Some chess clubs offer smattering of such materials, but I can't vouch for quality or coverage. Maybe start with the Exeter Chess Club, e.g. https://exeterchessclub.org.uk/content/get-your-eye-basic-practice-noticing-attacks
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Body: <p>I'm a beginner at chess with a 700 Elo rating on chess.com, but my primary motivation for improving isn't just about the game itself—I'm studying mathematics, and I've noticed that skills in chess, like visualization, memory, and calculation, can greatly support my studies. I’m fascinated by how top chess players can recall entire games, visualize positions, play blindfolded, and calculate several moves ahead. I want to train these skills to strengthen my mental abilities, such as concentration and logical thinking, and apply them in my major.</p>
  <p>However, I live in a country where I can't  pay for online courses or content in U.S. dollars (or anything really from the internet as it is banned to pay anything outside my country), so I’m looking for free resources or training methods that will help me reach an advanced level (around 2000–2600 Elo) over the next few years.</p>
  <p>Specifically, I’m interested in:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>Memory training: How do players remember their past games and keep track of piece positions accurately?</li>
  <li>Visualization exercises: What are effective ways to improve my ability to picture the board and play blindfolded?</li>
  <li>Calculation skills: How can I train to calculate multiple moves ahead without losing focus or track of the game?</li>
  </ul>
  <p>Most free resources I've found focus on openings but don’t cover these specific cognitive skills. Any advice, exercises, or training routines you could share would be greatly appreciated!</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2024-11-07T08:28:32.590Z
Comments.Text: Bad news: The points you mention are largely innate (although you can still train them, and you can replace money by creativity). Good news: I visualize and calculate hardly at all (can't do it for my life), but still I'm a FM. :-)
Comments.UserDisplayName: Hauke Reddmann
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Comments.CreationDate: 2024-11-07T08:30:48.053Z
Comments.Text: @HaukeReddmann Now I am disjointed, sad and frustrated.
Comments.UserDisplayName: pie
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2024-11-07T08:47:58.090Z
Comments.Text: You don't have to at all! Concentrating on the possible (I knew I would never become an IM, so I didn't bother) is the way to happiness. Find out where your strengths lie (Karsten Müller describes different type of players, and for example Tal could brilliantly calculate concretely, but still Botwinnik beat him - maybe you are the more intuitive type like me). With 700 ELO, just solving free tactic puzzles will make you gain rating quickly. Join a chess club or play with a friend. Only when you improved seriously, you have to bother if there is a "ceiling" hindering you in further improves.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Hauke Reddmann
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Comments.CreationDate: 2024-11-07T12:57:14.917Z
Comments.Text: "around 2000–2600 Elo"? 2k is kids who barely got ranking, 2600 is grandmasters - not many of them and it takes *talent* you'd already need to have to get there.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Mithoron
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Comments.CreationDate: 2024-11-07T12:58:17.843Z
Comments.Text: @Mithoron Being  a 2000 or more is impossible?
Comments.UserDisplayName: pie
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Comments.CreationDate: 2024-11-07T13:00:32.433Z
Comments.Text: 2000 should be easy enough if you're smart and work hard. To get over 2600 you'd need to be one of the best in the world.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Mithoron
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Comments.CreationDate: 2024-11-07T13:02:12.687Z
Comments.Text: @Mithoron I just put the range that I want to be in, in the next four years I just didn't want to write 2000 or more so I choose any arbitrary number as an upper bound.
Comments.UserDisplayName: pie
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Comments.CreationDate: 2024-11-08T20:49:21.070Z
Comments.Text: see [Think-Like-Grandmaster](https://www.amazon.com/Think-Like-Grandmaster-Alexander-Kotov/dp/0713478853) best book for this topic. After reading it, my ELO went from 2000 to 2310
Comments.UserDisplayName: Nasser
Tags: <learning><calculation><visualization><memorization>
Title: How Can I Develop Memory, Visualization, and Calculation Skills in Chess Without Paid Courses?
ThreadText: # How Can I Develop Memory, Visualization, and Calculation Skills in Chess Without Paid Courses?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2024-11-06)
  
  I'm a beginner at chess with a 700 Elo rating on chess.com, but my primary motivation for improving isn't just about the game itself—I'm studying mathematics, and I've noticed that skills in chess, like visualization, memory, and calculation, can greatly support my studies. I’m fascinated by how top chess players can recall entire games, visualize positions, play blindfolded, and calculate several moves ahead. I want to train these skills to strengthen my mental abilities, such as concentration and logical thinking, and apply them in my major.
  
