WARNING: I can get to rambling so if your just interested in the questions by all means, ignor the rest of my babble.

First ill introduce myself. Got the name right there...Blitz. Not based on the Blitz chess style of gaming though. Im by no means any good at chess. Good enough to beat my friends but I know nothing when it comes to the tactics, the names of the tacticts and how to apply them. Im the guy that will usualy lose moving my Queen somewhere she is in danger and I didn't even see it because I get to wrapped up in what Im doing. So ive come here to get better. I love the game, I just have fun playing it win or lose, but I want to delve into it a bit more.

OK, well I have some questions..chess related, that Im just curious about because Ive never been part of the chess community, I follow sports like Hockey and NFL/College Football like some of you probably follow chess .

Questions.

1)When describing where a piece is I notice things like  Kd5 meaning the Knight is moving to the d5 square. Question tho, what if two knights can move to the same square, how do you know which knight the move is talking about? My best guess is that you are just smart enough to know which one is the right move. Myself, i can be dumb enough to make the wrong move. That and I understand that this is probably rarly the case two can go to the same squre.

2)This will probably show my lack of knowledge about the players of the game. But I got into chess a long time back when that Searching For Bobby Fischer movie came out. Yeah yeah I know, probably sounds cheesy but hey, I never played it and that movie made it look pretty intriguing. But the QUESTION is, what is your thoughts on those two? Bobby Fischer and Josh Waitzkin. Is Bobby looked at in such high regard as far as a chess player in the chess community? Is he considered one of the top 4 or 5 ever? And about Josh, that movie made it seem like he was going to go on and be the greatest. Children as good as him not exactly a rare thing to see in the chess community? Not that there are tons of them that good obviously. But every few years is there that NEW Young hot shot?

3)Last question. Im not new to chess, I understand how the pieces move and the goal of the game. When I play with a friend or something, we start off with the basic opening pawn moves to the middle of the board...and then just kind of make it up from there if you know what I mean. So to better myself...Best place to start to learn would be Opening moves? Is that the usual, start with the opening and move to middle and then learning to close it up. Or are there more Chess theory, basic attacks like forking I should just learn to spot before learning some openings.

Thanks in advance, sorry its a bit wordy for just a few simple questions. This looks like a pretty fun site with a lot to learn. Maybe ill see a few of you on the online games, tho I may be in the Kiddy Pool. :)

About the notation, look at the move list in this (rubbish) game: Note the way White's 4th move is written: Ndxb5. That means the Knight on the d file captures. I the othe knight took, it would say Ncxb5

Hello!

To answer your first question: First of all, in algebraic notation, K stands for King, and N stands for kNight.  If two pieces can move to the same square, you add another letter for the rank or file where the piece is.  For example, after castling with a clear back rank, either rook can move to the d- and e-files, so you would write Rad1 and Rfe1 to show which is moving where.  Of course with a rook on c1 and a rook on d1, you only need to write Rb1 to show that the rook moves from c1 to b1, since the rook on d1 obviously can't jump over the other rook. For further reading, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_chess_notation

As far as what to study:  tactics are very important, as are basic endgame principles. Some basic opening principles are good to know, but when starting out, don't get too caught up with the opening phase. Just know some basic concepts and pick one or two openings to focus on to get to a playable middlegame.

Hope this helps.

About question 2, Bobby Fischer is regarded by many as THE top player ever, I think mainly amongst older people. Surely in the top 4 or 6 in almost everybody's list.

Question3, I expect most people will tell you tactics and endgame fiirst. But it doesn't hurt to get get through the openong 10 moves without falling into a trap.

Thanks for the responces so far. So far exactly what I needed to hear I think.

K = King

N = Knight

HAHA, ok I got that down now. Honest mistake really.

Fischer is considered one of the Top chess players ever to live,

some people dislike him due to some things he did outside of chess.

But if we stick to chess, he was crazy at chess, and probably one of the best in my opinion (First Kasparov, then him).

