One of the last websites I have discovered is the Grandmaster Mac Chess Academy! I was surprised because it has a great number of chess resources and videos to learn, and best of all, many of them are free! GM Mackenzie Moliner analyzes in video interesting games to learn new concepts and discover new ideas.
Videos are well-structured as learning material because you can find punctual chess lessons or videos about one specific topic, like “Attacking Chess Course”, “The Sicilian Defense Course”… with many chapters in each one. The fact that a GM like “Mac” analyzes positions showing how he thinks is very helpful to progress.
Who's Grandmaster Mac and his Academy?
Grandmaster Mac Chess Academy is a very complete online platform that provides people with videos and lessons available for everyone.
The page was first started by GM Mackenzie Moliner, who achieved the IM title in 2010 and later his GM title in 2013. He has become a great chess coach, especially collaborating with chess schools.
Nowadays he is very respected for the American chess community and well-known by his students and friends as Grandmaster Mac.
Now it’s a respectful online community that dedicates to chess coaching at any level. One important part of his webpage is the free chess lessons available, which are videos or PGN analysis of master games. I recommend you check out Grandmaster Mac's online chess coaching service where you will find free chess lessons so you can skyrocket your rating once for all!
The analysis of all these free chess lessons is done and published by Mac and his team and the result is amazing. These are focused on explaining specific chess themes or chess ideas with simple terms so everyone understands.
This chess project has a lot of experience and is very recommendable for chess beginners or kids. They are also associated with many important chess organizations like FIDE, US Chess Federation, American Chess Magazine, Chess.com, Chess life, and others.
Grandmaster Mac thinks that chess is an excellent game for kids so they can develop thinking skills and helps their mental growth, which is a fact. He carries out the ideal of ex-world champion Capablanca, who thought that chess should be taught to every student in his country.
The online chess lessons seem really interesting and in my experience as a chess coach, at least you should check them out.
A beautiful journey through chess improvement
This is a great way to develop your skills as a chess player, most humbly, Grandmaster Mac displays a Siegbert Tarrasch quote on the main website: “Many have become chess masters but none have become masters of chess” along with Irving Cherchev’s quote: “Every master was once a beginner.”
Grandmaster Mac wants us to understand that chess learning is a beautiful journey, as I also wrote in my blog post 5 keys to get better at chess. Also, while motivating newcomers to become authentic chess-lovers with his online chess lessons.
The strong methodology that Grandmaster Mac shows off in his videos is absolutely amazing, offering quality chess material to study is ideal for kids.
It's quite easy to find a person that teaches chess to amateurs or adults with an average good level, but Mac takes chess learning to the elementary level. He is not teaching kids chess, he is forming kids with chess.
He also offers courses and personalized online chess coaching for an affordable price.
Many parents and chess amateurs are highly connected to Grandmaster Mac, for the incredible things they learn with free chess lessons. Also, the awesome experiences like winning tournaments together o studying together make them look almost like family
School programs with chess lessons!
Now, the best of the creations of this acclaimed grandmaster is his school programs for kids to learn chess. This is why we said, in the beginning, it was honoring Capablanca’s desire to include chess as an object of study.
The reason is simple; playing chess brings so many benefits not just for children, but teenagers and adults as well. We have seen examples of this, like Russia, where chess is practically another subject of study.
There are a couple of useful things that, not just kids, but everyone could learn from chess, for example:
- Creativeness. There are a lot of chess players that just move their pieces around one place to another. This is not chess, to actually be successful at chess you have to create plans, have ideas. This is excellent for kids because it actively trains their creative thinking.
- Critical thinking. As I have mentioned before, analysis is a fundamental part of the chess learning process. Learning how to analyze in a chessboard will give you a great idea about how to analyze real-life situations and problems. (sounds crazy, believe it’s not)
- Concentration and focus. Chess is all about focus, you can’t do anything correctly if you don’t focus correctly. Grandmaster Mac, like many other good chess masters, improves the student’s focusing skills with his online chess coaching.
The benefits of chess are so numerous and are unimaginable how online chess lessons can change a person’s life. In my personal experience, is just amazing to see how many similarities there are between a chessboard and real life.
Our goal as chess masters is not just to “give certain knowledge” but to involve in the student’s learning process and understanding their mistakes so you fix them!
You can find their school chess programs with free chess lessons in different parts of the United States, they operate in a big number of schools and institutes. So if you live in this country and you would like to have your kid learning some chess check out their official page!
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