Novice Nook looks awesome. Here is the link in case any others are interested.
Personally I like the idea of working backwards. Starting from games where a mate is available in a few moves. I think it would be a lot easier to play if I had some idea what kind of board setup I was trying to accomplish instead of re-analyzing on every move starting from the opening. Knowing the opening moves won’t help much if I don’t know what they can lead to.
(from the point of view of someone who doesn’t really know anything except how the pieces move)
And that’s just what he won’t get by trying rote memorisation of an opening like the Nimzo-Indian - or, still worse, the Sicilian - to twenty ply deep. A thorough reading of My System would grant him a far better understanding of Nimzowitch’s ideas than any amount of opening study. There’s nothing so useless to a beginner as a well-established position that he doesn’t know how to handle. If someone can’t articulate why the Nimzo aims to control e4 with the Nf6 and the Bishop b4 pinning the Nc3 - or why he might prefer such a system to occupying the centre with pawns - then it’s not going to benefit him being dropped off twenty moves deep with the helpful hint that current opening theory makes this line about 53% for Black.
No. First grasp the basics of strategy and tactics, learn how to win material, learn why not to lose material, learn how to win simple pawnless endings, learn when K&P beats bare King and when it doesn’t, learn how to win Rook and Pawn endings (because they come up so often), learn why centre control is important, learn not to lose games by sheer laziness or stupidity (which besets us all) and then, when the OP is already playing to fair club standard on a regular basis, it will be worth studying some openings. And not before.
This, a thousand times this!
You can do all the book-larnin’ you want, but in a real game it will be all ruined by stupid blunders. Even advanced players will start by looking a move and a half ahead:
Your opponent has moved a piece:
- what squares and pieces is it attacking?
- what squares and pieces have been left undefended by the move?
- is it a tactical move? what is it threatening on the next move?
- is it a development move? what can be done to limit/counter the developed piece?
You are considering moving a piece:
- can your piece be captured or pinned?
- can your piece be attacked immediately, and do you have a response to that?
- what squares/pieces will be left undefended by the move?
I also suck at chess, but found working through a checklist like K364’smakes me suck slightly less. The only step I’d add to both is looking at the Kings. Does my opponent’s move expose his king or threaten mine? Are any pieces now pinnable/pinned against a king? Is a fork possible now?
Methodically working through the checklist has cut down my stupid blunders quite a lot (over 50% I’d say).
My major weakness now is tunnel vision - I’m so wrapped up in my own cunning plan I often fail to notice what my opponent is doing.
Ah-ha. I think I see where the misunderstanding lies. I’m not suggesting that a player can get by “only” with rote memorisation. Knowing openings are a useful tool but not by themselves. So are middle games and end games.
Studying how the masters and better players use those openings should lead to a better understanding of why some pieces are used in groups and when. Why start with those two particular pawns and a knight? Why hide a rook behind a bishop? Why castle at that particular point in the game? Why not castle later?
So how is remembering what you’re learned, including openings, become a bad thing? How dare someone attempt to learn this game without your permission.
Any person can learn whatever the hell they like. But some things will be more useful to a beginner than others. I wouldn’t teach a beginner about triangulation for example.
Similarly, learning opening books is unlikely to improve a relative novice’s win rate, plus they’ll likely find it boring and frustrating.
And drop the whole “Well excuse me for trying to help”. No-one’s been tough on you, people have simply disagreed and given reasons why.
It’s irrelevant whether it’s beneficial to memorize an opening to 30 moves, because beneficial or not, it’s impossible. If we assume that every move has 2 or 3 viable responses, and further take “30 moves” to mean “30 ply” (that is, 15 moves by each player), then you’d have to memorize somewhere between 2^15 and 3^15 different lines. This is already too much for any human to memorize, and it just gets worse if we increase the number of viable responses, or if your opponent throws in a less-viable move just to knock you out of your book.