Yeah, ive looked him up before and he seems to be one of the top three. I was just curious what the fans think, the chess community so to speak. Everyone has an oppinion.

Kasparov, I remember when he did that Kasparov vs World on yahoo or MSN one of those. Where the world votes on a move. I got in on that and after a while started wondering how many players like me were probably voting on stupid moves and killing our chances. HAHA.

Yeah, those vote games are terrible. I remember about 25 years ago GM Quinteros played a phone in vote game against South Africa. He mated us in about 11 moves.

I am about a month in the future from your position and here is what has been very good for me:

-Tactics training. Tactics are short term actions that can win you material, improve your position, or both of those things at once. It helps you to see the important things happening on the board and decide what course of action is best. I do a lot of problems at chesstempo.com. It's a tactics trainer similar to the one on this site but it's free and unlimited. When you try some of the problems, keep in mind they are not mating puzzles. Most will not end in checkmate. The goal is to come out better than you went in.

-Learn the basic principles of openings. There are a set of principles ("it's usually a good idea if...") that rule most chess openings. They tend to center around controlling the center (squares d4, d5, e4, e5), developing minor pieces, and setting up favorable pawn structures. There is more to it, and there are various articles on this site and others that can teach you.

-Study the basic endgames. The endgame is when both players are down to their king, some pawns, and maybe one or two other pieces each. Depending on what these pieces are, you will play differently and have to adopt a different strategy achieve checkmate. Some of the patterns are counterintuitive until you really understand them well, and there are some little tricks you can use when you size up the situation.

A great step that accomplishes all of these at once is to read "Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess." It is written in the form of a transcript of a one on one instructive game between a teacher and a student. As they play, different moves- both good and bad- are explored to their conclusions.

HA! Yeah, I can't remembe how fast that game went. But I just know that anyone who could play worth a damn probably gave up on it part way through due to their more calculated moves being out voted for something that looked good. The world never stood a chance. Would be interesting to see something like that take place but you have to show your ranking first to be able to part. I don't know what you are considered if your not a Grand Master... Just a master. But maybe make it like just Masters, Grand Masters, and maybe other top tier players got to do the voting. Id like to see that game. All vs the Number 1 in the world at the time.

Unless of course that does or has happend and I just don't know about it.

To be honest,

you dont need the world to beat number one..

INFACT, the top 100 vs the number one would easily kill the number one,

only if the top 100 were able to communicate and explain to each other which move was the best..

The number one would easily get killed.

Great responce. Good to hear from someone coming from my shoes. Sounds like a good plan of attack, I will look into that book as well, that does sound like an interesting way to go about it.

So what im geting so far is it is not all about knowing some awesome opening moves first. But knowing the different in game tactics that can help you win peices and set you up for a better end game, and learn the end game techniques.

True, id imagine if they got plenty of time to discuss and come to the most popular conclusion for that one move each move, it would be difficult to win against that.

Re: openings think of it this way: memorizing a few cool specific openings is like someone giving you a fish. Knowing the strategy behind them is like being taught to fish.

There will be plenty of time to study openings, but your game understanding has to be better in order for that to make sense to you. Without the understanding you're just memorizing and then when someone does something against what the book says, you're lost.

When you study the opening part, try to understand the moves, not much point in just remembering opening lines.

To really understand the middlegame you need to know the endgame.

Good players plans the endgame in the middlegame. And they plans the middlegame from move 1, you need to know tactics, so you dont make stupid mistakes.

Fischer is the best player ever from the US, in world he is probably around 3. 4th. Josh is nothing like Fischer, (Josh made the top 1300)

In my mind you are what you achive, what you could have been/done, doesn't matter.

Well said. Thanks for the advice.

If you fall for the mistake: Learn many favorite openings by heart, you soon finds that you really hate to meet specefic openings/opening moves.

If you understand many favorite openings instead, you could easy use this knowledge in openings that you dont know.

I see what your getting at. Using your knowledge of openings you know better to get a grasp on those you may not know as well.