Courses for Saving Lost Positions and Converting Wins

These two skills are covered by a small set of ChessMood courses, and we found no dedicated defence or conversion course from another seller in the catalogues we could read. For players around 800 to 2000, the lowest-priced of the four is Spartan Shield ($150 alone, defence) and the one aimed at converting won positions is The WWP Pilot ($250), as of 8 November 2026. Free practice and reviewing your own games are the alternatives. This guide is based on published documentation, pricing and reports.

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Test depth: Public information only. Nobody at ChessCourseFinder has taken these courses. This page is based on seller pages read on 8 November 2026. How we review explains the limits. This page is part of our skills guides.

An honest limit

All four courses below are sold by ChessMood. That is a gap in our research, not proof that no other seller has a defence or conversion course. We have not read any other seller's equivalent course, so this page cannot compare courses across sellers, though it does compare them with free articles and drills. Endgame courses and calculation courses overlap in practice; see endgames and calculation.

First, measure whether you have this problem

Count it before you pay for it. Go through your last 50 games with a free engine and make two tallies, using Lichess's own definition of a crushing advantage, an evaluation of 6.00 or more (Puzzle Themes), as the line:

1. Thrown wins: games where you reached +6 or better and did not win.
2. Saved games: games where you were at -6 or worse and still drew or won.

As a made-up example, not data: if 4 of 50 games were thrown wins, and 2 were lost after a draw was available, those games cost about 5 points in total (4 wins lost, 2 half-points). If 15 of the same 50 games were lost to a one-move blunder before anyone was winning, that is a much bigger leak, and the tactics guide comes first.

Aimchess measures something close to this for you. Its page lists "Advantage capitalization" and "Resourcefulness" among six scored areas and describes a free 40-game report. We could not confirm that every area appears in the free report, and it compares you with same-rated players by its own method. See game review tools.

What each course is for

Saving lost positions means making the best practical chances when worse. Converting won positions means finishing games you are already winning. Conventional coaching advice on conversion is to remove counterplay and trade into simple positions; on defence, to look for counterattack, perpetual check and stalemate ideas. That is received coaching wisdom and matches the section titles below, but the titles do not show how well the course teaches it.

The two jobs are close to opposites, which is why one course rarely covers both:

Cells without a link are conventional coaching advice, not measured findings.

The conversion argument worth knowing

"Simplify" is not the whole answer. GM Noel Studer's free article on winning won positions argues that the common failure is refusing to calculate: the player who is ahead wants to win without working, which hands the defender chances. He lists six causes: reluctance to calculate, chasing quick or pretty wins, imagining the result, losing control of the position, dwelling on an earlier missed win, and never training conversion. He also says failing to convert some wins is normal, and the goal is a better rate. That is one coach's view; Studer sells courses of his own. The WWP Pilot's list includes both "Simplify & Avoid Complications" and "Be ready to calculate", so the two ideas are not in conflict, but check that any conversion material you pick teaches the second as well as the first.

Three positions that show the ideas

We checked the first two results on the Lichess endgame tablebase and the third with a chess rules library, on 8 November 2026.

• Why pawn choice matters when converting. White: Kb5, Bc1, pawn a6. Black: Ka8. White to move. White is a bishop and a pawn up, and it is a draw. The bishop runs on dark squares, the pawn promotes on a8, a light square, and Black's king cannot be driven out of the corner. The defender's plan in such endings is to trade off White's other pawns and leave exactly this.
• Why stalemate is a real resource. White: Kg8, Qh1. Black: Kb2, pawn a2. White to move. A queen against a pawn usually wins, yet this is a draw: with White's king so far away, Black's king can sit on a1 in front of its own rook pawn, and any quiet queen move that takes away its last squares is stalemate.
• How a won game slips. White: Ka1, Qf7. Black: Kh8, Black to move. This is stalemate. Before your last moves in a won ending, ask whether the opponent will have any legal move.

What to buy by level

• Under about 1000: nothing yet; coaches commonly put tactics and hanging-piece checks first.
• About 1000 to 1800: one of the shorter courses if you are specifically throwing away won games or giving up in lost ones.
• About 1500 to 2200: Defend with Honor, whose stated range is 1500-2600.

Pick by symptom rather than by title:

How we chose

Courses whose titles and sections name defending, saving lost positions or converting; a stated range; a listed size; and a readable price.

