I have just made a bet with a friend that I will beat him over 5 games of chess in one months time. I can play chess at a very basic level and have no real understanding of opening moves etc. I know what the pieces do and think a few moves ahead but that's about it.

At the moment we are of equal ability but I have a much better natural talent for strategy games than he does.

Basically I'd love some advice on what I can do within this month to crush him. I mean really destroy him to the point of degradation. Advice on any good sites, where to start, articles etc would be great if anyone could help. I'm willing to put in a good amount of effort as I've always wanted to get good at chess and can use this bet as an opportunity to do so.

Thanks.

Just get as good as you can at tactics. Spend at least an hour a day solving mostly easy puzzles, and try to play at least one game a day (no blitz, though).

Don't get too bogged down with articles or anything else that has words. If >25% of your study time is spent reading text (or watching videos, or doing anything that isn't tactics practice), you are doing it wrong. All you need at this stage is knowledge of tactical motifs and basic opening principles.

Just to get a good sense of how good you currently are, can you solve the following problems (and report how long it takes to solve each one)? The circle in the lower-left corner tells you whose move it is.

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

Completely agree with what Rei said. If you only have one month, do tactics problems until your eyes bleed. Don't waste time with anything else. No openings, endgames, nothing. Just tactics puzzles.

Where does one find tactic puzzles?

Just kidding There are a couple of sites that are really good. IMO, the best free site is Chess Tempo. Here is the link. Simply register for a profile and get to solving.

http://chesstempo.com/

I think the best tactics trainer online belongs to Chess.com. Theirs is simply phenomenal, but they limit you to a certain number per day unless you pay for a membership, which is actually really cheap (something like $5/mo for the cheapest one, maybe less, I can't remember). Here is a link to the main website.

http://www.chess.com

Either of those will be great. Good luck.

Thanks man.

Thanks for the advice guys. I started doing some of the training on the link you sent me and I've just tried the puzzles you set. Wasn't 100% sure what I was doing though? Am I looking for a forced mate in all of them or just for good moves? If its just good moves this is what I got.

1. I took the rook with the knight. Not sure if I should be going further moves ahead here to get mate though? Saw the move I did straight away.

2. Moved the rook to d8 to get mate. I saw the move instantly but had to check that there wasn't anything black could do.

3. Took about a 90secs and then saw that moving the pawn to d5 would force black to give up either his knight or bishop. He either moves his bishop and I take the knight, he takes the pawn with his bishop and I take the bishop with my queen or he moves the knight and I take the bishop with my pawn.

4. Took about 2 mins and found rook to e8. He cant move his queen because he'll be in check and if he takes my rook I take the queen with my knight.

5. Took about 2mins again. Came up with moving my queen to h4 to put him in check and forcing him to play his king to f1. Then I played my bishop to g4 forcing him to trade queen for bishop.

I played a few games tonight against another friend and managed to create a few of the situations the training site showed me and managed to win 3 out of 4 games. The place I struggled the most was finding a purpose in the opening phase. AM I just trying to create a ton of forking, pinning situations etc and try and find them in as many moves ahead as possible or should I start off with a plan to occupy certain areas of the board?

For example I did this by fluke in the 2nd game, and deliberately looked to set up the situation in the following games. Playing as white Id move my pawn from f2, then a pawn to a4 and then the bishop top b5 attacking his queen. He moved his knight to block it but I found it tied up his knight from moving and I then tried to attck the knight. Is this a good move or the right kind of idea of what to look for?

Let me know if you want to play online.

The first four are correct. You don't have a forced mate in the first problem, but you're a knight up, so with accurate play, you'll be able to win Black's pawns and then queen one of your own without too much trouble. Once you have a queen, you'll be able to checkmate fairly easily.

Learn the basic mating patterns (queen + king vs. king, and rook + king vs. king) if you haven't already--they aren't difficult.

Even if you spot a move instantly, you should double-check if it actually works.

Your solution for the fifth problem is almost correct (Qh4+ is the first move), but Bg4 doesn't force a trade because White can block it with Nf3 or Ne2 or simply sidestep to Qe2. Taking the e4 pawn is the best follow-up.

ChessTempo is the way to go--it'll calibrate to your skill level after a dozen or so problems (it might mix in a few difficult ones early on while it's trying to figure out how good you are, so don't let that discourage you).

Just activate your pieces to reasonable, center-controlling squares, and castle your king fairly early (within the first ten or so moves). You'll need to make at least one or two pawn moves early on (usually with the d- and e-pawns), but don't waste too much time with the other pawns until you have at least a few pieces developed.

It might help to go through the games of great players (preferably the games that start with 1. e4 e5, which probably leads to the most intuitive positions) and look at what they're doing in the first 5-10 moves. (Don't worry too much about the individual moves; just understanding the gist of it will suffice at this point.)

This article on opening principles should be more than enough.

The idea isn't to create any of those situations. Players at your current skill level make a lot of big mistakes on their own. To win consistently against them, all you have to do is take advantage of their mistakes and minimize the number of mistakes you make. The more tactics puzzles you do, the easier that'll become for you.

The whole game is based around tactics - threat and response. You should always ask yourself what your opponent is threatening and what you can threaten yourself.

In the opening threats are often very strategic in nature. To seize space in the centre and push your opponent back, to create a weak pawn, to control a weak square. Always be on the lookout for weak squares around the opposing king that you can pile up on.

