Welcome to the website of
International Master Robert Ris
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Your Online Chess Trainer
Books
Crucial Chess Skills for Club Player Vol. 1 & 2
In December 2017 my first chess book Crucial Chess Skills for the Club Player Vol. 1 had been released by the Belgian company Thinkers Publishing. A year later Volume 2 was published. You can order my books here with a discount!
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“Each topic in Volume 1 is covered in detail and in a highly educational fashion. A careful and patient study of this book will surely be rewarded by a substantial improvement in the readers’ players standard. I can’t wait to see the next volume and what else Ris will be showing us. Again, highly recommended.”
Carsten Hansen, American Chess Magazine 08.2018
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"Our minds are formed by language, so the only way to grow in chess is through another human being sharing his ideas on the game, and how should be played. IM Ris is the right coach in this sense. The wise words he uses in this book will resonate and stay with us during our tournament games, making this book the right way to go if we care to improve our game. I will surely study this book for the next five or six months, while eagerly waiting for volume 2!"
Davide Nastasio, ChessBase.com (Full Review)
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Crucial Chess Skills for the Club Player Vol. 2
"... this book covers familiar ground, but it does so very impressively, with plenty of diagrams, lucid explanations and appropriate levels of analyis. In my opinion Ris’ book becomes the leader of the pack in a relatively crowded field. I commend it unreservedly. "
Mark Taylor, British Chess News (February 2020).
NEW: The Modernized Sveshnikov
The latest addition to my own chess library is my own book: The Modernized Sveshnikov, which was released in June 2020 after working on it for more than year. My favorite childhood opening is still incredibly popular as it's also part of World Champion Magnus Carlsen's opening repertoire. Also available as an e-book at Forward Chess.
DVDs
ChessBase
Since 2013 I have been a frequent visitor of the ChessBase headquarters in Hamburg, Germany for recording numerous DVDs on a variety of topics. An overview of all my DVDs can be found in the ChessBase Shop.
iChess
For iChess.net I even recorded a 15-hour+ Master Method series with several topics as well as an opening series on mastering the tactical ideas of the Benkö Gambit.
GingerGM
Despite the pandemic, 2020 has been a very productive year for me, as I started to cooperate with my good friend English GM Simon Williams. His company GingerGM does produce a lot of high-quality content and I'm glad to have been invited recording two DVDs: the Killer Scandinavian and the Killer Scotch.
Opening Articles
Studying openings has been my favorite pastime and I have always enjoyed keeping on track with the latest developments. Moreover, my students have benefited from this time-consuming work as well, by building up a long-term repertoire according to their style and specifically designed home-preparation for crucial games. For more than 10 years I have regularly published my analysis in several magazines. A chronological order of these publications:
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From January 2009 till end of November 2013 I have been part of the ChessVibes Openings (CVO) team, producing an online opening magazine (in PDF & PGN format), discussing the latest opening trends. In May 2011 we added another weekly magazine ChessVibes Training (CVT), for which I was responsible doing a tactics and endgame column. After, when ChessVibes was taken over by Chess.com, I had a monthly column in The Master's Bulletin until Spring 2015 when it ceased to exist.
Since 2012 I have my own Fast & Furious show on the PlayChess server, in which I explain sharp opening lines for a wider audience. From 2014 onwards I started to write opening articles for ChessBase Magazine.
In 2017 I made my first appearance as an author for the New in Chess Yearbooks.
In May 2019 my first of three (until now) repertoire series for Modern Chess had been published.
