7 Best Online Chess Classes, Courses and Training Lessons [Updated June 2023]
“Every chess master was once a beginner.” – Irving Chernev
If you have had your first encounter with a chessboard and not a pleasant one, it may seem that chess is a game meant only for people with above-average intelligence, someone who can think fast and logically and generally excels at math. However, it is one of the biggest misconceptions. Though people with higher cognitive ability can acquire mastery in chess faster than others, the skills can be acquired by anyone who has an interest in this game.
Playing chess regularly can help in improving multiple brain functions such as improved memory, higher IQ, better cognitive ability, enhanced strategic thinking, and improved concentration. In fact, one of the studies even found that people over the age of 75 who played chess were less likely to develop dementia compared to the non-players in the same age group.
Chess is a board game that requires planning and foresight and acquiring the knowledge of all the pieces and their moves can get the ball rolling in this direction. To learn the basics, enrolling for an online chess course can help you master the game in no time. Most of the popular online learning platforms are offering some amazing online chess classes for beginners. These online chess classes can teach you the basic moves of each piece, best opening strategies, principles of attacking, basics of endgames, etc.
Since you have been contemplating on taking the best online chess lessons (we are assuming since you are on this page), we assure you that you will not regret this decision. Learning the popular moves and strategies from popular chess coaches and world champions can go a long way in improving your game. Children too can be enrolled for these online chess classes to develop their interest in the game.
To get you moving, we at TrumpLearning along with 10 chess experts have filtered down a list of best 7 online chess lessons that you can undertake to begin your chess training online. The basic requirement for these online chess classes is a chess setup or a chess app and the willingness to learn.
7 Best Online Chess Classes, Courses & Training Lessons :
- Chess: From Beginner to Advanced at Warp Speed [Udemy]
- Chess for Everyone! [Udemy]
- Learn to Play Chess [Chess.com]
- Chess Courses [LearningChess.net]
- Garry Kasparov Teaches Chess [Masterclass]
- Chess Tactics Essentials [Udemy]
- Learn to Play Chess: from a Novice to a Fierce Competitor [Udemy]
![Chess: From Beginner to Advanced at Warp Speed [Udemy]](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/storage.trumplearning.com/cmsfiles/chess-from-beginner-to-advanced-vhrkxjvl.jpg)
The first one to serve your quest of taking chess training online is this Udemy course. This is the best online chess training for beginners who may be familiar with the basics of chess but have not undergone any formal training. Intermediate players can also enhance their tactical skills by understanding the thought process of a master chess player. This is one of the best online chess course that with the help of diagrams and chess positions will help you transition from an average player to an advanced player. This online chess course will help you find tactics over the board, make a strategic plan for the game, and set up your pieces for an effective opening.
This chess training online consists of 16 on-demand online chess classes that have been classified under four modules. Besides that, this course also contains eight downloadable resources. The four modules and the topics covered under each are mentioned as follows:
- Module 1- How to Think Like a Chess Player
- Chess Notation
- Special moves such as castling, capturing "en passant", and pawn promotion
- Introduction to tactics and openings
- Module 2 – Using Your Tactical Weapon
- Learn about the powerful tactical weapons such as pins, forks, skewers, and the tactic of discovered attack
- Module 3 – Planning and Attacking
- Popular opening sequences
- The difference between open and closed positions
- Attacking the castled king
- Trading pieces
- Module 4 – General Principles
- Chess psychology
- Key defensive moves
- End game considerations
- Fun chess anecdotes, quotes, and amazing chess positions
The instructor of these best online chess lessons is Greg Vanderford, a teacher and entrepreneur who has spent many years training with chess grandmasters in Vietnam. This online chess course has a rating of 4 and has been enrolled by 3,163 students. You can avail of this course by paying a one-time fee that is backed with a 30-days money-back guarantee. Purchasing this chess training online will give you lifetime access to the course content. You will also be awarded a certificate of completion in the end.
