I can’t play a good game of chess. Sure, I can beat beginners. But, I can’t seem to advance any further than that. I’ve tried reading some books, but I haven’t found one that really explains why I should make a particular move. Reading books on great games is entertaining, but it doesn’t make me a better player. Just like watching the Diamondbacks doesn’t make me a major league ballplayer or listening to the Berlin Philharmonic makes me a first chair violinist.
I usually play on Yahoo games.
Any suggestions? Is there software which will analyze the moves I make in a game and make suggestions? Just keep plugging away and hope I improve?
How much do you play? Like anything else, doing it often is how to get better at it.
Is it possible you are advancing your game and don’t realize it? Yahoo tries to rank people by their skill. If you are playing people with a higher rating than before, you might not win more games even though you’re getting better.
Hopefully glee will be in here soon (he’s actually a professional chess instructor), but in the meantime, I can make a few suggestions. First, learn openings. For the first dozen moves or so of the game, you should be treading on familiar territory: There’s only so many ways to start, and they’ve been analyzed to death by players far better than you or I, over the course of centuries. What most of them come down to, though, is trying to control one or two of the center squares: Bring everything you can to bear on attacking the square of your choice, and once you’ve got more firepower trained on it than your opponent does, claim it with one of your less-valuable pieces such as a pawn.
Second, keep an eye on what’s vulnerable, and what pieces you can bring to bear on those vulnerable enemy pieces. Ideally, try to set up forks, where you can attack multiple targets at once, so your opponent can’t react to defend them all.
Third, keep your options open. Try to get into positions where you have many moves available to you. Even if you don’t know what you’ll use those options for yet, opportunities will come up. Knights and bishops especially should be kept near the center of the board, if possible: A knight in a corner has only two moves available to it, but one in the 4x4 block in the center of the board has 8 moves available. Likewise, a bishop on an edge of the board has only 7 moves available to it, but one in one of the four centermost squares has 13 moves available.
Usually an hour a day. However, I can play as often as 6 hours a day on the weekends. I try to play people who are ranked similar to me, but I’d say I lose 7 out of ten games.
The way I learned how to play was to get a chess game for the computer. Chessmaster or something like that. Then I spent days and weeks playing against the computer on varying levels of difficulty. You can also set up the board how you want and watch the computer play itself.
All in all, it really taught me a lot and, I think, bettered my game.
I don’t play chess, not because I don’t know how, but because I like Reversi and backgammon better. IME, it’s best to play against the widest variety of people you can, even people who aren’t as good as you are. You can learn from their dumb mistakes.
I have a couple of Reversi programs with computer opponents, and while these are good for times when you can’t find a human opponent, the computer is limited, even with different skill levels available. It will ALWAYS make certain moves or use certain strategies, while a human opponent will react in less predictable ways.
I don’t think that I’ve ever played on Yahoo games, usually I play on Microsoft’s site.
Don’t learn openings first. Learning openings without understanding basic tactics of the pieces is just like learning the answer to certain problems by rote: you won’t understand the underlying reasons for why you are making the moves, which means you’ll be toast as soon as you move into the middle game.
DO learn the mechanics of how the pieces interact. Start with endgames. Yeah, they seem dry and boring, but there is no better way to learn the basic interactions of the pieces than to do it on a board cleared of all intervening obstacles. Plus, the whole purpose of the game, for the most part, is to make it so you can reach a favorable endgame, which means you’d best know what to do once you get there.
Once you have learned the mechanics of endgames, play some chess-like games with the pieces. Things like fox and hounds can really make you learn to put the various interactive tactics into action. Such games also teach you how to think ahead. It’s like small-sided soccer, or playing pepper in baseball.
When you have some good understanding of how pieces work, get a book on the middle game and the tactics you need to learn. glee can probably offer some modern examples of good books for this purpose, but I found that both the Capablanca book and the Pachman series of books were especially helpful in this regard. Knowing WHY to fianchetto your bishop, or when NOT to push the h-pawn are the sorts of things you are looking for. A good midgame tactics book does that.
Play, play, play. Play against increasingly skilful opposition. Study the games when you are done, to see if you understand why you lost, when you lose. Find a chess club, if you can, to facilitate the analysis part.
I teach chess for a living and have an international rating.
After reading through the thread here’s my analysis.
Dale42, I need to see some of your games to tell what level you’re at.
Do you know chess notation? If so, please post a couple of your games here. (Otherwise learn notation!)
As Mosier said, practice should help. You do need to play through each game afterwards:
looking for your good and bad moves
deciding why you won or lost
to remember useful ideas (chess is a game of pattern recognition)
I agree with DSYoungEsq that studying endings first is good:
there are only a few pieces to study
correct endgame technique doesn’t change (unlike openings, which are constantly refined)
you learn how to force the win (or hold the draw)
Also (as he says) you can then move on to tactics, which can be learnt by solving sample positions where they occur.