There's no magic formula though. It's all practice, practice, practice.

I'm not very good at chess and I did over 6K tactic puzzles this past month. I don't think I am any better. You should still study tactics tho. Just simple ones tho. Chess is tough. My advice is to try and focus on not making mistakes. I make a ton of mistakes just because I don't pay attention.

Always try to see what he is threatening and what threats you are making. Try and guess what he is planning. And always have a plan yourself. Try not to change your plan if you can help it.

Before you make a move ask yourself what job the piece you are moving is currently doing. Often I move a piece and create a weakness that I don't notice till like 2 seconds after I move the piece. Also do this for his moves look where the piece he moved came from not just where it went.

If you can take a piece but you will not gain material from the exchange consider not taking the piece and keeping the tension in the position. Let him initiate the exchanges. Often when you take back you develop your pieces and gain time. Clearly if you can gain material always take first.

I find the endgame easier to learn than any other part of the game. I'm not good at it but I am good for my rating level. Low level players hate if you exchange pieces with them and enter into a even endgame with them and beat them repeatably. Just forcing the trading of Queens early can upset some players enough that they fall apart. A little endgame knowledge can make you look like a genius to low level players.

6000 tactics puzzles in one month is a metric **** ton. I would say that you aren't "solving" the tactics but instead guessing at them and hence why you aren't progressing. You should see the solution before you move, and give yourself a reasonable length of time to do this (10 minutes or so) before giving up. Thinking the problem through increases your calculation ability as well as pattern recognition, and this is how you will improve.

Yah I need to slow down. I was wrong tho looks more like 5600 tactics in 2 months. Chess.com has that dam timer so I rush to solve them. I will try changing the settings and take the timer off and not give an answer till I think it is the right one. Thanks for the advice, I know you are right.

I am rated over 2200 on chess.com tactics trainer (frontrunner78) but I still frequently make embarrassing blunders in games. I have also spent over 150 hours solving tactical problems in the last year. After all this time solving problems, I would expect my standard rating to have made major improvements, but my rating actually has not moved any at all! Now I think working on your metal processes during games may be the way to improvement....

When your main time control is 15|10, that comes with the territory.

You might not be doing enough easy problems. Hard problems are great for training calculation skills, but easier problems (basic 2-5 move combos) build the motif-recognition abilities that help you avoid silly blunders--especially at short time controls like G30 and faster.

Your last sentence is correct too.

I alway try to envision realistic positions that I want to reach. I feel that solving tactic puzzles doesnt really adress that.

prefaced with that im not very good or anything, but thats my feel, if you dont think like that you might never reach positions where your newfound tactical sense comes in handy. I get into uncoordinated positions when I dont strategise where I want to go. And cant do anything.

You mean, like, positions where it's possible for either you or your opponent to make material-losing mistakes, which is almost every position?

yeah your right.

I just use what I said as way to always play purposefull chess. which probably isnt a problem for OP since hes playing for a bet. But it was a problem for me when I was playing a bunch games on my chess app.

I joined chess.com and have been doing a load of tactics practice. Was struggling with some of the medium ones at first so used the mentor and started from the very start even if some of it was stuff I already knew. I can see a vast improvement already and the way I think about the problems now is much different to when I started.

I know it's been suggested that I only concentrate on tactics but do you not think I should perhaps learn just one opening? Learn it really well just so that I'm aware of what sort of positions will come up and be ready to punish any mistakes by my opponent? He's probably practicing as well and I think I need to guard against the possibility of him just memorizing a ton of openings.

If I was to learn just one opening (as white) which would you suggest for someone of my standard?

Learning even a single opening "really well" can take ages. Tactical mistakes are universal. You'll be able to punish those without understanding the opening you're playing. Nevertheless, being aware of common opening tactics should be helpful.

You don't. Traps aside, extensive memorization alone is probably worth 0.5 pawns per game at most, compared to what someone with merely a reliable understanding of "the principles" could achieve. Tactics at this level is worth about an order of magnitude more--10, 15, 25 pawns, I'm not sure exactly how much, but I do know that players who play on a "basic level" blunder away pieces multiple times a game on average.

These moves should be all you need to memorize:

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6/f6 3. d4

1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 and then 4. d4

1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. Nf3

1. e4 d6/e6/c6/g6/b6 (as well as most offbeat replies) 2. d4

1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4

By "these moves," I mean the moves that are in this post, not the continuations that follow them.

No 3.Nxe5 against the Damiano?

Haha, I thought about suggesting that, but then I thought it'd be odd if the only long line I recommended was against the Damiano of all things. I was hoping someone else would endorse 3. Nxe5. 3. d4 is strong and principled anyway.

Actually, I can just recommend 3. Nxe5 in video format.

Yeah, in a bet like this, the best thing that could happen for you would be to have your opponent waste a lot of his available study time memorizing opening lines deeper than a few moves in, while you focus instead on tactics.

Give me a position between two relative beginners, where one player is "worse" out of the opening, to the tune of even a full pawn or more worth of positional factors, but is more capable tactically than their opponent, and I'll bet on the better tactical player every time.

Thanks for all the help you've given so far. Has really helped and I'm glad to know what areas to concentrate on.


Happy to hear this as I think he's the type of person who will go down the memorization of openings route. I know he's read a few articles on them already so hopefully he'll place too much emphasis there.