That fucking ad thing just reloaded the page on my iPad and deleted my fking post. In short - You can look 10 more moves ahead as your opponent but it still won’t help if you don’t know what your looking for. Learn basic tactics - pins, forks, skewers, discovered attacks. There are many apps that will ask you to “find the fork.” Tactics are fun and give you a sense of chess thinking. You can also jump right in. Learning the endgames may be the best way to learn but it turns a lot of people off.
It helps to take the “one move” inventory to avoid basic blunders:
When your opponent moves a piece:
- what is that piece attacking?
- what did that piece just leave undefended?
- can that piece be taken, forked or pinned?
When you move a piece:
- can my piece be taken, forked or pinned?
- what am I leaving undefended?
I had the best games by remembering the “control the center” rule. One tactic I used in the opening game was the Gambit. Say both you and your opponent start by advancing your king or queen pawns to your 4th ranks. Advance the bishop pawn next to your king or queen to the 4th rank as well. Your opponent will hardly be able to resist capturing it, but in doing so will lose control of the center.
Think Like A King is used by a lot of school chess clubs.
It teaches tactics and strategies.
Its helped my game. I learned enough to start playing friends. I don’t play regularly enough to get really good.
Reuben Fine has written a number of good books on chess … my favorites are The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings and The Middle Game in Chess …
Yes, playing better players will improve your game if and only if you exhaustively analyze the game afterward, hopefully with your opponent … find out what your mistake was and learn from it …
Not to hijack, but has anyone else encountered any world class arrogant d-bags when it comes to post mortems? Admittedly, the large majority of the post mortems I’ve engaged in were done in the spirit of education, but every once in a while you get the egotist who feels compelled to use the occasion as (another) opportunity to not so subtly crow about how great they did? Or worse, when you win and the other guy proceeds to tell you how ‘if only I would have moved here instead of there I woulda kicked your ass.’ Yeah, well you didn’t.
My one and only goal in post-mortems was to try and find out what the opponent was thinking of during crucial points in the game. Why do they like that opening? What were the options they considered at the significant point of the middle game? Were they concerned with what I was doing, or did they think they had that completely handled? Etc.
Yes, they sometimes used it to be arrogant jerks. But you can learn something from even an arrogant jerk, at times. 
One other thing you can do, if you’re playing against a computer, is to just repeatedly undo moves until you find all of your mistakes. To do it properly probably requires more patience than a human opponent would have, though.
I’m not a great player by any stretch. I don’t methodically think through every possible reply to my every possible move, but I have managed to significantly improve my game by following some simple principles: (1) As many have said, try to control the center, or at least not let the other side do so. The center is important. (2) Don’t be overly timid, or fearful of losing pieces–that’s part of the game. Sometimes an improved position for attack is well worth the sacrifice of a powerful piece. (3) As far as possible, try to keep the whole board in consideration, so you don’t get attacked by “long distance”. Avoid getting skewered by long distance, as it were.