Chess Tempo Forum

Hi

I stumbled upon ICS(Internet chess school) and its a 13 month structured program tailored for players who wish serious improvement and the instructions provided is what most 2200 to 2300 players receive...

I wish to know if anyone of you guys and girls have enrolled in it or have friends in it who wish to share their experience on how effective their method is.

If the feedback is good then I might consider enrolling in their course.

I was exploring their forum as well and saw quite a few mixed feedback on the ICS. However there are only a few who can actually give good and useful response, hence allowing to me to gauge how good their 13 month program is.

I just want to learn chess in a structured and organised manner so my understanding would not be fragmented. As I know, we can always improve but fragmented knowledge would always make us hit a plateau and voila...no more improvement..holes in knowlegde aint fantastic....

So pls leave any comments....

Sorry i meant INTERNATIONAL CHESS SCHOOL

I had a look as well some time ago, and discarded it mainly because it was too advanced for my actual level. I downloaded the demo material they have, and it seems quite good. I still think that if you have the time required to invest (which is a lot), and you are willing to cash a bit more money, some private lessons would help much more, because of the personalization aspect.

I prefer private tutorials but i only have a limited amount of money to invest..

Lets say i take a coach who offers his services for like 20-25 USD/hour, i can only take around 30 lessons from him/her and i wonder if that 30 lessons is actually enough for me...theres no point hiring a coach if i cant achieve much or he/she cant teach much within 30 lessons.

My country has quite a weak currency thats why any amount Im paying with USD would open my eyes big big

I don't think it is, based on forum discussions that I've read about it. Their system is that you purchase monthly study material for I think 24 bucks a month. They also have supplimentary program on openings, which seems to have been designed haphazardly.  The only concrete result that I've seen mentioned is someone posted in chess.com that a rating went up 33 points after the thirteen month program.... I personally think that a gain like that in a year is just as likely due to a player's normal course of improvement than the ICS program.

For the amount of money you're spending on that material you could buy a book a month by an author with proven results. I'm not saying that ICS is necessarily disreputable, but I think you can find more tangible evidence of the value of Mark Dvoretsky's series of books or My System and Chess Praxis, or even Silman's books.

Or with the money you'd spend on that program you could purchase a database and launch a more independent study with a few million chess games.


In short, I haven't seen any proof that the program yeilds results that justify the time or the money that they ask for it.  But you should know that I've not participated in the program myself, I'm just basing my opinion on what I've read from people that say they have partaken in it.

Other possibilities for less money per month than ICS and much less than personal lessons:

1) chesslecture.com: over 1000 videos by GMs and IMs and 5 new ones each week.  You can try it for a month for about $13 to see if you like it.  Unlimited video watching, you'll never be able to watch them all unless you are a fanatic for many months.

2) Internet Chess Club: hundreds of videos by GMs and about 4 new ones each week.  About $6 per month, a great deal just for the videos, but of course there's lots of other things to do there too.  Same as above, you'll never be able to watch all the GM videos unless you are a fanatic.

Of course videos are not as good as personal live lessons, but if you pay attention and try to learn things you can surely get much more out of it per dollar spent.   For example, try writing down a few sentences after each video describing what you learned, and review what you wrote some days or weeks later.

I'm a member of both sites above, and I can't even keep up with the new videos each week, much less make a dent in the hundreds of past videos.

I am member at ICS and i like it. In real its just a book in several chapters and with exercices and you get monthly some of them. The main focus is middlegame-strategy, positional play, thinking, analysis...http://www.chessmasterschool.com/clients/mainfiles/program-strategy.pdf (http://www.chessmasterschool.com/clients/mainfiles/program-strategy.pdf) .
So aspects are "missing" like endgame or tactics. It is an expensive book, there is nothing suprisingly new, but the information is highly concentrated, very very to the point; no Junk Infos; but if you dont have a Fide Elo>1800 you should stay with Silman and other books.
By reading these lessons you dont improve, you have to use the informations in your games and post mortem analyses.