(However the whole purpose of the game is to checkmate. Reaching a favourable ending is just one way of doing that. You’ll need to understand middle-game attacking as well as endings - it’s just easier to start with endings.
And I see no value to a chessplayer in ‘fox and hounds’.)
Idle Thoughts is correct in that computers can provide endless opposition at your convenience and Lynnn Bodoni is right that people have different levels and plans.
But computers can’t chat to you afterwards about how well you did.
OK, I’m semi-retired now, so here’s an amazing offer (buy now while stocks last):
I’ll analyse the sample games you post
I’ll play you a training game here on a thread (that means you get advice throughout and can even take a move or two back)
Just kidding. I’d say start with the endgame, figure out how to get there backwards. Always think ahead of your opponent. Avoid the trap of playing to his/her level.
I recommend IM Jeremy Silman’s books. I really benefited from his book, The Amateur’s Mind, where he wrote about the fixes for his students’ most common mistakes. He also has other books, if your more advanced. He doesn’t analyze games as much as he writes about tactics and strategy more generally. Or you prefer want individual instruction.
I’ve been experimenting with a new opening move: I’ll start by bringing out the King’s knight to KB6. Is this a bad open? I’m trying to castle as early as possible on the King’s side.
I’ll play a couple of games on Yahoo this week and post the moves. My stategy is to get the knights out as soon as possible in the middle of the board, try to control the center 4 spaces, castle as early as possible, but never castle on the queen’s side, and never trade a knight for a bishop.
It depends. I assume you’re talking about playing as Black (by the way, if you’re using “descriptive” notation then you’re moving the knight to KB3 as you give the move from your own side of the board; if in “algebraic” then it is f6). It’s possibly the most-played response to 1. P-Q4 as it avoids a very difficult opening called the Queen’s Gambit (1. P-Q4, P-Q4; 2. P-QB4, which looks like a pawn sacrifice but isn’t and gives Black a hard ride whether he takes the pawn or not) while still preventing White from doing as he pleases in the centre with, say, 2. P-K4. But if White played 1. P-K4 then 1. … N-KB3 is double-edged as White can chase the Knight around the board a bit, and while the move is playable (it’s named after an ex-World Champion and one of the greatest players who ever lived) it’s not necessarily a novice’s weapon.
Your strategy:
Get the Knights moving soon, agreed, but don’t centralize them straight away. Develop them (if possible) both to B3 (KB3 and QB3) where they can defend your centre pawns and attack the enemy’s, but wait until you have other pieces moving and some idea where your Rooks will go before moving them further. Try not to place your Knights where they defend each other as they each rob each other of a square that way, though in some lines it may be necessary.
Good if you can. You can’t always, but it’s worth shooting for. “Control” and “occupy” aren’t the same thing, often it’s enough merely to ensure that the oppo can’t use the squares himself.
Castling Queen’s side can be a useful aggressive option, but as a rule King’s side castling is safer. But you will learn after a while the wisdom of the maxim “Castle because you must or because you want to, not because you can”.
Impossible to generalise. Two Bishops are often, but not always, superior to two Knights. However, in many situations, avoiding giving a Bishop for a Knight may be more trouble than it is worth. Better to aim to control the game to suit whichever minor pieces you have - if Bishops, look to open the game up and give them scope on the diagonals; if Knights, look to block the game and stifle the enemy Bishops while finding good outposts for your Knights.
But it’s better to have a strategy than not have one - at the very least you may learn how to improve your strategy. Keep practising!
I think it’s safe to say that different play styles will favor bishops or knights, and if you know which one you favor, it’s not unreasonable to prefer to hold onto those. Myself, I’m very good at planning and executing knight forks, so I try to hold onto them if I can (of course, this isn’t stopping me from trading one for a rook, or for a piece and a pawn).
“King’s knight to KB6” went out of use about a century ago. :eek:
(As Malacandra said, if you’re White the move is N-KB3; if Black N-KB6.)
But my first post mentioned algebraic notation (which is the only legal notation in tournaments) and it will really help you to learn and use it.
The best opening moves are:
e4
d4
c4
Nf3
My guidelines for beginners in the opening are:
control the centre 4 squares
develop your pieces
get castled
“Never castle on the Queenside” and “never trade a knight for a bishop” are less use than a chocolate teapot. :smack:
Chess is a completely logical game and superstition like “only move on the White squares” and “never look at the board in case your opponent sees what you are thinking” have no place in it.
I don’t want to seem … rude … but is this whole thread a wind-up?
On the other hand, you can occasionally beat an opponent who’s studied but who hasn’t developed general skills by using an unconventional opening that your opponent hasn’t prepared for. As long as you only use it against that type of opponent.
Yeah, my chess teacher beat that one out of us early. It’s pretty well agreed that the strongest opening move is the king’s pawn, though queen’s is not unusual.
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