Reviews by Yang Wang
“
I learned a lot of new strategies and tips that will give me an advantage when playing with someone that is very skilled
Sign Up Here
![Chess for Everyone! [Udemy]](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/storage.trumplearning.com/cmsfiles/chess-for-everyone-qofhpqd1.jpg)
This online chess course is meant for beginners and intermediate chess enthusiasts who have an interest in the game of chess or are looking for the best chess course online to hone their skills. This two and a half-hour long chess training online contains the best online chess lessons to teach you the basics as well as the ways to develop tactics for winning at the game. By the end of this course, you will be thorough with overlaying strategies to use in a game and the tactics required for implementing those strategies to force a checkmate in the endgame.
For your ease of learning, the online chess classes have been divided into four parts. The topics covered in this best online chess training are:
- The Basics of Chess
- Starting position and special moves castling and en passant
- Checkmate – how check works
- Stalemate and draws
- Chess notation
- What to do in the opening
- Fighting for the center
- Developing your pieces
- Castling your king
- Strong components of opening play
- Tactics in the middle game
- Pins, skewers, and forks
- Discovered attack
- Double attack
- Checkmate in the endgame
- Mate with rooks, queen, or the minor pieces
- Pawn promotion
Besides the videos, each section also contains a quiz at the end to test your learning. The instructor of this course is Robert Gumerlock, a chess coach and teacher. This course contains some of the best online chess lessons as it has been tagged as a bestseller on Udemy. This chess training online has a rating of 4.5 and has been enrolled by 3164 students already. People interested in undertaking this course can have full lifetime access to the content with a one-time fee that also comes with a money-back guarantee. You will also be awarded a certificate upon completion.
Reviews by Rebecca Denham
“
This was a great course for someone like me who had very little understanding of chess. I had been learning from a book and it in no way matched up to Mr Robert's lessons. Would highly recommend.
Sign Up Here
![Learn to Play Chess [Chess.com]](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/storage.trumplearning.com/cmsfiles/lessons-lvrwztex.jpg)
Chess.com is a free learning platform that will not only help you take chess training online for free, but it will also help you play chess online in a safe and friendly environment, save your progress, meet chess enthusiasts, share chess stories and ideas, and learn from each other. Chess.com is one of the most popular online chess websites that hosts more than one million chess games every day. It also contains great learning content created by more than 50 world-class chess players, coaches, and professionals.
Whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or an advanced chess player searching for the best online chess course, there is something for everyone on this site. The chess course here has been divided into five levels starting from scratch, learning as a beginner, thinking like a chess player, moving to the advanced chess concepts, and finally learning the tactics and strategies to play like the masters. To give you an overview, mentioned below are some of the topics covered in each level of this online chess course.
- Level 1 - Learn to Play Chess
- Chess pieces and how to set up the board
- Basic rules of chess and how to play a full game
- Level 2 – From Beginner to Winner
- How to get the advantage in the first few moves
- Hanging pieces, counting captures, tactics such as pins, forks, and skewers
- The most common book chess openings
- Level 3 – Think Like a Chess Player
- Understand the endgame
- The powerful winning moves such as a discovered attack, discovered check, double-check, deflection, decoy, desperado, and zwischenzug
- Recognizing pawn structures, pawn chains, open and closed games, and the advanced chess notation
- Level 4 – Advanced Chess Concepts
- The offbeat and popular openings such as the Sicilian Defense, French and Caro Kann, Dutch Defense, gambits and opening traps
- Chess combinations such as exchange sacrifices, clearance sacrifices, overloading, interference, underpromotion
- The advanced techniques of distant opposition and triangulation in king and pawn endgames
- How to win rook and pawn endgames with the Lucena and Philidor positions
- Level 5 – Mastery
- Learn from the famous openings such as the Evans Gambit, Catalan, Nakamura’s King’s Indian Defense, the London System, etc.
