It is important for all players to become great masters of tactics, to see all the threats that you and your opponent have on the board. To improve this ability, just like anything else, players need to have a training program. All players should be working through tactical puzzles every week and we are lucky that there are now sites online that can help us do this.

The Training Squad players must register on thechesstempo site and attempt at least 50 tactical puzzles each week. Their coaches can look at their performance, see which problems they are getting right or wrong and can set targets for them to achieve in the short term and the long term. If you want to be like the Training Squad players, then this is something that you should be doing.

Here's a quick tactic that Training Squad players should have no problems with.

It is important in all our games to examine forcing moves for both our self and our opponent. Here is a great game between 2 young stars from the Training Squad, Elijah Cordover and Harry Phillips. It was a very complicated game and there were lots of chances for both sides to take. The Elite class in Ormond are having to examine as many captures as possible in this game and work out which might be good and which not so good. That is the captures that happened and those that could have happened. Perhaps you'd like to join the Elite class in this exercise.