memorizing chess -
with the reinhard method.

The Method of Grandmasters.

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Simon's course is fantastic. It is unbelievable how fast one can memorize Chess variations with his method.
GM Rainer Buhmann
GM Rainer BuhmannElo 2598 - German Chess Champion 2018
Simon does a great job of connecting memory techniques and Chess. I can wholeheartedly recommend his lectures.
IM Georg Kilgus
IM Georg KilgusElo 2411 - Austrian top league player
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Simon Reinhard - GM Raymond Keene, 1-0 (32). Manama, Bahrain, 2007.

The above photo shows me beating GM Raymond Keene in 32 moves.

The game was played in Manama, Bahrain, in 2007, in the aftermath of my first World Memory Championship attendance.

GM Keene was one of the organizers. I knew him from sight and I knew he was a Grandmaster. Me, I was only playing Blitz Chess online back then and had last visited a Chess club 15 years before, in 1992. I was also quite tired after three days of grueling memorizing. But, after these three days of constant and very intense imagining, visualizing, recalling, I somehow felt "activated". It is hard to describe.

I saw GM Keene wandering around. I asked him and he was ready to play. We agreed on an informal game, with no time control, no time pressure, no time scrambles. Each of us could think as long as he wanted, like in the old days.

I had White and it was maybe the strangest Chess game of my life: do you remember how I wrote that I felt somehow "activated"? Indeed. I did not really think about any move for a long time, everything just "felt right" and seemed to be clicking into place. In the end, after getting a promising middlegame position, I won with a sacrificial attack, crashing through in the center and on the kingside, overwhelming Black in 32 moves.

When he resigned and it was over, it felt a bit like a dream. And it felt oh so natural. As mentioned, I estimate I had not spent more than a few minutes per move at the most. Often, I was moving almost instantly. In the evening, after the prize giving ceremony (I became 3rd overall and became world champion with the team), I celebrated my memory titles and my Chess win with my friends. What a fantastic day, so long ago and so far away.

What does that tell you about the Reinhard Method? Well, I did not use the method that day, but that day I felt for the first time that special connection between the world of memory and the world of Chess.

That connection should manifest itself years later, when I would start to apply the methods that had helped me so much in my memory tournaments on a completely different topic: the Royal Game. Memorizing Chess, so to say.

In the end, after much testing and thinking, I managed to create my very own method: memory techniques for Chess. Humble as I am, I called it the Reinhard Method. Today, 15 years after my oh so memorable win in Manama, a number of GMs and IMs have taken my course, have learned my method and profited from it.

I also have many Chess amateurs among my students. And I love to teach, to explain, to see my students' quick progress. If I can manage to motivate them, it is also infinitely motivating for myself. Teaching is giving and receiving, all at the same time.

Maybe I have managed to pique your interest with this little story and this little text. If I did: contact me, let us talk about the method and the courses and about your goals. And if you wish, you can decide to take my course and learn my method.

It would be a pleasure. if you let me be the one to assist you on taking the next significant step on your Chess journey, helping you to transcend that old plateau and to get better than ever before.

Simon Reinhard

Munich, May 2022

CHESS SUCCESS

 

In the end, what is Chess success, Chess improvement really about?

I will tell you my personal view. Chess is about understanding. Nobody doubts that. But Chess is also about remembering. Chess is about position types, the best piece setups, openings moves, endgame motifs, middlegame ideas, checkmate patterns. If Chess was only about understanding, no Grandmaster would learn opening moves. 

In short: Memory is part of the game.

We have to accept (and embrace) that: getting the position you want out of the opening. Knowing how to play that devious rook endgame. Recalling the best piece setup in a tricky middlegame position. Recalling plans, recalling ideas. 

Playing Chess well means standing on the shoulders of giants. Your own personal understanding can work from there. Seeing it like that, a great Chess memory is the prerequisite to you reaching your full potential as a Chess player. 

Let me help you with that. 

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openings

Let us talk about the study of Chess openings. You regularly hear from some masters that studying the opening in detail is not necessary, that it is enough to just know the ideas and motifs of a position. 

But let me tell you one thing: I have had two GMs, two IMs (one of them a GM soon, hopefully) and many strong players as my memory students. And all have agreed that openings ARE important. You get your positions, the ones you know and like. You choose the playing field.

If you do not play the opening, your opponent plays it for you.

With my memory techniques, you can learn to memorize all of your repertoire, extremely reliably, virtually forever, with less forgetting, less repetitions, less tedious clicking, less boredom of replaying the same moves the thousandth time. Sounds too good to be true? It isn’t. It is the cold and hard truth and it will help you to become the best Chess player you can become.

Let me help you with that. 

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endgames & Co.

 

Memory techniques cannot only help you with learning the opening perfectly, like a book, as the well-known quote goes. 
You can also memorize endgames, setups, plans, motifs, mating patterns. But wait, you say, isn’t it enough to simply practice those? I say no. It helps, of course, but who does not know the feeling that things have been learned and understood, but cannot be accessed, that you cannot get there? It is simply such a comfort to have all of these things always at your fingertips, ready and usable.

Understanding is no guarantee to remember. 

But memory techniques are, the perfect tool to complement your understanding and to make you a more complete player.

Let me help you with that.

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