1) In the first 10-12 moves develop your pieces so that your rooks are now connected. This implies that your knights, bishops, and Queen are off the backrank and that you have castled. Then get the rook that wasn't castled with out to an open file or a center one if none are open.
2) Learn how to win K+Q v K; K+R v K; K+p v K on an otherwise empty board.
3) Constantly look for the following items in your game AND your opponent's game: pins, forks, double attacks, discovered checks. Remember that many tactics in chess start with an unguarded pawn/piece. Look for them on both sides of the board.
And one for the road:
4) The key factor in any attack is OPEN LINES! If your pieces have the mobility and access to the enemy position (especially the King), the attack will often crash through. 🙂
Good luck all and good hunting.
1. Try to find a flexible opening for white and for black that suits your type of play (offensive, defensive, tactical, strategical). For white I started out with Reti (1. Nf3 d5, 2. c4 ...). It is a very easy opening to learn (not too many variations) and it often transposes to another solid opening.
2. Don't spend any more time on learning opening variations, until you are sure that you are not simply walking in to an opening trap. Instead try to focus on more general opening ideas, like: developing your minor pieces, don't move to many pawns in the opening, (almost) never play a piece for the second time in the opening phase (unless you have to), try to gain space (especially in the center), castle (bring your King to safety), et cetera. All openings are based on these ideas. So instead of memorizing all openings, it is much more useful to understand what you need to do when you are out-of-book or do not know the variation played.
3. Study the middle game. Most games are won in the middle game. Understanding, amongst others, the importance of weak vs strong Bishop, weak and strong squares (your own and your opponents), will aid you in finding the correct plan in the middle game.
As a bonus: if your game reaches the end game (most of them don't, but just in case), try to see if you can read a book that deals with the type of end game you are in. I still do this myself. If I have, for instance, an end game with three pawn each, I look up this end game theme to see what are the general ideas and try to implement them in my game.
I don't regard myself qualified to hand out advice. However, the following 10 quotes have always inspired me to become a better player:
1) Chess is one long regret. – Stephen Leacocku
2) The hardest game to win is a won game. – Emanuel Lasker
3) A chess player's talent is measured not by his knowledge of the rules, but his ability to find exceptions to them! – Viktor Korchnoi
4) The most important principle in chess is safety; second is activity. Everything else is relatively unimportant.– Dan Heisman
5) I keep on fighting as long as my opponent can make a mistake. – Emanuel Lasker
6) Play the opening like a book, the middlegame like a magician, and the endgame like a machine. – Rudolf Spielmann
7) A quiet move often makes the earth shake. – Richard Reti
8) Lack of patience is probably the most common reason for losing a game. – Bent Larsen
9) If your opponent offers you a draw, try to work out why he thinks he's worse off. – Nigel Short
10) The chessplayer's greatest art lies in creating positions in which the normal relative values cease to exist. – Mikhail Botvinnik (this is profound!)
1) Use analyze board and play out the game at least 5 moves down the road making your BEST moves for both sides before making any move (beyond the opening of course).
2) NEVER attack with the queen alone and generally don't attack with just the queen and one other piece. You need to be prepared to sacrifice at least one attacking piece to force checkmate and if you one attack with a queen and bishop for example, you cannot usually sac the bishop and achieve a mate.
3) Play each move assuming your opponent sees everything that you do. Don't play a move on the assumption that your opponent is a moron or won't notice that his rook is hanging.
Happy new year!
Originally posted by greenpawn34yeah, that's the most important thing in CC. good time management.
On here it has to be TAKE YOUR TIME.
You have days to make a move - set up the position on a board
and throw the pieces about. Use the time that you have been given.
The blunders made on here are incredible - worse than any OTB
tournament I have ever seen.
Avoid the silly blunders and you will win loads of games.
[b] Take Your Time[/b]
also avoiding playing when drunk or tired. one drunken 'session' after bar and you lose maybe 30% of the games you touched.
1. Develop pieces (There are no forced mates in the opening)
2. Learn count to 3 (your move - opponent's move - your reply to his move)
3. Practice tactics daily (You only improve if you do something daily)
4. Run all your lost games through computer for both sides (Hiarcs is my favorite)
I know you asked for 3 so you can ignore one you think isn't important.
Happy New 2009!!!
🙂
I'm somewhat overwhelmed (in a good way) with the response, not just the number of you who bothered to post, but the insightfullness also....when a novice can see the immediate value in the advice it must be good.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival." W. Edwards Deming (1900 - 1993)
Thank you chess dudes and a very Happy and Prosperous New Year to you all.
DG🙂
great suggestions by all. I am very new to chess. Here are a few things I've noticed:
1. Try not to allow pawns to get separated into islands.
2. Think about your opponent's opening - are they aggressive, tactical, tricky? Model a game style to match who you're playing. try different styles of play yourself so as to develop different looks and situations to learn from.
3. Definitely never play tipsy. I blew a really good game this way.
4. I personally prefer to hold off on early castle b/c it prevents your opponent from modeling their attack on it. Try to leave it as an option as long as possible before commiting. I don't know if a better player than I would recommend this though.