Who runs ChessDoctrine
ChessDoctrine is a small site run by two Turkish chess players and few volounteers who write and verify everything you’ll read here. We all have a long competitive history, and we teach the game outside of writing for the site. We don’t outsource articles to generalist content writers, and we don’t generate them with AI tools.
If you’ve found a guide on chessdoctrine.com that helped you, the chances are it was written by one of the two people below.
Our content writers
Deniz Tasdelen
Deniz is a FIDE-rated player (FIDE ID 6305946, rating 2102) with over 20 years of competitive experience. As a junior, he competed at the European Youth Chess Championship (Top 20 finish), the World Youth and World Junior Championships, and finished 3rd at the Turkish Youth Championship three times. His childhood rivals included Mustafa Yilmaz, currently Turkey’s #1 player.
More recently, Deniz defeated both Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana in back-to-back rounds at the FIDE Fischer Random Chess World Championship — both games were live-streamed by chess.com and on Hikaru’s channel. They’re playable from his chess.com profile.
Deniz also holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in philosophy. He writes most of the strategy and middlegame articles on the site. Read more about Deniz →
Emre Sancakli
Emre is a chess coach with current chess.com ratings of 2410 blitz, 2380 rapid, and 2557 bullet — verifiable on his chess.com profile. He started competing at age six and has spent the past decade-plus coaching, working with more than 100 students from adult beginners to tournament players.
The openings Emre most enjoys teaching are the Italian Game, French Defense, and King’s Indian — lines that reward students who understand why a move is played, not just which move to play. He writes most of the opening guides and trap articles on the site. Read more about Emre →
How we write our articles
Every guide on ChessDoctrine is written by one of the two players above. The process for an opening or strategy article is roughly:
- Research the position. Critical lines are cross-checked against the Lichess Opening Explorer (master games and 2200+ amateur games) and against published opening books where they exist.
- Verify with an engine. Evaluations and “best move” claims are checked using current Stockfish at high depth. Where our analysis disagrees with the engine, we say so explicitly and explain why.
- Use real game examples. We cite actual games — most often from the Lichess masters database or recent tournament play — rather than invented illustrative positions.
- Internal review. Articles are read by the second author before publishing. When readers point out errors, we correct them and update the article’s “last updated” date.
If you find a mistake or have a question about a specific line, write to us at ads.chessdoctrine@gmail.com. We read every email and update articles when readers point out genuine errors.
What we cover, and what we don’t
ChessDoctrine focuses on areas where a small, expert-written site can do something that the bigger platforms don’t:
- Opening guides with a coach’s perspective — not just theory, but what to actually play at different rating levels and why.
- Trap explanations that teach the underlying tactics — so you understand the pattern, not just the specific sequence.
- Strategy articles for club-level players — the rating range that gets the least attention from grandmaster-focused content.
- Less common openings in real depth — the Sodium Attack, Tennison Gambit, Saragossa, Van Geet, and similar lines that chess.com and Lichess cover only briefly.
We don’t try to compete with chess.com or Lichess on interactive play, puzzle training, or rated games. We don’t sell courses (yet), and we don’t run a paid membership. The site is and will stay free.
Our mission
ChessDoctrine exists because we wished a site like this existed when we were club-level players ourselves. The chess world has world-class content for grandmasters and decent introductory material for total beginners — but the middle ground, where most players actually live, is poorly served. That’s the gap we’re trying to fill: serious, technically correct chess writing for the player who’s past the basics but not yet at master level.
If we’ve helped you become a better player, the best thank-you is to share an article with someone else who might benefit, or to subscribe on YouTube where we’re slowly building out a video version of the site.
