This could be confusing as I am a bit doped up at the moment.

Do you learn things in steps? Like, say you have someone who has seen a chess board once before and knows nothing else. You start off showing how to set the board up, move order, explain which pieces can move where (or if they cannot move). Okay, anything else? Introduce some very simple mate in 1 tactics perhaps. See that they at least know how to move around in a game. These are the worst of the worst.

Next comes myself, I think. My rating is 781 with 5m time controls and 1159 with 15m time controls. I understand all of the above more or less, like I miss mate in one during games quite a bit under time pressure. At this point do I want to pick an opening and stick with it or not worry about openings yet. Obviously work on a lot of basic tactics. I am almost never in an end game scenario, worth looking at end games yet? Can I get anything out of watching high level games? It feels like I'm stuck banging my head against a wall.

Don't limit this to my level. Around when should you start to seriously study various other topics that I did not mention (and what are they)? Or, am I thinking about learning as a series of steps incorrectly? I don't mean like learn e5 opening variation and move to something else as the topic is far too complicated to master without many many years (right?) spent on it.

Everyone tells me, tactics. I agree. My question is say I get tactical rating up to 1500-1800 or so... then what to focus on, or should I try to improve multiple aspects at once? I have no dream of becoming a master, my goal at the moment is to simply become solid enough to rarely lose a casual game against my current self.

Also feel free to mention when you should start learning what, and what these topics are... I apologize for rambling if I did but I am about to pass out due to sleeping meds and muscle relaxers... and my state of mind led me to finally get around to make this op...

I don't really think there's any particular step system to improvement. There's just so many different ideas and thoughts on how to learn the game. I guess the only thing that's for sure is anybody who recommends learning openings early on, is wrong.

I'd start with basic principles of opening play. Learn what the center is and why it's important. That sounds simple enough, but it's really not. Every single game revolves around the center. Then the other stuff: move each piece only once in the opening unless there is an exceptional reason (and move them towards the center!), develop your knights before bishops since it's easier to determine where the best square for them will be, and bring out your big pieces only after all the other pieces are out.

And I think there's a ton to be gained from watching high level games, particularly blitz games. Don't try to predict or even understand their moves, but look at the board as a whole - and their pieces. Watch how they will fight for the center, and how they will make their pieces, every single one of them, work together as a whole. Try to almost picture it as a game where two commanders are leading their armies into battle. The individual moves aren't as important as seeing how they make their forces work so fluidly.

But beyond that, I am a strong advocate of tactics tactics tactics tactics. You simply can't do anything in this game without tactics.

Where do you think a total beginner should start? I play everynow and then with friends but its like, who can take the other guys pieces the fastest - ie I have no clue what I am doing.

Are there any articles, websites, resources you guys can suggest? A place to start?

When you say learn the value of the center is there a way to do this other than trail, error and observation?

thanks

- 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate, Reinfeld I think
- Some beginner book by Jeremy Silman
- The Yasser Seirawan series ("Winning Chess. . .")
- There is also a series called Comprehensive Chess Course, I think by Alburt and Palatnik

Good luck!

This is probably what I would teach to a complete beginner (who knows the rules):

Value of pieces (Q=8, R=5, B=Kn=3, P=1 is close enough for now)
Don't hang your pieces, make favourable trades, avoid unfavourable ones
Basic development principles: Move 1 or 2 central pawns, develop your minor pieces, castle. Don't forget about the rooks.
Basic technique: Learn how to mate QueenvKing, RookvKing. If you have a material advantage start picking off your opponent's pawns and queen yours. Trade pieces if you can when you're ahead in material.

This is very basic but probably enough to get you started. Next you should learn basic tactics like double attacks, skewers, mate threats. As a general strategy keep your pieces safe and active. From there it's really about understanding what safe and active mean in practice as well as learning tons of patterns that allow you to win material. Incidently winning tactics tend to turn up when your pieces are active.

Awesome... I'll brose through them sites in the website thread to find material on those aspects

Do you think any of the PC tutorials/games are good, chess master 10 for example?

Be my guinea pig and try De La Maza's 400 Points in 400 Days (just google that). Report back. Thanks.

Any good online articles for noobs? Or, online books. For free? Heh. How far can I get from free resources online?

ok first off this is the first time I knew 2+2 had a chess forum, but anyway I have sort of the same question but a little more advanced than OP. I've never read any formal strategy whatsoever. I learned from my dad when I was like 10 what the pieces were and how they moved and the rest has been just from experience. I played a bit online a few years ago and was around a 1300 rating. Basically I know some general strategy, can beat most people who don't play seriously but get crushed by anyone who knows what they're doing. My logic is basically try and figure out what my opponent is trying to do, stop that, figure out what I want to do (whether there's a vulnerable piece, whether I can force some pieces out of my way, and obviously if I see a checkmate a few moves away, nothing fancy), and do it.

