GM Maurice Ashley – Secrets of Chess Geometry 2: Dance of the Pieces Index Review

Secrets of Chess Geometry 2 Review: The Verdict in 60 Seconds

Maurice Ashley’s second geometry course is a tactics course in disguise. It does not drill fork after fork; it trains you to see lines, diagonals and king paths that ordinary pattern training ignores. The chapters are organised by piece, the examples mix composed studies with real games, and the presentation is lively from the first minute to the last. The price of that richness is length: most chapters run an hour or more, and the closing practice section is short. If you are willing to pause and work, few courses change the way you look at the board as much.

Depth earns a 9 because every chapter goes beyond textbook patterns into study-level ideas. Practice value gets a 7: there are pause-and-solve moments everywhere, but the dedicated mates and puzzles chapters last only about ten minutes together. Study files score well thanks to the full course PGN. That balance is the core of this Secrets of Chess Geometry 2 review. For other tactics courses, see our chess courses list.

Meet the Coach

The commentator is easy to hear. When Ashley tells the story of a World Championship ending, he narrates it like a broadcast — the hours of play, the pressure, what the loser must have been thinking — before he explains the geometry. And the coach of young Harlem teams shows in the outro, where he says he wishes he had been able to train this material “in an organized fashion” as a youngster.

How to Get Dance of the Pieces

Where the 11h 58m Goes

For this Secrets of Chess Geometry 2 review we timed every chapter and grouped the first four videos as the foundation block. Two numbers stand out. A quarter of the runtime goes into the recap and the general lines-and-shapes chapter before any single piece takes centre stage. And the knight and the king together take more than a quarter of the course, which makes sense: in our view these are the two pieces whose paths are hardest to visualise.

The course logic is a zoom: from the general themes of volume 1, to the shapes of tactics, to one piece at a time, then pieces in combination, and finally positions where nobody tells you the theme.

A Worked Example: Bronstein’s Blunder and the Diagonal King

The Salsa King chapter opens with one of the most painful moments in World Championship history, and it is the best illustration of what “geometry” means in this course.

1. The rule. A king moving diagonally reaches a target as fast as one moving in a straight line, because the board is not ordinary flat geometry. Réti showed it in his famous 1921 study, which volume 1 covers in detail.
2. The position. Game 6 of the 1951 match: Bronstein, with White, must stop Black’s passed pawns with king and knight. Ashley shows the easy draw — bring the knight back with check and plant it on d4, ready to give itself up for the pawn.
3. The mistake. Bronstein plays Kc2, expecting …Kf3, after which his knight could return with tempo.
4. The refutation. Botvinnik plays …Kg3, moving away from the pawn in order to come back to f2 without allowing a knight check. The pawn can no longer be stopped and Bronstein resigns.
5. The cost. The match ended 12–12 and Botvinnik kept his title. Ashley’s point is that Bronstein surely knew Réti’s study — and still missed it after hours of tension.
6. The training lesson. The chapter then shows a study where the defending king walks the “wrong” way, away from the enemy pawn, only to double back inside the square of the pawn and draw. Same geometry, other side of the board.

That is the method of the whole course: one geometric property of a piece, a dramatic example where a strong player got it wrong, and then a composed position that drills the idea until you see it without counting.

Second Example: Seeing Through the Pieces

The Art of Defense chapter introduces the skill Ashley calls seeing through the pieces. In his first example White threatens a crushing bishop check after a queen move to e6, and Black seems to have no defence at all. The saving move is a quiet pawn push to f3. It works because Black’s queen, looked at properly, already defends a1 — through the pieces standing in its way. A few moves later an X-ray defence, with the queen guarding a rook through a bishop, and a zigzag of queen checks finish the job.

The second example is even more geometric. A black rook on h2 gives check, and every way of dealing with it lets the queen use a different square on the same diagonal — first f4, then c7, then d6 — to pick off an undefended white rook. Three squares, one line. Once you see that picture, you will look for hanging pieces along diagonals in your own games.

The Index, Turned Into a 14-Session Study Plan

The product page lists every chapter with its runtime. To make this Secrets of Chess Geometry 2 review useful at the board, we split the long chapters into halves and set a task after each session. At three sessions a week the course takes about five weeks.

Test Yourself: Can You See the Lines?

Every Secrets of Chess Geometry 2 review should let you test the material yourself. These four questions come from the chapters; if you solve them quickly, you are ready for the deeper studies. Click a question to see the solution.

Secrets of Chess Geometry 2 Review: Strengths and Gaps

A composer’s eye for the impossible move

Ashley composes studies, and it shows in the choice of positions: moves that look absurd, such as a king walking away from the pawn it must stop or a queen landing on an attacked square, are the core of the course. He always explains why the move works in words of geometry — lines, squares, triangles — rather than “the engine says so”, which makes the ideas transferable.

Energy that carries long chapters

Hour-long videos can drag, but Ashley’s commentary rarely does. He jokes, tells stories about the players, invites you to pause and comes back with the solution. The outro sums up the aim: look at the board differently and spot the shapes of tactics in your own games.

Where the course stops

No Secrets of Chess Geometry 2 review would be complete without the downside. The practice section is the weak spot: the mates and puzzles chapters together run about ten minutes, so most of your solving happens inside the main chapters. Many positions are studies rather than practical middlegames. If you want classic theme-based drilling, add Magic of Chess Tactics or Tactics Ninja; for geometry in the endgame, Van Perlo’s Endgame Tactics is the natural companion.

Which Tactics Course Should You Pick?

Board-vision courses solve different problems, so this Secrets of Chess Geometry 2 review ends with a short comparison. The table matches each one to a goal; each title links to a product page with its own index.

FAQ

Is this Secrets of Chess Geometry 2 review based on the real course?

Yes. Runtimes come from the 14 video files, and every example and quote comes from the full chapter transcripts; the historical game was checked against the record of the 1951 World Championship.

Is the course mostly studies or practical games?

Both. Many positions are composed studies, some by Ashley himself, but the course also uses real games, including a famous World Championship ending, to show the same geometry under tournament pressure.

How should I split chapters that run over an hour?

Watch the longest chapters in two halves of 40 to 52 minutes and replay the positions from the course PGN between sessions; the 14-session plan in this review does exactly that.

How is the course delivered?

Digital files. Crypto payment only. Fast delivery is handled manually after payment confirmation. Download links remain available for 7 days; save your files locally.