Attacking Hotspots in Chess

Buy with videos for 20$

Attacking Hotspots in Chess

MoveTrainer® Tactics course by GM Yaroslav Zherebukh (2623 FIDE) 

A Chess Hack for Successful Attacks—

Focus on These 4 Hotspots

Have you ever noticed that some sacrifices tend to happen more often on certain squares than on others? A typical example is the sacrifice on h2, and h7 respectively, with recurring tactical themes like the Greek gift.

But there are more squares that are prone to specific attacks. In fact, every square on the board has its own group of tactical patterns that are especially likely to emerge on them when the conditions are right.

This is a huge opportunity for pattern recognition. And that’s exactly what this course is about: practice typical sacrifices for individual squares, internalize the patterns, and then play them on repeat.

What’s special about this course is that not only the typical attacking squares are covered—you’ll learn the tactical specificities of every single square of the board.

Attacking-Hotspots

As the title suggests, this course focuses on specific attacking hotspots—square complexes on the board where certain attacks tend to happen. Each hotspot is treated as a group of adjacent squares.

The four hotspots are the following:

🔴 Kingside Square Complex: f6, g6, h6, f7, g7, h7, f8, g8, h8

🔵 Narrow Center: e6, d6, d7, e7, d8, e8

🟠 Queenside Square Complex: a6, b6, c6, a7, b7, c7, a8, b8, c8

🟢 Sacrifices on the 5th Rank: a5, b5, c5, d5, e5, f5, g5, h5

For the sake of efficiency, your training ground will be from rank 5 to rank 8, playing from White’s perspective. Since the board is a mirror image, the pattern recognition will work in your favor when you’re playing the black pieces as well.

The Common Ground of Sacrifices

Have you ever considered how often games are decided by sacrifices, for example, on g7? Let’s see two positions from the course:

Attacking-Hotspots

It looks like White doesn’t have enough attacking pieces to justify the sacrifice, but they actually do! From the game Ding vs. Aronian, St. Petersburg 2013

Attacking-Hotspots

Why can White sacrifice the knight here, even though there don’t seem to be enough attackers on the kingside? From the game Timman vs. Huebner, Tilburg 1988

Two completely different games, but a similar idea. To say it in the author’s words: “destroy the pawns in front of the king, sit back, enjoy. Well, maybe calculate just a little bit.”

Sometimes it doesn’t even matter which piece you sacrifice (it can be the queen in some cases too!). In this course, you will see and practice all piece sacrifices on all squares!

Pattern Recognition and Repetition

Through studying and repeating these patterns in different positions, you’ll develop a strong intuition for when and where to focus your calculations. Your thinking will become sharper, more targeted, and ultimately, more efficient.

By the end of this course, you’ll be much quicker at identifying the right attacking ideas — because your candidate moves will naturally revolve around the key squares you now know to be vulnerable. You’ll stop looking at the board as just 64 squares—instead, you’ll start seeing it as a dynamic landscape, full of opportunity.

And yes, you will gain plenty of experience here: The course contains so many exercises that the author himself described it as “a massive beast”. Here’s a list of all that you’ll get:

✅ 1000 exercises, mostly drawn from real games by top players like Carlsen, Nakamura, Caruana, and even Nimzowitsch and Tal!

✅ 32 chapters, each one dedicated to a single square

✅ 32 extra chess tips given at the end of each chapter on various topics, not just tactics

✅ > 15 hours of video instruction

The author’s recommendation is to take one or two days to study each chapter. Consistency is key here, though! Try not to skip a week. Study regularly and the results will come.

Author GM Yaroslav Zherebukh has even used this method, with the same exercises, for his own chess improvement. After seeing the positive effects for himself, he introduced it to his students and was able to confirm its efficiency, from 1500-rated players up to the grandmaster level!

GM Zherebukh is among the top 20 chess players in the US. He has years of coaching experience, and in this course he is giving you a novel and efficient approach to understanding and knowing your 64 squares.