Practical Calculation by GM Renato Quintiliano Modern Chess

We are excited to introduce the latest course by Grandmaster Renato Quintiliano, titled “Practical Calculation.” Unlike traditional courses that focus on opening repertoires, this unique offering dives into the art and science of calculation in chess, a crucial skill for tournament players and enthusiasts alike.

Course Structure: The course is meticulously divided into five comprehensive sections, each designed to enhance your calculation skills through structured lessons and practical exercises:

1. Candidate Moves:
   • Introduction: Understand the importance of identifying potential moves to consider in various positions.
   • Test Positions & Solutions: 7 challenging positions to test your skills, followed by detailed annotated solutions.
2. Improving Variations:
   • Introduction: Learn how to refine and optimize your lines of thought during calculation.
   • Test Positions & Solutions: 7 positions to practice improving variations, complete with in-depth explanations.
3. Calculating Long Lines:
   • Introduction: Master the technique of visualizing and calculating extended sequences of moves.
   • Test Positions & Solutions: 7 long-line scenarios to solve, with thorough analysis provided.
4. Calculating in the Endgame:
   • Introduction: Focus on the critical endgame phase, where precise calculation can make or break the game.
   • Test Positions & Solutions: 7 endgame positions to hone your skills, accompanied by comprehensive solutions.
5. Studies:
   • Introduction: Explore composed positions that highlight specific themes and challenge your calculation abilities.
   • Test Positions & Solutions: 7 studies to test and improve your calculation, with detailed annotations.

In addition to the theoretical and practical content, the course also features a Video Version with a running time of 3 hours and 30 minutes. This video complements the written material by providing visual explanations and insights directly from GM Renato Quintiliano.

Why This Course?

Calculation is often the deciding factor in chess, separating good players from great ones. This course aims to provide practical insights and examples that demonstrate how calculation works in real games. GM Renato Quintiliano shares valuable experiences from his own tournament practice, emphasizing the non-linear and complex nature of chess calculation. By engaging with this course, you will not only improve your calculation techniques but also gain a deeper understanding of the thought processes behind them.

The course is designed to be interactive and engaging, with critical moments highlighted in red as additional exercises. These marked positions serve as focal points for practice, allowing you to test and measure your progress.

Introduction by GM Renato Quintiliano

For the first time, I’ve decided to make a database that is not focused on an opening repertoire. Instead, I wanted to talk about something that could be more useful and effective for everyone, especially tournament players. So, calculation technique seemed a logical subject to exploit. This database is divided into five sections: Candidate moves, Improving variations, Calculating long lines, Calculating in the endgame, and Studies. Although all these topics have been well examined by many books and better players/trainers than me, I still wanted to contribute by sharing my view and some interesting examples from my tournament practice.

Therefore, instead of selecting my best tactical games, my idea is to show how calculation works in practice, in a real game. It’s never so clear-cut as textbook examples; our opponents often have a good continuation, both players miss resources along the lines, etc… but so is chess: a difficult game, in which you almost always only win with a little help from the opponent. Nevertheless, the examples selected still look good enough – at least I hope – and I tried to explain the thinking process in the best way possible, as I think this can be the most useful thing for improving players.

For practical purposes, I marked some positions in the examples as red. These are critical moments that can be used as additional exercises if you want.

I also offer this first diagram as a warm-up for the upcoming positions.

White to move

If you are not able to find the best sequence here, I hope that after studying the database you can return to this position and make progress. Then we will know if the database is really helpful!