# Please recommend a path to learning chess **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Tags:** chess\ **Created:** [October 21, 2023, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867 "2023-10-21T00:17:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867/41 "2024-12-10T14:02:34Z")
Do you have access to a janitor or maybe an old homeless guy who used to be a Grand Master, lost his mind playing chess, but is now considering facing his demons and taking on a brilliant young protégé? Because that’s my understanding how most people get started learning chess. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867/42 "2024-12-10T14:43:09Z")
I first saw chess on a children’s TV programme ( [Blue Peter - CBBC - BBC](https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/shows/blue-peter)) when I was about 5 years old. Since my parents didn’t play, I then learnt chess out of a book ( [Chess For Children,: Amazon.co.uk: 9780001061101: Books](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chess-Children-Bott-R-Morrison/dp/B0013JV6TG).) I think many people learn from their family, or at school. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867/43 "2024-12-10T14:55:44Z")
> [@glee](#): > > I think many people learn from their family, or at school. That might actually be a more reasonable path. More seriously though, I think if you are just interested in learning to be a better chess player, it really just comes down to playing a lot and learning some chess theory and strategy. I do think you need to understand the strategy and be able to think a few moves ahead. Setting up your pieces to control the board and disrupt your opponents plans for doing the same. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867/44 "2024-12-10T15:13:32Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > More seriously though, I think if you are just interested in learning to be a better chess player, it really just comes down to playing a lot and learning some chess theory and strategy. I agree (although having a chess coach as well means you can get specific advice about your strengths, weaknesses and style of play.) > [@msmith537](#): > > do think you need to understand the strategy and be able to think a few moves ahead. Setting up your pieces to control the board and disrupt your opponents plans for doing the same. Well this is the ‘Holy Grail’ of course! I hope you won’t mind if I say that it’s learning how to do all the above that is jolly difficult. 😉 Many years ago there was a chess book where the author advised “To free your game, take some of your opponent’s pieces, preferably for nothing.” Sadly the author neglected to explain how to do this… 😲 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867/45 "2024-12-10T23:00:38Z")
Oh, it’s easy: Just reach out and grab them. He did say “for nothing”. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867/46 "2024-12-11T00:21:27Z")
Not a chess player of any note, nor a teacher. No ranking. I lose to a computer in short order. That all said, I’ve thought a fair amount about what you would do to write a computer chess engine. Now, computers are real good at running simple tasks at an unfathomably fast rate. You can tally just a bonkers list of things together in milliseconds. So if you want to do something like dumbly advancing every single piece that can move, into every position that it can move into, a computer can really blitz that. Except…the combinatorial expansion of options as you iterate on the options for your opponent’s counter, your second move, his second counter, your third, etc. expand even more unfathomably fast than a computer can keep up with. Ideally, you would be able to tell your computer to simply play through every possible move until the end of the game, find the path that had the fewest moves, and Bob’s your uncle. We can’t do that. Ultimately, you need to prune (i.e. choose to not go down some paths). And that’s where things intersect with strategy. Pruning is a matter of evaluating the quality of the whole field. For any one piece, you can have more or fewer options. More is better. The fewer options you have, the more your opponent can define how you move. So we can rate moves that have given us more options as more worthwhile to explore further, and ones which didn’t lower. But, likewise, your opponent can have more or fewer options. Depriving your opponent of options is better, so the more you’ve accomplished that, the better. You want your own pieces to be at as little risk as possible. You want your enemy to have as few ways to attack any one piece as possible. You want to have defenders on them. You want to have more ways to attack a piece, and for those pieces to have few defenders. If you think of all of the above, the middle of the board is generally strongest. If you have pieces there, they can go left and right. If they’re on a wall, they can only go left or they can only go right, they can’t do both. But, contrariwise, in the middle of the board, almost every piece is positioned to attack you. The side is more defensible. With a computer, I would assign a value to all of these things. If I’m considering a move where my rook goes from having 5 positions that it could move to, to having 3, then I’d reduce my “movability score” for the board state, for the move under consideration, by 2. But maybe my opponent’s movability score goes down even more, my attack score goes up, and my defensibility goes up. For any one move, I’ll have a whole bunch of different scores fluctuating all over the place. As a person writing a computer program, I’d then tell the computer to do something like average all these scores and trim out the worst options, then continue to play forward with the remaining options, until I run out of time to choose my first move. You’re not a computer, but thinking about which things you _could_ score and _how_ to score them is liable to make you start considering things at a higher level. I don’t know whether professional players are thinking as concretely as “I’ll gain 2 movability points” but I do expect that they’re thinking in terms of opening up options, moving into more defensible positions, moving into more attackable positions, etc. I’d venture to guess that if you sat down to develop things that you could score and started to evaluate and track those numbers, through plays with a computer, you’d start to gain some sense for some deeper patterns (like taking vs avoiding the center). I suspect that the value rating of pieces (pawn = 1, rook = 3, knight = 3, etc.) came about through processes along these lines. ---
**Author:** ![peccavi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peccavi/32/388_2.png) [@peccavi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peccavi)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867/47 "2024-12-11T05:33:54Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I suspect that the value rating of pieces (pawn = 1, rook = 3, knight = 3, etc.) came about through processes along these lines. The valuation of pieces (correcting your typo: Pawn=1, Bishop/Knight=3, Rook=5, Queen=9) dates back to the 18th century, according to the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_piece_relative_value). However, as the article points out, from the start of the use of piece valuations, the relative value of the pieces varies according to the position and their placement in the position. For example, a good knight has more value than a bad bishop. Expert players don’t assign fixed values to pieces and only consider relative values alongside other considerations such as space and tempo. ---
**Author:** ![Mike\_Mabes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mike_mabes/32/1782_2.png) [@Mike\_Mabes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mike_Mabes)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867/48 "2025-01-22T02:28:43Z")
> **[Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess: Fischer, Bobby, Margulies, Stuart, Mosenfelder,...](https://www.amazon.com/Bobby-Fischer-Teaches-Chess/dp/0553263153)** > > Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess \[Fischer, Bobby, Margulies, Stuart, Mosenfelder, Don\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess I haven’t played chess in decades, but I got this when I was in 7th grade. Two weeks later I won the school tournament. It teaches all the basics in an easy to understand and fun way. Once you get through the book, you will destroy any other beginner. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867/49 "2025-01-22T02:34:51Z")
Not great at chess, and not a chess teacher, but I didn’t like that book. It’s just a series of puzzles. I think you could just do puzzles for a week on [chess.com](http://chess.com) and basically get the same information. Much less information about overall strategy than I was expecting when I picked it up. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867/50 "2025-02-04T16:16:49Z")
> [@glee](#): > > I repeat my offer to play a practice game with comments and analysis by me. > Honestly this is an amazing offer because: > > - you get an experienced player and teacher giving advice throughout 🕶 > - you get to see an ELO-rated player in action 😉 > - I normally charge £50 / hour to teach chess 😀 > [@aceplace57](#): > > I’ve started relearning chess. I’d forgotten so much. It’s going to be awhile before I can ask @glee for a study game That’s a very kind offer Aceplace57, if you’re still interested I offer you a training game… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-recommend-a-path-to-learning-chess/991867.md?page=2)