I just read the blitz tactic thread and wow I have no idea what I'd do in the original example and reading responses I have no idea wtf they mean (yes I realize if I took the time I could figure out what the moves are but basically I guess my thought process is still a bunch of pieces on the board rather than what they're all doing and how they work together). Anyway like the OP I'm not really interested in getting super-serious but I am interested in getting better and being able to hold my own against other competent players. Curious what my next step should be.

Buy this book. Solve the problems.

Online:
http://www.exeterchessclub.org.uk/Op...openrules.html
http://www.exeterchessclub.org.uk/abc2.html
http://www.exeterchessclub.org.uk/mates.html
http://www.exeterchessclub.org.uk/attack.html

As far as you want. You don't need to invest money into the game to improve. Articles and books are alot of fun to read, but I don't think they're the best path to improvement. I think your primary improvement will come from tactics and analyzing games (others and your own). All of that can be done for free.

www.jeremysilman.com ; the beginner articles are your friend, assuming they're still exist!

My chess career is off to an unceromonious start. I joined FICS to get some practice and tried to implement what I have been reading: developing my knights and bishops, castling, moving towards the centre and being patient. I must be doing something wrong since my opponents so far have just sttacked me on the third move and pwned me.

I dunno if the people I am playing are beginners or not. I'm not sure how to improve when I'm getting trounced every game within a dozen moves trying to implement a few basic things

My noob opinion is to keep trucking. Losing can be awfully instructional.

Even if the games are only a dozen moves long, sooner or later you'll start to recognize the patterns. With that, you'll start to look ahead and see what's coming. Even if they STILL beat you, you've improved.

0.02

Obviously you are right. It is just a bit frustrating trying to play a conservative game, try and implement a little of what I have been reading and then getting trounced.

On FICS is there like a way for beginners to face of against each other?

after each game you get a rating, other players can see this before they challenge you. It won't be terribly accurate at first but after 15-20 games it will have stabilised a bit.

Most players want to play players at their level or close, so once you get a stable rating you'll find most of your opponents are around the same ability level.

Also, there's something to be said about the philosophy of playing a conservative game. It's easier here since this is a poker forum. I think playing a conservative game in chess is alot like trying to make money in poker by calling.

It can be done, but you're forcing yourself to play at an extremely high level. It's alot easier to play aggressively and just let your opponents make mistakes. I'm only mentioning this since it was my first 'instinct' when learning chess to just try to make a super defended fortress of a position and then move on from there, but as you progress - you'll find that going after your opponent is the key. I'm not advocating reckless abandon by any means, but that'd actually probably be closer to proper than completely defensive play.

This is another thing I think you can get from watching very high level players play. You don't need to even remotely understand the moves they're playing, but watch how their forces ended up so aggressively placed so quickly. I guess it all comes down to the old saying:

The winner is the person who makes the next to last mistake.

Thanks for the advice. This is a cool forum, a lot of obviously good players and helpful posters.

What I mean by a conservative game I really mean implementing some things from the silman beginner articles - developing my knights and bishop, trying to get a foothold on the center, castling my king and then trying to play some tactics. But I never get that far, by the time I've got my knight and/or bishop out I'm on the back foot.

I'm not looking for a miracle solution, just bemoaning what is actually a very exciting situation. I am at the very very start if learning a great game and there is a million things I am going to learn, I'm looking forward to getting better, I know I just have to practive playing games, play a bit on chess tempo etc and take my lumps and thumpings.

thanks

go over every game as soon as it finishes. are you using babaschess? you can analyse after each move to get an idea of who is ahead at that point. find where you made errors, then find out what you should have played, etc etc.

Don't ever forget this. If all you take away from this experience is that semantic knowledge gained from books is nothing without experience and repetition, you'll be golden. If you're going to study chess, study it. Rather than read a book by Silman, do twenty tactical puzzles. Rather than read an article on the minority attack, set up a basic endgame (like K+Q vs K) against a chess engine and mate it five times with increasingly strict time constraints. Rather than read yet another book about opening principles, do a search in an online database for games that lasted fewer than 15 moves, and try to figure out why, specifically, ten of them were lost.

Chess is something you do, not something you know.

I go over most games using Crafty to find obvious blunders. It helps a bit in that I am slightly better at not blundering now than say a month ago.

Just to reply to OP's question about openings:

YES! Of course you should pick some now, at most one or two per colour. You should not spend much more time on them than learning the move order and playing through some good games of them.

After playing them, you'll learn the patterns in the positions that result from them. This will have a profound effect on both strategic and tactical thinking. Trust me, chess is all about the pattern recognition. It's like gaining fluency in reading, you don't have to trace letters one by one with your eyes, and you can process a lot more at a time.

You can always move on to other openings if you don't like the resulting positions.

EDIT: Learning basic opening principles is obvious. Learning how to apply them can be gotten from many of the classic openings. This provides a deeper understanding of things like "why is that piece there?" and "why is the move order like this?". The only way you can really "get it" though is by playing them, tons.