  However, I live in a country where I can't pay for online courses or content in U.S. dollars (or anything really from the internet as it is banned to pay anything outside my country), so I’m looking for free resources or training methods that will help me reach an advanced level (around 2000–2600 Elo) over the next few years.
  
  Specifically, I’m interested in:
  
  * Memory training: How do players remember their past games and keep track of username_0ce positions accurately?
  * Visualization exercises: What are effective ways to improve my ability to picture the board and play blindfolded?
  * Calculation skills: How can I train to calculate multiple moves ahead without losing focus or track of the game?
  
  Most free resources I've found focus on openings but don’t cover these specific cognitive skills. Any advice, exercises, or training routines you could share would be greatly appreciated!
  
  **Tags:** learning, calculation, visualization, memorization
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Bad news: The points you mention are largely innate (although you can still train them, and you can replace money by creativity). Good news: I visualize and calculate hardly at all (can't do it for my life), but still I'm a FM. :-)  
  > **username_0**: @HaukeReddmann Now I am disjointed, sad and frustrated.  
  > **username_1**: You don't have to at all! Concentrating on the possible (I knew I would never become an IM, so I didn't bother) is the way to happiness. Find out where your strengths lie (Karsten Müller describes different type of players, and for example Tal could brilliantly calculate concretely, but still Botwinnik beat him - maybe you are the more intuitive type like me). With 700 ELO, just solving free tactic puzzles will make you gain rating quickly. Join a chess club or play with a friend. Only when you improved seriously, you have to bother if there is a "ceiling" hindering you in further improves.  
  > **username_2**: "around 2000–2600 Elo"? 2k is kids who barely got ranking, 2600 is grandmasters - not many of them and it takes *talent* you'd already need to have to get there.  
  > **username_0**: @username_2 Being  a 2000 or more is impossible?  
  > **username_2**: 2000 should be easy enough if you're smart and work hard. To get over 2600 you'd need to be one of the best in the world.  
  > **username_0**: @username_2 I just put the range that I want to be in, in the next four years I just didn't want to write 2000 or more so I choose any arbitrary number as an upper bound.  
  > **username_3**: see [Think-Like-Grandmaster](https://www.amazon.com/Think-Like-Grandmaster-Alexander-Kotov/dp/0713478853) best book for this topic. After reading it, my ELO went from 2000 to 2310  
  
  ---
  
  ## 4 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_4 on 2024-11-06. Score: 8
  
  The more you learn about chess, including openings, tactics, and other patterns, the easier it is to visualize, think many moves ahead, play blindfold, and remember games played. I don't have a source, but I remember reading about a study where average players and master players were each told to memorize the placements of some username_0ces on a board in a short amount of time. When the username_0ces were placed as in the middle of an actually played game, the masters remembered much better, but when the username_0ces were randomly placed on the board, the masters did about the same as the average players. So, it's not just a feat of pure memory. The memory is supported by years of recognizing certain chess patterns.
  
  So, I guess I would advocate to just learn chess, and not focus directly or solely on the skills you mentioned. As you study, play long games, and analyze your games, you will be practicing visualization along the way.
  
  You could buy the book, Cognitive Chess: Improving Visualization and Calculation skills, and train with it parallel to learning and playing chess. I have the book and would recommend it. But the exercises in the book would be very difficult for a player who isn't already well-trained in chess patterns.
  
