I learned the chess rules and moves in the 1990s. I bought a chess set with a vinyl chess mat. I purchased Sargon on my PC. I upgraded it once.
I never grasped strategy and thinking five moves ahead. I went to the local chess club and inquired about lessons. They weren’t offering any at that time (mid 90’s). All the people there had played for decades. I didn’t go back.
I wasted money on . They all explained clasic openings, middle game and end game. I still didn’t grasp strategy. I could see my pawn can take this piece. Then I got my butt kicked. I found a pc exercise for capturing with a Knight. I practiced seeing that L shape and recognized when I could take a piece. Then I got my butt kicked. (Again)
I finally gave up and moved on 20 years ago.
I’m thinking about trying one more time. I’ve heard about Think Like a King. It’s a complete program for teaching chess to kids, coaching and organizing a club. Gosh, I wish something like that existed when I was 9.
They’ve taken Think Like a King a step further with a Online Chess School. Looks interesting for people like me that can’t attend Elementary school again.
Can you recommend a path to learning chess?
Does it always require memorizing dozens of openings and the moves in classic games? Most books I’ve seen focus entirely on that.
I don’t expect to get very good at my advanced age. It would be wonderful to become competitive with another beginner.
I’ll ask around. They’re adults now but can’t hurt to ask.
It seems like most chess players started playing with a relative during childhood. Kids minds are very adaptive to learning new skills.
I know there are many online rooms to play chess. AFAIK they aren’t there to hand out advice. It would be helpful to find a place where they would comment on a beginners game and explain why a different move is better.
If most books focus on that, it’s because that’s an easy way to fill books. The specific openings aren’t all that important. It’s the principles behind the openings that are important.
The first key principle of openings is that you want to develop your pieces: That is to say, get them into positions where they can make many moves. Usually, that means near the center of the board. And of course, you also want to prevent your opponent from doing the same.
The most basic way to control the center is to have pawns there, but just having pawns there isn’t enough, because your opponent can move pieces to capture the center pawns. So you want something defending your pawn, so if another piece captures your pawn, you can capture that piece. But then your opponent can move a second piece into a position where it threatens that pawn, so you have to threaten that space with another piece, or you’ll get a trade where opponent captures your pawn, you capture their capturing piece, and they capture your capturing piece, putting them ahead. Or maybe instead of defending that spot, you counter-attack somewhere else, so they have to respond to that, and meanwhile your counter-attacking piece has also gotten more developed. Or maybe, rather than pulling in more and more pieces to defend the spot that pawn is sitting on, you just move it (possibly capturing another pawn that was threatening it), which usually results in a small trade rather than a big one.
Of course, there are lots of ways to do all that, and so there are lots of standard openings. But eventually, you’re going to move out of the openings that are listed in the book, and unless you understand the why and how of the openings, you won’t understand the why and how of the departure from the opening.
Oh, and paging @glee . He’s a retired professional chess teacher.
Think Like a King is used in schools to teach kids critical thinking skills. That’s something I don’t remember my schools teaching. We got that skill indirectly in general ed classes. Word problems in math etc. But chess takes it to another level.
Practicing critical thinking now could avoid dementia later in my life.
Hi, I’m a retired chess teacher and had an international rating.
a) Memorising openings is wrong at every level (even Grandmasters don’t do it. )
This is because:
you want to understand openings, so you can react well when your opponent plays an unexpected move
there is a massive amount to ‘remember’
there are much better ways to spend your valuable time
b) Chronos is on the right lines with sticking to principles in the opening.
Assuming your opponent is not threatening anything with their latest move (always worth checking!), you should try to:
control + occupy the centre (it’s the most important part of the board)
develop your pieces (i.e. bring them out to attack more squares)
get castled
To explain each of the above in more detail:
the centre is defined as e4, e5, d5 + d4. It’s important because from any of those squares you can quickly reach any other part of the board. And if you control the centre, your opponent’s pieces have to go the long way round to get anywhere.
on g1, the White Knight controls e2, f3 + h3 (=3). By playing Nf3, the piece now controls g1, e1, d2, d4. e5, g5, h4 + h2 (=8)
after a sequence like e4 … Nf3 … Bc4 … OO, your King is safely tucked away and your rook has come into play
c) Next it is a good idea to learn about tactics. (Tactics are things like pin, fork, skewer, overload and discovered check.)
Tactics are fun to play; crop up quite a lot and are relatively easy to learn.
Here are two examples:
e4. d6 2. d4 Qd7 3. Nc3 Qc6?? 4. Bb5 (this pin wins a Queen for a bishop)
Nc3 d5 2. d3 e5 3. Be3? d4 (this fork wins a piece for a pawn)
If you get a book on tactics (or use the Internet), then play through lots of tactics, you will come to spot patterns - which is a huge part of playing chess well.
d) I think an important way for players of your strength to improve is to study endings (particularly basic checkmates.)
This may seem odd, since the ending is a long way away from the start!
