Thread: Chess players

Originally Posted by bamabubba

Love it but suck at it!

I'm also in love with the game if Go, but in this, too, I rival Hoover and Electrolux. Give me a trivia game and it's a whole different thing

Go is my favourite. So much deeper than Chess! The same friends in Japan I quickly beat at Chess and Shogi styled all over me in Go. Fantastic!

I'll copy an email I sent my brother last month, of what's worked for me. YMMV :-)

I reckon Chess Titans will be unavailable to you, but you should be able to find a website to give you a good daily match. If you sign up at chess.com, PM me and we can do some correspondence matches!

As mentioned, I've had some success improving my chess game in the last few weeks (ie, establishing any game at all). Here's how:

(1) CHESS TITANS
More than anything else on the list, this is the most important: play at least one game a day. A game shouldn't take more than 10 or 15 minutes, so it's a good way to kick off a lunch break. The biggest reason I didn't succeed last time is that correspondence games are too slow to operate as effective learning tools. Solution: CHESS TITANS. That's the built-in chess game that comes with Windows. Use it and love it. Fiddle with the graphics options for the top-down view (easier to analyze), and start at Level 1. Don't be ashamed to use the 'Undo' button. It's actually one of the most useful tools. When you get yourself in a sticky situation, tactically, you can back out and see where you went wrong and what you should have done. After a while, you'll find that you don't have to use that button any more. When that's the case, when you're regularly bossing the computer, move up to the next Level. Then you can start over again

(2) OPENING THEORY
My biggest improvement in the past few weeks has been in my tactical play. But tactics don't really come up until the middlegame. First step is a strong opening. A bad opening puts you on tilt and you'll never recover - your opponent can hunt your pieces at leisure, and you're stuck with a crabbed, defensive game without a chance to take the advantage. To avoid that, use online resources to walk you through the opening as you play it. Stick to the basics - Open Game & Queen's Gambit. Use Wikipedia to learn the theory, and use 365chess, or a similar resource, to walk through how it's done or to help you identify what your opponent is trying to do. The Wikipedia articles can seem dense and self-referential and obscure, but read through them *every game* and eventually it makes sense. When you can't follow the thread of the opening from Wikipedia alone (ie, if you start with Queen's Gambit but don't know to link to Benoni Defence at 1. ...c5), just google the algebraic notation ("1. d4 c5" &c.), and it'll pop right up.

Wikipedia & 365chess help analyze particular openings, but I found this article really helpful as far as telling me what those openings are trying to accomplish. Especially see nos. 3 & 8.

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Those are your basic tools - Chess Titans for practice, and Wikipedia to help you figure out the theory. On a parallel course, though, to your practice games, you may benefit from the learning tools at chess.com:

(A) Study plans - start from the beginning, it gives you a step-by-step of what to do. I got distracted playing games, and see that I still need to circle back and read through these. Openings are the first step, but I'm still stuck in tactical exchanges in the middlegame - reading the 'Strategy' guide would give me some ideas, I think. Make sure to read the basics, though, working through in order. Some of this stuff is helpful:

A pawn is worth 1
A knight is worth 3
A bishop is worth 3
A rook is worth 5
A queen is worth 9
The king is infinitely valuable


Daily work:

(B) Tactics trainer - This one's huge. Frustrating at first, but do 3 puzzles a day and you'll be amazed how quickly it sharpens your game.

(C) Daily puzzles - Not as sharp as the tactics trainer, but a good daily exercise.



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I'm not sure that this lays it out in as clear an order as you'd like, but you can use the chess.com study plans if you want a procedural treatment. Most importantly: play daily, work through the opening theory on Wikipedia & 365chess, and do your daily Tactics Trainer. You'll see rapid improvement, at something like 20 min / day.


Buena suerte!