Online chess school
Learn chess with a grandmaster.
Every guide follows the method of Grandmaster Tigran Gharamyan, French Champion 2018. There are 79 of them, from the rules of the game to real opening and strategic understanding. Free to read, with nothing to install and no account to create.
Your teacher
Tigran Gharamyan
Grandmaster · French Champion 2018 · Peak rating 2676
Armenian-born and a multiple Armenian youth champion, Tigran Gharamyan became an International Grandmaster and won the French Championship in 2018, after finishing runner-up in 2015. His peak rating is 2676. He has spent his life on the sixty-four squares.
What he enjoys most is not winning a game. It is the moment a position finally makes sense to someone who could not read it an hour earlier. He has been teaching for more than twenty years, and he co-founded this school because that moment is what he wants to spend his time on.
His conviction is that nobody gets better by memorising more. You get better when you understand why a move works, so you can find it again on your own, in a game nobody has shown you. Every guide on this site is written that way.
Four tracks, one path through the game
Learn Chess · 25 guides
How to Play Chess
Start from the first move
Learn how to play chess step by step, from the rules and your first checkmates to opening principles, with exercises and advice for complete beginners.
All 25 guides →For parents · 8 guides
Chess for Kids
A parent's guide to chess for kids, from the pawn game warm-up and teaching kids chess step by step to the right age to start and real benefits.
How it works
01
Written guides
Every topic is a long, carefully written article you can read end to end, not a stack of short tips.
02
Board diagrams
Positions are shown on a real board, right where the explanation needs them, so you never lose the thread.
03
Playable games
Famous games are replayable move by move inside the article, on the same board as the diagrams.
04
A free opening guide
Three opening tips from Tigran and two complete repertoires, sent to your inbox at no cost, with no account to create.
Begin with the free opening guide
Three opening tips from Tigran and two complete repertoires, one for improving players and one for experienced players. Pick one and play it long enough to know it well.