- How to improve positional play and strategic understanding
- Master attack and defense – the essential checkmate patterns and attacking plans
- Learn from the greatest players in the history of chess
- Miscellaneous chess lessons to improve technique
In addition to the video online chess classes, each level also has several challenges for you to practice. This is a comprehensive self-paced online chess course that will surely provide you the best online chess lessons. This site does not provide any certificate of completion.
Sign Up Here
![Chess Courses [LearningChess.net]](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/storage.trumplearning.com/cmsfiles/courses-tdryl1g3.jpg)
This again is a free chess learning platform that has got some of the best online chess lessons for free for children, beginners, and advanced players. These chess classes for adults have been divided into three levels – beginner, intermediate, and advanced. The aim of this platform is not only to equip you with chess skills but also to use chess as a personal development tool to enhance strategic thinking.
Each level of chess training online consists of 36 completely self-paced videos. In order to access the free classes, you will have to sign up on their website. You can additionally pay to unlock courses and to gain one year access to all the online chess classes and undertake more than 1000 challenges in each level, which is not available in the free version.
Some of the topics covered in different levels of these chess online classes are:
Level 1 – Beginner
- Understanding the chessboard, the different pieces, and the movements of each piece
- Special moves, the life of chess king, one move mate, rook mate, mate by two bishops, mate configurations
- Chess openings, middle games, and the endgame
- The basic combinations, typical combinations, deflection, sacrifice, skewers, pins, tale development, and pawn structures
- The safety of the king and the open, semi-open, and closed positions
Level 2 – Intermediate
- The principles of attacking, development and space advantage, positioning the pieces, and weak squares
- Using the bishops, knights, passed pawn, rooks, and the queen in the middle game
- Closed, open, fixed, and mobile centers
- Endgame tactics, advanced use of pawn, rook, and queen in the end game
Level 3 – Advanced
- Zugzwang, delivering discovered attack and discovered check, and the x-ray attack
- The incorrect combinations, hanging pawns, variation calculation, and active defense counterplay
- Intuitive sacrifices, destructive sacrifices, and exchange sacrifices
- Pawn endgames – pawn break, reserve tempo, and defense
These courses have been designed by Grandmaster Jozsef Pinter and International Master Gabor Pirisi. Each level also includes an achievement test at the end of the online chess classes. Besides these three courses, you can also sign up for free grandmaster lessons. These courses have a rating of 4.5. However, this site does not provide any certificate of completion.
Sign Up Here
![Garry Kasparov Teaches Chess [Masterclass]](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/storage.trumplearning.com/cmsfiles/garry-kasparov-teaches-chess-wawlvtqe.jpg)
Another gem in the best online chess course list is the masterclass taken by Garry Kimovich Kasparov, a Russian Chess Grandmaster and former World Chess Champion. This beginner chess training online consists of 29 detailed online chess classes that will help you develop the instincts and philosophy to become a stronger chess player. These video classes also include Garry’s favorite openings and advanced tactics that have helped him become the coveted world champion.
The duration of this best online chess training is 7 hours 14 minutes. The topics covered in these online chess classes include:
- Chess fundamentals and principles of Garry’s chess philosophy
- Double attacks and how to defend yourself from it
- Skewers and pins positions to get the best out your pieces
- Discovered attacks, deflection, and attraction
- Interference and overload
- Winning trades - trading pieces to create a decisive advantage
- Endgame lessons - shouldering, zugzwang, pawn, rook and queen endgames, and the king’s role
- Garry undertakes simul chess with three players and demonstrates what each player could have done differently
- How to analyze and the benefits of computer in chess training
These are some of the best online chess lessons that have been rated a 4.7 by his students. You can enroll for this course by taking a monthly subscription to Masterclass.com that will also give you access to more than 85 classes across categories. This online chess course does not provide any certificate on completion.
