Dear ,
As a kid he showed incredible potential, reaching 2000 FIDE level at only 10 years old while putting minimal effort into formal study beyond just practicing casual games.
![]()
Are you wondering why so many people get stuck at the 1500-1900 FIDE chess level without making any progress despite countless studying and practice?
You are not alone. Dozens of students around this skill hit a glass ceiling despite continued study of tactics and games, and more.
We recently reached out to Argentine Grandmaster Damian Lemos, whose ascent to becoming a Grandmaster is very different than your typical story:
As a kid he showed incredible potential, reaching 2000 FIDE level at only 10 years old while putting minimal effort into formal study beyond just practicing casual games.
Around this time he began to take chess more seriously and began studying tactics for hours-and-hours each week. Unfortunately by the time he was 12, he was actually rated lower for much of the year! What was he doing wrong? Was formal study actually hurting his game?
He began to read more books on tactics, memorize and study openings to a deeper level, scrutinize his own games, and play in more tournaments. By this point he was studying chess 25+ hours per week and it was basically his only extracurricular activity besides school at this point. This went on for nearly 2 years.
Did he become a Grandmaster? Hardly. By early 2004 he had barely gained 100 points. It would make him so angry to see his peers continue to seem to become better while studying less. Maybe he was one of those many children who showed promising results as a child "chess prodigy" that never translated into the adult world.
By early 2005 he had had enough. He was not going to give up and knew by this point that the problem was in the way he was studying. We are sure many of you have heard of the "Pareto Principle" (also known as the 80/20 rule) and so he began to completely rework the way he studied for chess, eliminating activities that had little gain and focusing on those that seemed to bring him the best return.
The results were shocking. The biggest mistake most club level players make is not shifting the WAY they study chess after they reach a certain level, and instead dedicate more time to studying the wrong way.
We think that when you hit this rating level, you need a massive paradigm shift in the way you think about improving your chess. Studying tactics and memorizing openings till your eyes bleed are no longer going to cut it. You need to learn the way Grandmasters think, which is completely different from the way club players think.
The results in the system he built for himself were insane. In early 2005 he didn't have a FIDE title. By 2006 he zoomed past the IM title and less than 30 months after that he became a 2500 GM.
He never shared this secret study system he put together that year (except for a few lucky students he privately tutored, of course).
In 2014 FIDE Master William Stewart from our friends at iChess.net reached out to him to see if he would share the secrets of the system he created that year. They agreed to make a 20 disc authoritative course under the Empire Chess brand for struggling club players who are tired of seeing diminishing returns on their gains and want to leave the "beginner" way of studying tactics and openings out in the dustbin.
He spent the next 9 months carefully finding the best games to go over, the best content to cover and a way to maximize your chess gains in this course. The result was The Club Players Manifesto which went on to become the best selling Club Player’s video series on the market. The video is rated 4.8/5 stars on Amazon with over 35 reviews.
This bundle is not for everyone, it’s recommended for club level players in the FIDE range of 1200-1900 who are serious about improving their chess and want to add an excellent supplement to their chess study routine. We guarantee by just watching one lecture a day everyday for 20 days you will see marked improvement.
