Middlegame Planning and Weakness with GM Lev Psakhis at KCF Academy

KCF Academy is thrilled to announce the upcoming live lecture featuring GM Lev Psakhis. The online masterclass will take place on May 31, 2026, at 17:00 CET.

Lev Psakhis is an Israeli grandmaster, trainer, and author - and one of the most distinctive talents to emerge from the Soviet chess school. Born in 1958 in Kalinin (present-day Tver) and raised in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, he studied under Mikhail Botvinnik before being famously expelled for what the Patriarch called "chess hooliganism": an early knight sacrifice that perfectly foreshadowed the aggressive, creative style he would carry throughout his career.

That style brought extraordinary results. In 1980, Psakhis shared the USSR Championship in Vilnius with Alexander Beliavsky, still without the grandmaster title. A year later he shared it again in Frunze, this time with Garry Kasparov, whom he had defeated in round two. The grandmaster title followed in 1982, and by July of that year he was ranked 7th in the world with a peak rating of 2625. Tournament victories followed across Europe and beyond, from Sarajevo and Cienfuegos to Troon and the Lugano Open.

After emigrating to Israel in 1989, Psakhis won the Israeli Championship in 1997 and represented the country at seven Chess Olympiads. As a coach, he worked with Kasparov, Artur Yusupov, Susan and Judit Polgár, Emil Sutovsky, and the Indian national Olympic team. As an author, he produced a celebrated four-volume series on the French Defence and the widely praised Advanced Chess Tactics (Quality Chess), known for combining deep analysis with a direct and engaging voice.

This masterclass on May 31 offers a unique opportunity to explore middlegame planning and the exploitation of weaknesses with one of the game's great strategic and attacking minds.