Sign Up Here
![Chess Tactics Essentials [Udemy]](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/storage.trumplearning.com/cmsfiles/chess-tactics-kztq5t0x.jpg)
If you wish to up your ante in a chess game or prepare for a chess tournament, this online chess course will prepare you with the right tactics to become a strong chess opponent. This is an intermediate/advanced online chess course that requires you to have a basic knowledge of the chess game and how each of the pieces moves on the board.
The online chess classes in this one of the best chess course online have been divided into seven sections consisting of 25 lectures that take approx. two and a half hours to complete. The topics covered in these online chess classes are:
- The true value of each piece
- What is a pin, the types of pin, and how to exploit a pin
- What are a fork and a skewer
- What is a discovery and removing the guard
In addition to the above videos of chess training online, the instructor of the course has also provided 33 downloadable resources that contain companion PDFs for the lectures. The instructor insists on reading these PDFs as you progress in your training to make your learning more concrete.
This best chess course online has been created by Brendan J. Norman, owner of ChessnCognac and a Pro Chess Coach for more than ten years. His online chess classes have a rating of 4.4 with 16,083 students on board making them one of the best online chess lessons that you can enroll for. This online chess course can be purchased with a one-time-fee that also comes with a 30-days money-back guarantee. You will have lifetime access to this course and will also receive a certificate of completion.
Reviews by Christopher Quam
“
He is a good teacher and I have been winning more games with the tactics being taught! Was great!
Sign Up Here
![Learn to Play Chess: from a Novice to a Fierce Competitor [Udemy]](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/storage.trumplearning.com/cmsfiles/learn-to-play-51kc45z3.jpg)
The last one in our list of online chess classes is this Udemy course created by an International Chess Master Alex Davidovic. This course is amongst the best online chess lessons for beginners to easily and quickly learn how to play chess. The online chess classes in this online chess course will not only make your fundamentals rock solid but will also teach you how to keep your king safe, repel the opponents attack, and apply tactics to gain an upper hand right from the opening of the game.
This is one of the best online chess course on Udemy as the instructor has not only provided the best online chess lessons with the help of videos but has also integrated the ‘Chess Mates Companion' software to learn by practice. The software will enable you to apply your new knowledge in practice immediately, and thus learn chess in the fastest way possible.
This course has been divided into five sections that contain 26 online chess classes. The duration of this training cum practice course is 2 hours and 14 minutes. The principles covered in this chess training online are:
- Setting up the board, how the pieces move, and value of each piece
- Castling to safeguard your king
- What are a check, checkmate, and stalemate
- Checkmating with one rook and two rooks, with the queen, or with two bishops
- Defending against quick checkmates
- When not to promote the pawn into a queen
- Tricky pawn promotion
- Best opening tricks and how to avoid the common opening trick pitfalls
This is the best online chess training to learn chess in the fastest possible manner that has a rating of 4.3 and has 2292 students on board. You can purchase this online chess course by paying a one-time fee protected by 30-days money-back guarantee. Each enrollee will also be awarded a certificate of completion at the end.
Reviews by Aaron Menezes
“
Yes, i learned a lot and moves which i hadn't thought of before. Plus, it cleared my concepts.
Sign Up Here
Conclusion
Enrolling for an online chess course and playing chess regularly has a myriad of benefits. It helps one to think rationally, develop patience and thoughtfulness, recognize patterns, stimulates visualizing, improves self-confidence, and winning the game gives you a sense of accomplishment. It is, therefore, a must develop habit for everyone. With that, we wrap up our list of best online chess lessons. We sincerely hope that the detailed information on each of the best online chess course will help you decide which chess training online to proceed with. Each course in our list of best chess course online will equip you with the basics, tactics, and strategies to gain an upper hand on your opponent in no time. Once you complete your chess training online, we assure you that you will be brimming with confidence, ready to take up any challenge.
Best Online Chess Classes and Training Lessons
Reviewed by 10 Chess Experts
4.5