I've been playing chess for over 10 years.. and it seems I have gotten worse... no one.. especially the good players... will teach me how to get better.... or tell me what i need to work on.. i think chess players are so selfish.. they only care about their gamer and hopefully one day i will become a great chess player and share tips with beginners... studying and playing is not enough... this is why im going to just quit playing because im not improving... why? because no one will help me... and chess tutors want to charge you a arm and a leg to learn... maybe i lack in intelligence and am to dumb for this game i guess

Maybe you've met some jerks but not all chess players are selfish like that.

It can be very hard to improve on your own, but books + online practice + online community (chess.com cough, chess.com :) can take you farther than you'd imagine.

Intelligence isn't related to skill in chess as much as many people think.  Actually chess is a lot like any other skill, practice over time = skill.

And although I'm not staff or anything, the membership here isn't much and you get tons of articles, videos, and such from very very strong players .

Hi Jay, I've only been playing chess for a few weeks but if you want a good way to learn, along with this site, try Chess Master Grandmaster Edition. There are helpful academy lessons from IM Josh Waitzkin. It goes into a lot of detail from basic tactics and strategy, to annoted games from other grandmasters he's won and lost over his chess career. 

Also his courses include the psychology of competition along with a shed load of other material. It's what I'm currently using to learn the game, along with this site, and it's coming on pretty well. Don't be frustrated with learning, I've heard chess as being descriped as mental torture, and it obviously requires a lot of patience. If you follow the course through Chess Master I'm sure it will help you to truly love the game.

Is chessmaster a website or software?

software

Get some easy books from the library. It won't cost you a penny (unless you return them back late). Bobby Fischer got really good in his eary days on his own by studying chess on his own. Believe in yourself. Do you have any chess books?

No I don't have any chess books... I find them really difficult to understand! I learn better visually; having some one actually sit down and teach me strategies and show me what moves I should and shouldn't make and explain to me why I should and shouldn't make them!

No offense to you but who sits around playing chess every day a week... I dont even play 4 times a week.. I have other interest and a life... im not going to be home all day playing chess.. i feel i play often enough.... my friend sucked... his dad was a great great chess player.. he said he sat down with his pops for 2 days.... learning strategies and moves... a week later when he played me he whooped me badly

ok

Well, "There's no misery to it." Gotta argue, there is misery to it. GM Norwood pointed out that improving in chess takes a lot of work that most of us would not commit to. I also doubt your friend got 500 points better after a few sessions with "pops".

Ok im not going to turn this into an argument.. i say here and played the boy and saw him play on chess.com almost twice a week and he struggled tremendously against low ranked players... after training with his father he got much better and was competiting with guys ranked in the 1700's so if u dont believe me fine thats your problem i know for a fact that he did tho.. have a nice day

Hello Jay!

I've known how to play chess for about 17 years now (learned from dad when I was 9). I've only started taking it more seriously much more recently though.

I've been self-taught the whole way, and I understand some of your frustration. Personal lessons can be quite expensive, but understand that a lot of the players who are offering them are earning a large portion of their income that way. And you're right, plenty of the books out there can be absolutely maddening.

What it really takes to keep steadily improving, is a properly laid-out course of study. For me, the hardest part was figuring out what I needed to be studying, and when. I got a book of openings by GM Seirawan, which was a great book, and I'd highly recommend it as one that you should think about getting, as well as a book about the middle-game by Reuben Fine, and a couple of other ones. The trouble was, I'm looking at a massive book with literally every opening possible in it. Now, there's no way I'm just going to go through and memorize all of them instantly, and most of them will never be played. Studying the middle game was another problem, as all of the tactics, and positional play etc. was obviously going to take a lifetime to learn, but I didn't have a clue where to start.

My advice is to start out by studying opening theory, basic tactics and strategy, basic endgame theory: mating patters with the different pieces, exchanging into an endgame position, activating the king, etc, and calculating simple variations.