  Other ideas include trying to play blindfold, learning the colors of all the squares (like when you hear "c4" you think "White"), and trying to memorize some classic games, like the Opera Game.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_5 on 2024-11-06. Score: 7
  
  **Calculation**: lichess.com is free (as in beer and speech) and has all the resources you need to work on calculation, openings, and principles. The most of important feature to help with calculation would be its puzzle trainer. You can customize what types of puzzle you want to solve based on several variables (difficulty, opening, theme). It also has a public library of thousands of studies which are created by the community.  
  **Visualization**: There are some accessibility controls on LiChess catered specifically toward blind people. You can use these to work on your visualization skills, as the you can play online games without the board. There is also a coordinates trainer to help internalize the algebraic coordinates of the board.  
  **Memorization**: This will be different for every individual, and probably requires finding resources that are not chess-specific. It is known that some grandmasters use all sorts of memorization techniques that may or may not be specific to chess. LiChess *can* maybe help a little bit. You can create your own studies of games that you want to commit to memory, then review/drill them constantly.
  
  All this being said, at 700 (Fide/chess.com/lichess/uscf/whatever) you can improve (alot) by just playing everyday. Try to analyze your games, both with and without an engine. LiChess has free unlimited engine analysis. Check your games with the opening book as well (available on LiChess), as practical chess does not always follow engine analysis.
  
  **Opinion Ahead**  
  Common wisdom dictates that the beginner should not be memorizing lines. Rather they should focus on learning principles and developing calculation. However, if the novelty of learning to play blind is what drives you to play and improve, then that is what you should work on. The odds of any adult improver reaching the upper echelon of chess is so low that most people shouldn't bother if chess doesn't bring them joy. Therefore, you should focus on what interests and entertains you, regardless of whether it is the most efficient path to improvement.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: "It is known that some grandmasters use all sorts of memorization techniques that may or may not be specific to chess" Like what?  
  > **username_5**: @username_0 The "Memory Palace" technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci is at least common enough in chess that this guy wrote a book on it https://johnden.org/chessmemorypalace  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_6 on 2024-11-06. Score: 6
  
  At your level, I think that the most important thing you can do is to just ***play*** a lot of very slow games, I.e. 15 + 10 and 30 + 0 on chess.com or anywhere else. Every game will help you in some way. Try to calculate some moves yourself. Over time you will improve.
  
  Fast blitz games don’t help you very much.
  
  Chesscom has a pretty solid visualization exercise feature: [chess.com/vision](https://chess.com/vision)
  
  Set the training mode to *moves* and see if it helps.
  
  Drawing from my own experience (my current skill level is about 1500), I developed pretty solid calculation and visualization just over time by playing 30 min and 15 + 10 games. I also watched tons of educational chess videos about various topics, maybe that helped me as well.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_7 on 2024-11-15. Score: 2
  
  You can't calculate if you can't visualize (imagine) future positions.
  So, work on visualization until you can hold a position in your head after an increasing number of moves, but without calculating. Aim for 5 moves as a first goal. A good exercise is simply to memorize some games. Old master games may be the best, because apart from the occasional surprise, they're mostly straightforward. Fun fact: Masters have reported their play dramatically improved after they started memorizing entire games (not a beginner task).
  Another exercise is to do puzzles that increase in the lengths of the solutions, while not trying to solve them (just visualize the moves and positions in the solutions).
  
  Another is to visualize transiting a username_0ce from one square to another in a way that involves multiple moves while avoiding obstacles or dangers. Simple: Get a knight from one square to a distant one by the fastest route. Start with an empty board, then populate it with obstacles to force a longer route (defended enemy username_0ces, and friendly username_0ces).
  
  Once you can accurately visualize a position after 5 moves with only the rare mistake, then practice calculating, i.e. finding candidate moves after each given move. One useful source is the Chess Life games column by NM Bruce Pandolfini, in which you pause and calculate at key points.
  
