Tony Miles had guts, my friend.

In 1980, at age 25, at the European Team Championship, Miles, playing black, defeated then World Champion Anatoly Karpov -- and he did so with an extremely unorthodox opening called the St. George Defense, which is 1...a6.

For those of you who don't know chess notation, in this opening black's first move is to advance the pawn that's all the way on the right-hand side of the board ahead one square.

Normally, a move like that would indicate to an opponent that the player knows nothing about the game. It's a ridiculous move.

Miles -- the first Englishman to earn the grandmaster title -- had a purpose behind it, though: he wanted to pull Karpov out of all his opening preparation and create a weird position his opponent had never seen before.

And it worked.

Grandmasters analyzing the game afterward found a bishop sacrifice Karpov could have made that looked very strong. So Miles was asked: do you think that bishop sacrifice would have worked for white? Was it a sound sacrifice?

Miles replied that it didn't matter if it was a sound sacrifice or not, because he knew Karpov wouldn't play it.

Since Miles had known his opponent so well, he hadn't needed to spend precious time, with the clock ticking, evaluating that bishop sacrifice. He just soldiered on, ended up ahead by two pawns, and Karpov resigned.

(Miles had less success with GM Garry Kasparov, telling the press: "I thought I was playing the world champion, not a monster with a thousand eyes who sees everything.")

Imagine knowing anything as well as Tony Miles knew chess.

He defeats the world champion with an opening that looked like a first-grader was playing.

He knows the kinds of moves the world champion makes.

You and I are not at that level, dear reader.

What we need is a do-this-then-that kind of training. In other words, a playbook, a proven system.

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But first, reserve your seat for the masterclass here -- it's being done three times, so you can choose which time works for you:

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Tom Woods