This can be done with a couple of books and a chess set. For the openings, it's most important as a beginner to learn the theory first. You're going to be facing several different openings before you've gotten a chance to study them, so it's more important to understand the basic ideas of proper play and the reasoning behind it, so that even though you won't know the prescribed moves, you can still make good ones. Along with the theory, pick a couple of the most common openings and start a more in-depth study of them. The basic tactics and exchanges are best learned through beginner-level articles and puzzles. Seriously, puzzles, do at least a handful of them a day. They're really tough at first, and it can be frustrating, but just stick with it. Eventually, you'll start getting them more easily, and moving onto more challenging ones. And I personally believe there's nothing that can improve so many areas of your game so quickly (especially for us beginners) as puzzles. The basic endgame stuff can be learned from a few articles and exercises, plus you can set them up on your own chess set as many times as you want.

Practice all of this stuff over and over and over again, until you're completely comfortable with it. Write down the moves in your games, and when you're done, replay them and analyze them. Take some time on each move to see if there was a better move that you could've made. Move the pieces around, and actually play out the different lines, if you've got the game written down, you can put them back with no problem. When there were exchanges that you came out on the wrong side of, look and see if you could've played it differently, or avoided the whole thing at all. Try to figure out why the exchange was possible in the first place. Get some feedback from software programs, and the forum here.

This site has an amazing amount of resources to get you going, and a huge community to help you along.

I'd recommend playing a lot of correspondence chess (called online chess on chess.com). It's fantastic for beginners, because you have a time-limit for each move that's measured in days not minutes. You get a lot of time to look over the board and move the pieces around to see how each move will play out. During the openings and endgames, and even in the middle-game, you can look through your books to get some understanding of what's going on, what your opponent's trying to do, and what you should think about doing. It also removes a lot of the pressure, being as you can be alone when you're considering your moves, and not feel your opponent sitting there, or worry about other people watching you. Plus, you get to play with a lot of people all over the world!

Lastly, a previous poster said that you're not going to get any better if you're just playing an occassional game once or twice a month with friends. This is entirely true, but improvement also doesn't have to take up your whole life. If you get your course of study in order, even if you can only dedicate a half hour or an hour each day, so long as you're serious and focused, you'll see yourself coming along at a steady rate!

P.S. Play, play, play, and then play some more! Don't worry about losing, everyone loses a lot more than they win when they're starting out! It's not failure, it's the path to progress. You don't bench press 350 pounds your first day in the gym, and you don't win 25 out of the first 30 chess games you play. Just remember to go back and analyze your games when they're over. Both on your own, maybe with some software, and definitely with other people, whether it's people you know in person or in an online community. You can't learn from your mistakes if you don't know what they were, or what you could've done instead.

And for what it's worth, I'm right here with you. I'm just a beginner myself, dealing with the same frustrations, but if you keep working at it, you'll find a love for chess that makes the whole thing worth it!

 +10

Your posts look kinda familiar, didn't you have a different profile on this site earlier, Jay?

It is not about whether I have a nice day or whether I believe the sudden improvement or not. But when you look at this kind of outlier, it will much more likely discourage you than motivate you. Look at the controversial book of Michael de la Maza: he improved about 800 points in 2 years, while studying tactics about 6 hours every day. He did not work, but studied chess all they long. After hitting 2046 (if I remember correctly) he simply disappeared. The one point here would be, try to study tactics with the Tactics Trainer on this site. It will let you monitor your progress and you can learn a lot of little tricks.

uhmmmm i dont think so this is the same account profile i always had haha

thanks for this post man maybe i can get better if i do what u said

lol

You're very welcome! Just remember, you don't have to end up being a Grandmaster. There's a lot of work involved in improving as a chess player, but it's supposed to be something that you enjoy doing and are wanting to do. If you just want to be good enough to beat most average players, or be able to go to a few tournaments a year and compete, that's just fine. Heck, I've got a few friends that study chess quite a bit and don't play competitively much at all; they haven't got much interest in winning games, they just think chess is really cool, and they want to be able to understand it.

Every chess player has their own goals in chess, and their own amount of interest in it. Just figure out what yours are, and work towards that, and you'll be improving all the time. More importantly, you'll be happy and enjoying it.

Yea I just want to be at a level where i can beat your average player.. like one of those players that only tournament players can beat