  For this, you need to use a Move Selection process (MSP). Because that's involved, I can't address it here. Many authors offer advice. My suggestion is to avoid anything encyclopedic, such as Kotov's "Think Like a Grandmaster". I can recommend Per Ostman's "Find Your Best Move", but it may be too challenging for the beginner to fully grasp. Skim it for ideas you can use and come back to it later for more as you improve. Or, try Andrew Soltis' "How to Choose a Chess Move", which is less demanding.
  
  To get good at finding candidates, in test positions find every move that represents a "Capture, Check, or Threat" (CCT). Do it for both players. To get good at picking the best candidate, you need to:
  
  * develop good judgment intuition about typical moves, from experience
  * develop visualization skills
  * develop analysis / calculation skills (selecting the most powerful threats and replies, and experimenting with move sequences/ improvements to amplify/ refute them)
  * learn to maintain a count of material (username_0ces captured and remaining) over the length of a variation
  * know when to stop (no further immediate threats); this is going to be necessarily limited by your visualization / counting abilities in the early stages
  * use 'pruning' to select an initial set of 3-4 candidates to explore in depth, using just a quick analysis to weed out the losers, before calculating the winners to any depth
  * find 'improbable moves'; those that look absurd but guarantee some advantage because the apparent refutation fails to an unexpected resource. For this, I recommend "Forcing Chess Moves", by Charles Hertan, in which he highlights winning moves that chess engines find but which most human players prematurely dismiss.
  
  Then, to improve you also need to eliminate flaws in your MSP. I recommend NM Dan Heisman's many works, both articles and books, on eliminating mistakes. Try his book "Looking for Trouble". A key exercise here is finding your opponent's most dangerous reply in every position. Heisman's acronym is the aforementioned "CCT's" for the 3 categories to initially look for. (But that simple rule of thumb overlooks dangerous 'quiet' moves, such as using a rook to cut off the opposing king's escape while setting up a mate, without making a check, capture or further threat with the rook itself. It's not a panacea.)
  
  Some of Heisman's articles are available at ChessCafe.com (which involves a subscription), e.g. his article "A Different Approach to Studying Tactics" from May 15, 2001, available as a PDF file at: <http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman04.pdf>
  (ChessCafe is a valuable resource on every topic of chess in the form of digestible articles by a variety of expert trainers and master-level players, so if you can afford it, I'm going to plug it.)
  
  Finally, because there's a bias in most puzzle books oriented towards finding a winning move (or a defensive move), which is not the problem you face at the board until you know you're winning, I recommend finding a puzzle book that doesn't prime you with any information about whether you should attack or must defend. In fact, avoid any themed books, from those that specialize in, say, "Mate in 3" to, say, "Forks". Instead, I suggest "Practical Chess Exercises: 600 Lessons from Tactics to Strategy" by Ray Cheng. You must figure out the situation, and follow Steinitz's Rule of attacking or defending based only on the needs of the position.
  
  Don't spend a lot of time studying openings or endgames until your tactics are solid. Just get a plausible opening, and run through a couple of dozen existing game scores by masters in it to learn the themes. Then, play as many quick games with it as you can, just to see where you end up.
  
  When you're ready for endgames (you'll know because you start surviving until the endgame), I can recommend "100 Endgames You Must Know", by Jesus de la Villa. To whet your appetite with what surprises endgames can offer (and make sure you don't underestimate them), I also recommend Van Perlo's "Endgame Tactics". It's a medley of different endgames from real games, in many of which one or both players failed to find the best resources. Because endgame theory is very dry, I'd suggest mixing up your work on de la Villa's theory with Perlo's practical hijinks for entertainment (and stimulating your creativity).
  
  Good luck!
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_7**: Of course, I realize you wanted to avoid paying for paid chess training courses, but I didn't assume that meant you wanted only free material. The books I recommend are generally available for $20 or less, especially if you buy them as ebooks, or as used paperbacks.   Good free material is hard to come by, because chess writers have to make a living, too. Some chess clubs offer smattering of such materials, but I can't vouch for quality or coverage. Maybe start with the Exeter Chess Club, e.g. https://exeterchessclub.org.uk/content/get-your-eye-basic-practice-noticing-attacks  
  
  ---
  
  