As for starting from a “well-established position”, there is no position that’s more well-established than the position at the start of the game.
Lol. Not according to “Malacandra”. Maybe you should re-read his referrence to “worst advice”.
“Nonsuch” can take whatever advice he sees fit or chose to ignore it. His choice. I offered an option. You jump to the conclusion that “Nonsuch” will find books on openings to be boring and frustrating. I don’t know hiim that well.
My advice is to start with endgames not opening moves.
Start with simple endings like queen and king vs king and learn how to force the mate. It’ll teach you basic principles. Try different combinations until you’ve got them mastered. Then make it little less simple - try things like queen and king vs rook and king.
No; I said he’ll likely find memorizing openings to be boring and frustrating (because most beginners do IME; boring because it’s just rote memorization and frustrating because it doesn’t improve a beginner’s win rate significantly).
Right, because I was insisting people seek my permission. :rolleyes: But meanwhile, make your mind up what point you’re making. A few posts ago you were arguing for beginners learning to play the first 20 or 30 moves from memory. Now you’re coming around to the idea that understanding middle games and end games is necessary too, and even redefining your stance on openings. I’ve no quarrel with aiming to understand the basic principles of opening play - as already well outlined by other posters in this thread - but that’s very different from trying to memorise book lines 20 moves deep; especially in an opening as complex as the Sicilian…!
@LittleNemo - ironically, your “making things a little less difficult” example is one of the hardest in chess; K+Q v K+R is notoriously hard to play well. 
But the basic idea is sound.
But endgames are useful because they’re so focused. There’s only three or four pieces on the board and the goal has been reduced to checkmating the opposing king. A player learning the game doesn’t get overwhelmed by all the possiblities.
All very true. Even an ending like K + B + B v K is an excellent exercise in piece coordination, although unlikely to come up in practical play (it’s really unusual to reach an ending exactly two Bishops up with no pawns on the board!).
Indeed it is - presumably there are endgame studies where the solution relies on an underpromotion to bishop, for example, which is only won because 2 bishops + king vs king alone is a win. Probably not a very interesting idea nowadays, but I’d be surprised if it hadn’t been done at some point, given the variety and ingenuity of endgame studies.
I’d doubt that, myself. The underpromotion could only be necessary if promotion to a queen would be immediate stalemate, which would require that the enemy king be far enough from the promoting piece that it wouldn’t be immediately checked, which would in turn mean that the advantaged player has an opportunity to twiddle pieces for a turn or two so the enemy king would get out of the instant-stalemate position. The waste of time doing so wouldn’t even be significant, since a queen endgame (especially with another piece offering support) is far quicker than a two bishops endgame.
One example that I know of:
White: King a4, Knight e3
Black: King a2, Bishop f6, Pawn b2
White plays Nd1, threatening to take the pawn, so black’s only winning chance is to promote. But 1…b1=Q (or b1=R) 2.Nc3+ Bxc3 is stalemate. The only winning move is b1=B.
Hm, yeah, that would do it. The knight then forks the king and newly-promoted piece, so black must respond by either capturing the knight, or by giving up the promoted piece and being left with insufficient mating power. Though this is probably getting pretty far afield of the OP: Situations where underpromotion are optimal are so rare that it’ll probably never make a difference in actual play if you don’t know it’s even possible.
Yep. The reason underpromotions are popular in compositions is exactly because positions requiring them are so rare.
Incidentally, there is a similar thing to be aware of when studying master games (to get back to the OP a bit). Often such games are selected for publication because they’re unusual, which makes them interesting but maybe not as useful for a novice trying to learn principles. Of course there are many famous games that show expert execution of basic principles as well.
Heh. Whereupon Black wins in 70 (!) with best play. I guess K + B + B vs K + N is a quoted exception to the 50-move rule? (And I for one would not have a clue how to win without a tablebase.)
eta: Black could also underpromote to Knight, but K + B + N don’t beat K + N with best play.