How I Became an IM – The Bulmaga Method

Master Method Series #30

Do you ever feel like you spend too many hours trying to find out how to study chess openings but your opponents outplay you anyway?

Do you ever feel like your game level is stuck at one single point and not going anywhere?

Well, let me tell you, you’re not alone. That often happens when the player is too busy at trying to improve in one aspect of the game, but then neglects the other important areas.

Ambitious players need to have an opening repertoire they can rely on. But when you start to face the serious “booked-up” players in tournaments sometimes is very difficult to know better than they do, end they end up taking advantage very early in the game.

Romanian master Irina Bulmaga knew she needed to keep an edge if she wanted to make rapid progress and beat ever stronger players.

So she took a whole different approach in order to have a solid opening repertoire and also avoid falling into endless lines of long theory with players who literally eat the books and memorize all the lines, her approach: master the sidelines.