What is Maximize Your Chess Potential! about?
Maximize Your Chess Potential! by NM Dan Heisman is a collection of 164 expanded chess tips drawn from his long-running “Chess Tip of the Day” column. The book covers general improvement, thought processes, psychology, tactics, safety, positional concepts, strategy, openings and endgames, with additional explanations, examples and background that go beyond the original short-form tips. It is aimed at chess players who want practical advice on how to improve both their play and their approach to studying chess.
NM Dan Heisman is an experienced author who focuses on writing books on chess improvement. This is his latest book (as of March 2026), and it’s a companion to his book, A Guide to Chess Improvement: The Best of Novice Nook.
He describes the genesis of the book as follows:
“I joined Twitter in 2009 and, since 2011, have been publishing a Chess Tip of the Day at www.x.com/danheisman. If you go to that URL on a browser and scroll down, you can find about 4,000 chess ‘tips’, and growing by one every day.”
The book contains what the author considers the best 164 tips he has put on Twitter, including his top 10 tips. In contrast to the Twitter versions of the tips, he has expanded the discussion and provide more examples and background to the tips in the book. He writes:
“Therefore, this book is much more than just some of my best tips. I have selected tips that were not just the most helpful, but also ones that could be expanded with additional text and/or examples… While many players at the same level may have similar problems in a skill-like analysis, they can also differ greatly in other areas, such as playing too fast or slow, or in their knowledge of openings, exact endgames, or principles.
As an instructor, the tips I offer often lean toward general chess improvement advice, rather than how to play very specific positions. So it is unlikely you will find too many tips comparable to: ‘When playing Black in the 6 Bg5 lines in the Najdorf variation of the Sicilian Defense, you will more often develop your queen’s knight with …Nb8-d7 than you would …Nb8-c6.’”
The Table of Contents above shows the scope of the tips. In particular, Heisman emphasises thinking techniques, making sure that all your pieces are always safe, visualisation and positional evaluation skills, and the efficient use of time during a game to avoid time trouble. He is also a big fan of Lasker’s quote above. Chapter 3 on psychology is an unusual, but welcome, chapter in the book, and it deals with such things as focusing too much on your rating, trying your best during every game, and making your chess studies fun. Most of the examples come from games by the author or his students, and so Heisman has a clear idea of what the players were thinking during the games.
Heisman implores readers to avoid playing “Hope Chess”, which he defines as follows in Tip 65:
What is Hope Chess?
Heisman defines it as making a candidate move without analyzing whether you can safely meet your opponent’s most dangerous reply — a check, capture, or threat — on the next move.
“When you have a candidate move and do not analyze ‘If I make this move and my opponent replies with a dangerous check, capture, or threat, can I safely meet it next move?’”
He then gives a striking example of Hope Chess:
“When asked ‘What’s the worse example of Hope Chess you have ever seen?’ (and indeed, arguably one of the worst moves, period), I offer the following amusing but painful example from a game where a student had White:”
Two further examples from the book are given below, with annotations from the book.
The question for the next example is: Is 1.Nxd5 safe?
In conclusion, this is a great chess improvement book for amateur and club players. Heisman’s long experience as a coach has given him a solid background to clearly see what most players need to do to improve. The tips and examples cover all areas of the game, including practical advice on what and how to study, and what to do whilst playing a game. The tips may seem simple, or even too easy, but they impart a lot of chess wisdom.
Finally, it’s appropriate to allow Heisman to give us his last tip:
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