Chess.com is excited to announce the winners of the 2023 Create Your Own Course contest, authors IceBreaker and Benedictine! Their courses, Killer Kings: The King as a Fighting Piece in Chess and Advanced Chess Patterns, are now available on Chessable, presented by the legendary GM Maurice Ashley.

The Create Your Own Course contest is Chessable’s yearly competition that encourages members to publish a course. In 2023, we received so many strong submissions that we couldn’t pick just one—so we went ahead and elected two winners!

Below, you can learn more about the 2023 contest winners and their courses:

Killer Kings: The King As A Fighting Piece In Chess By IceBreaker

“I was super excited to work with this material right away,” said presenter GM Maurice Ashley about this course. “This is the kind of stuff that all of us fierce tacticians, gladiators, wannabe Tal-like tacticians want to learn everything about.”

Try out the free Killer Kings lesson with 41 minutes of free video presented by Ashley by clicking the button below:

Try Killer Kings

IceBreaker’s course will teach you how to turn your seemingly fragile king into a close-quarters fighting powerhouse that will take you to victory. Strengthen your nerves and get ready to reset your mindset to look at the king in an entirely new way. Turn your king into a war general and learn how to use its full potential while never compromising its safety!

Among other things, Killer Kings will help you:

• Learn the optimal time to castle to build up an opening advantage
• Understand when you should give up castling to inflict pain on your opponent’s pieces instead
• Use your opponent’s pawns against them by using them as cover for your king
• Hone your tactical creativity by trapping enemy pieces, weaving mating nets, and using your king to land the finishing blow

A FIDE-rated expert, IceBreaker is an adult improver passionate about getting better. With many Chessable courses already under his belt, IceBreaker was twice a finalist for the Spanish edition of previous Create Your Own Course contests.

Are you ready to turn your king into an unstoppable fighting machine? Then click here to try the free sample of Killer Kings: The King As A Fighting Piece In Chess.

Advanced Chess Patterns By Benedictine

Tactics decide most chess games. The question is: will you be the one delivering the decisive blows, or will you be on the receiving end of them? Benedictine’s Advanced Chess Patterns course is here to build your tactical muscle, so that you can always find winning combinations and defend against your opponent’s threats!

Start working on your tactics with the Advanced Chess Patterns’ free lesson, featuring 29 minutes of free video presented by Ashley:

Try Advanced Chess Patterns

Benedictine’s course will take your chess to the next level using “isolation chess exercises.” You’ll first drill a tactical pattern in its bare bones, with very few pieces on the board, and learn to recognize it instantly. Only after you internalize that pattern, you’ll move on to more complex tactical exercises resembling real game positions. 

A follow-up to Benedictine’s Common Chess Patterns course, Advanced Chess Patterns is perfect for intermediate to advanced players who want to improve. In this course, you’ll learn to:

• Find devastating tactics that will win you crushing amounts of material
• Quickly identify pieces that are running out of squares so you can trap them
• Build impenetrable fortresses and use other drawing techniques to save you when you’re in a murky position
• Use tactics in the endgame that will get you the full point 
• And more!

Benedictine is an experienced Chessable author who has published multiple courses. His thousands of students have awarded him over 2,200 star-studded ratings, with his Common Chess Patterns course being among his most popular releases. 

Are you ready to take your tactics to the next level? Then click here to try out Benedictine’s Advanced Chess Patterns free lesson!