But here’s the thing - endings are great to study because:
there’s only a few pieces on the board, so it’s much easier than openings
you can usually see if you are making progress
once you learn the correct way, you can use it forever
it avoids the frustration of being ahead on material, but unable to win
You should master these checkmates:
K+Q v K
K+R+R v K
K+R v K
You will gain confidence and learn to plan ahead.
e) Finally you should play games.
A friend about your standard is jolly useful; a computer program is very convenient.
Finally (if you’re interested) I have played practice games right here on the SDMB.
We have two threads - one of the game (in which I will offer to let you take back blunders ) and one for comments and analysis.
I’ll look at the threads first. I have to find my chess mat and pieces. I’ve forgotten a lot in the past 20 years. It’ll take awhile for me to catch up.
I wondered if @glee or any other chess aficionado had an opinion about the puzzles offered by chess.com (among others) as a means for improving play.
Are puzzles helpful?
Does the “rating” given to puzzles by chess.com, or the cumulative rating from trying many puzzles correspond with anything? How do they determine the rating of a puzzle?
After you play a game on chess.com, you can review it and it will identify good moves, misses, blunders, etc. Then it gives you and your opponent approximate ratings. Do these mean much? How are they calculated?
(FWIW, I am an intermediate player. The best player I have beaten IRL had a 2100 rating, and chess.com has rated my games as high as 2200, but I usually play at or around the 1600 level, with some occasional bone-headed mistakes from playing quickly and not considering enough alternative moves (and commensurate lower ratings).
I doubt these numbers mean much. I understand the basic openings, endgames and strategy. I have a number of Everyman books on strategy and various openings but haven’t had much time to read them. I recently started doing puzzles, but don’t know if they will actually improve play in regular games.)
I notice that you don’t mention KBB vs. K nor KBN vs. K. Is this because those aren’t as useful, or because they’re more difficult, and above the OP’s current skill level? And are there any positions where the opponent has anything more than just a king that are useful to study in this way?
I presume the advice was meant to offer some starting points rather than be a comprehensive list of checkmates, many of which might depend on subtleties in pawn positions. There are whole books devoted to this.
I’d still like to know if puzzles are an efficient way of improving. I’ve gotten pretty good at the online ones. They have taught me some things about checkmates, seeing a little further ahead and even checkmates with subtleties in pawn positions.
But it is still pretty different from playing a game. I can play well if I slow down things down and consider more moves than is my wont. Puzzles force me to do that, so maybe that’s good.
Probably a bit of both, but mainly (in my inexpert opinion) that it’s pretty rare to end up in those endgames - most games played to checkmate involve either promoting a pawn, or evolve from a rooks and pawns endgame into the losing side being forced to give up their rook for the last pawn. So much so that it’s probably possible for a chess master to never need to know how to mate with KBN - though in practice they all do, of course.
I’m assuming these puzzles are game-like positions where you have to find a win by using a tactic (e.g. pin, fork, skewer, overload and discovered check.)
In that case they are useful, since tactics occur when certain ‘conditions’ are met e.g. undefended pieces or exposed King.
If you practice tactics, you are more likely to spot when the conditions are right for them.
Of course, there are also some chess puzzles that are just gimmicks, with things like “the only way this position could possibly come up would be if Black’s last move was to move the pawn two spaces forward, and hence en passant is legal here”, or the like. Those can be interesting mental exercise, but probably not much good for sharpening chess skills.
Wasn’t a KBN v. K endgame the record in the tablebases for “longest span without a capture or pawn move that nonetheless ends in checkmate”? And hence potentially a draw anyway, if the 50 move rule is in place?
The puzzles offered by chess.com are a mix. Some of them encourage forced wins in one to four moves, sometimes using a pin or fork or skewer. But there are also puzzles which practice other things. Some are defensive things to avoid mate or restore advantage or force mate from a disadvantageous position (and it is not always clear which goal), others just kings and pawns to win subtle endgames, some just maneuvering to capture a queen or rook or whatever to get a positional advantage. Since they mix these up it does more than allow basic tactical practice, though it does that too.
No - according to Wikipedia, mate takes a maximum of 33 moves from any starting position. Of course, that assumes perfect play on both sides - if I were playing someone of my level (about 1500 on chess.com) I’d play on with the lone king, as they may not be accurate enough to mate me within 50 moves. Equally, as the stronger side I wouldn’t be confident of being able to do it, even though I’ve studied it a bit and know the principles.
You may be thinking of endgame positions such as KBR vs KB, many of which have been found to be technically winning for the stronger side, but often well outside 50 moves, so in practice a draw. There doesn’t seem to be any appetite to change the 50 move rule as a result of these discoveries, at least for chess played by humans. Last time I checked, the record length was well over 300 moves to win, and it’s probably way more now.
. They all explained clasic openings, middle game and end game. I still didn’t grasp strategy. I could see my pawn can take this piece. Then I got my butt kicked. I found a pc exercise for capturing with a Knight. I practiced seeing that L shape and recognized when I could take a piece. Then I got my butt kicked. (Again)
It would be helpful to find a place where they would comment on a beginners game and explain why a different move is better.
)