The courses

All sit in ChessMood plans from $79/month billed yearly ($948/year Essential; see pricing). Ratings are ChessMood's, with no rating system named. Calculated from listed figures, the alone prices work out to about $71 (Spartan Shield), $56 (SLP), $77 (WWP) and $26 (Defend with Honor) per listed video hour, and about $2.05, $2.25, $1.41 and $1.23 per listed puzzle. Listed hours are not study time.

Those shares are calculated from the unlocked sections on each page. Spartan Shield and The WWP Pilot cost the most per listed hour, and Spartan Shield lets you see the largest slice before paying.

Spartan Shield

Seven sections: Mobilization, Defensive exchange, Accepting the sacrifice, Counterattack, Prophylaxis, Safe pawn structure and Defensive tactics, plus a test, by GM Hovhannes Gabuzyan per the page. Downside: it is short, and the price per listed hour is high.

SLP Method

By GM Avetik Grigoryan. Its 14 sections include Complicate and create room for mistakes, Avoid exchanges, Target the King, Sacrifice fearlessly, Create traps, Stalemate - your faithful friend, Psychology dynamics and When is it ok to resign?. The longest is Create traps at 42m 8s. Downsides: the free preview is the introduction and the first section only, and several sections, including Make adjustments and Psychology dynamics, list no puzzles.

Read this first, because it is free. ChessMood's own SLP article sets out 11 strategies whose names match the course's first 11 teaching sections, with annotated examples. What the course adds, on the page's evidence, is more examples, 111 puzzles and the later sections. If the article is enough to change how you play worse positions, you may not need the $250. One blogger, Ivan Veselov, wrote in 2024 that the article changed their attitude to bad positions, and that they had done only parts of the course on days when it was free. That is one person's account, not an outcome.

The article also suggests a drill it calls the "SLP gambit": open 1.e4 and play 2.Ba6, giving up a piece, to practise fighting from behind, presumably on a separate account. Check your site's rules on second accounts first; casual games or a training partner do the same job.

The WWP Pilot

By GM Avetik Grigoryan. Sections include Simplify and avoid complications, Exchange pieces, Keep your King safe, Don't be greedy, Punish the bluffs, Be ready to calculate and Prevent counterplays. Its 177 puzzles are the most of the three shorter courses, and the longest section is Make practical decisions at 25m 5s with 34 puzzles. Downside: the preview is the introduction and Section 1, which together run 7m 21s.

Defend with Honor

By GM Johan Hellsten per the page. Its 16 strategies include Mobilization, Blockade, Prophylaxis, Counterattack, Perpetuals, Counterthreats and Accepting Sacrifices. Downsides: it starts at 1500, and it is the longest of the four at 9h 41m, so it is the slowest to finish. Its page says 11 lessons and 21 puzzles are unlocked, all from Section 1, which is a fair sample of the format.

What the seller's pages do not tell you

• The two Grigoryan courses share section ideas. SLP Method and The WWP Pilot both have sections called "Make your pieces happy" and "Make practical decisions" and a "train your skills" finale. The shared headings may point to a common approach; we cannot say how much content is shared.
• Defend with Honor and Spartan Shield overlap in topic. Both list Mobilization, defensive exchanges, accepting sacrifices, counterattack and prophylaxis. Spartan Shield is 800-2000, Defend with Honor is 1500-2600.
• The previews differ widely. The WWP Pilot's unlocked material is the course overview, a structure lesson and a 3m 40s Section 1, so you cannot sample its puzzles on the page, while Defend with Honor opens a full section.
• Refund wording covers subscriptions. The refund policy gives 30 days from the first payment on your first subscription and does not mention single-course purchases, which matters if you are buying one of these alone.
• No page shows a date, and none states a rating system for its range.

Who should skip this

Skip if you are under about 1000, if you want one skill and expect a single seller to cover it (these four overlap in topic), or if your games turn on tactics rather than defence. For being on the attack, see attacking courses.

The free resource that covers the same ground

Lichess Practice and puzzles are free (Practice); see our Lichess guide. Its Puzzle Themes include "Defensive move" (386,822 puzzles on 8 November 2026) and "Equality" (43,030), described as coming back from a losing position, so you can drill the exact skill. Puzzles train finding the move, not the patience of a long game, so also play a won position out against the computer from a game you threw away. A common free step is to review your own lost and drawn games for the move where you went wrong. For general advice, see how to choose a chess course.

To see the unlocked lessons first, ChessMood's free Basic plan is the route.