How to WIN any Chess game!

It’s actually quite simple. To win any chess game, follow these steps in order, and forget everything you’ve ever learned about chess. 

Ready to win?

The opening:

The opening is usually the first 10 to 15 moves. The opening is also one of the most heavily studied openings, due to its predictability. Many bad players choose to study openings, but don’t do that. This blog will teach you everything you need to know about losing, ahem, winning openings. But if you insist on memorizing openings, why don’t you go with the Bongcloud, or the Damiano, or the Barnes Opening. They’re proven to be awesome with their less than 40% win factor. That’s good, right?

(Don’t) Develop

A typical opening strategy is to develop pieces and control the center using the pawns, bishops and knights. This strategy is, however, overrated. Let’s take the better approach and develop our pieces just to put them back again, like this:

Control the Flanks, Not the Center!

Most people will fight it out on the center of the board. This will give you better ways to develop, plus better ways to defend. But we don’t want to be party-poopers, and additionally, there’s a WAY better way to dominate the opening! It starts by moving your Knights out onto the rim (I know, I said developing is bad, but trust me on this). Then, push your flank pawns to control the flanks! And honestly, who cares about the center anyway? Using this method avoids a fight. Plus, this will throw your opponent off, big time. You want to win? Be the guy who makes your opponent question reality, not their opening moves.

Don’t Castle!

Castling is a popular method of getting the king to safety. However, Nelson (bot) says that castling is for cowards, and he knows a lot about chess (cough). The king is powerful (yeah, right), and getting him into the center of the board will invite checks and other (un)wanted attention. The king can’t capture a protected piece (because that will put him in check), so you can see why this is a good idea. Right?

Overload Defenders

Only so many of your pieces can be spared to defend. You need most of them for your grand plan. See here:

The knight is the only piece guarding a pawn, another knight and a bishop. But what does it matter? Just because they take you piece doesn't mean you can't take back, like this:

Well, it LOOKS like black is winning, but they're actually not. Just because they have a bishop up doesn't mean anything. They fell right for our trap. And thatt rap is... just get on to the next strategy, will you?

Double Those Pawns!

Doubling pawns is a great strategy. Not only does it isolate pawns strategically, it also makes it so your pawns are unprotected. And... unprotected pawns are good because it tricks your opponent into taking them! Many games have been won where isolated pawns were used on one side or the other. I can't remember if it was the winning side who had the isolated pawns... anyway, moving along!

Bishops Before Knights

Put you bishops out before the knights. Chess is all about alphabetical order, and B comes before K in the alphabet. Plus, bishops usually cut off routes for the knight, making the knight HAVE to find more places to stable. That's why the Best (B) always come before the Worst (W). It's just simple logic.

Hang Your Pieces

As I’ve said above, the king can do all of the work. And if there’s one thing a king can do extremly well, it’s hang useless pieces. But who cares about pawns, anyway? They’re just one point of material. So, don’t be afraid to hang pieces to gain a (dis)advantage, as shown here:

Ignore Your Opponent!

Your opponent doesn’t know what he is doing. After all, he’s never read this blog. So, just ignore anything he has cooking and stay focused on your own plan. Remember that you can probably stop his attacks, so it doesn’t help to stress over the future. Focus on NOW, not tomorrow.

Move the Same Piece Over and Over Again

This strategy will completely confuse your opponent. Moving the same piece multiple times in the opening is generally considered bad strategy, but us grandmasters know it's not. When you move the same piece multiple times, it makes your opponent start focusing on that piece: it's like a smokescreen to get an early checkmate. Distract and conquer, as they say. When moving the weaker piece, like a knight, the more powerful piece, like a pawn, can score a hit.

The Horrors of Trading

Trading pieces is a bad strategy. Only trade them when they have plenty of space to move and are doing a great job attacking. Other than that, avoid trading. Especially when the trade frees up a cramped room: cramped pieces often have hidden strengths. Trading usually wins a tempo for you, and it's better to retreat. You need all of your pieces so you can trade them in the middlegame.

The middlegame:

Now that you’ve successfully turned your opening in your, ahem, favor, it’s time to play the middlegame! The middlegame is where tricks and traps shine, so don’t be afraid to step right into them!

Developing(again?)

A typical strategy in the middlegame is developing undeveloped pieces. That’s okay though! Just make sure you develop them into the wro–, ahem, right places. Make sure that you don’t keep the bishop pair, as it’s pretty strong in the middlegame, and we don’t need strength. We just need cunning (hehe) and smarts. Knights are also expendable, but you might want to keep your Queen around so you can, um, brilliantly sac it in the endgame.

Restrict the Queen

The Queen is not very powerful in the middlegame (cough). You should try to keep her down in the back rank so that way you don’t send her out to cause trouble. Queens excel at pins and forks, so… wait, what were we talking about again? Oh, right, let’s keep the Queen confined.

Seeing (Less) Squares

When a piece “sees” a square, that means it’s a square that the piece can move to. Most chess players want their pieces to see MORE squares, but we don’t. See, if a piece sees more squares, then that means it has more ways to capture and defend other pieces. And that is exactly what your opponent wants you to think, especially as they’re setting you up for a trap. Plus, pieces who see more squares have greater mobility, and we want to confine them to their wheelchairs, right? So let’s try seeing LESS squares. It’s easy, isn’t it? As you are probably coming to see, chess is very simple.

Hope Chess

Your opponent is full of mistakes, so embrace it! Just because a move looks bad to you doesn’t mean that it looks bad to them. Chances are, they will ignore it. Focus on the attacks without worrying about the consequences. Hoping that your opponent won’t see a bad move is the top strategy of many awesome bots like Martin, Jimmy, and Fabian.

Try Not Connecting Rooks

Some people think that if you connect rooks (eg, make it so they could touch each other) then you can do very well in the middlegame. This is a common misunderstanding, which is why I’m here to set things right! In fact, rooks don’t need anybody’s help. They are extremely strong on their own, and protecting a rook won’t do you any good. Plus, connecting rooks usually involves castling and developing, and those are really bad strategies (cough).

Isolate Those Pawns!

Pawns are notoriously weak, and one isolated pawn can mean good things for you! Have your opponent work for you and take out those pesky pawns so your queen and other pieces can breathe and have room to move. Because, you know, moving them forward and maneuvering won’t help at all. Plus, if the opponent captures, hooray! That’s what the pawn deserves for being put here in the first place. Free up some room!

Speed Chess on a Rapid Time Control

Charge into the game quickly, and it’ll be over soon (in your favor, of course). Moving quickly makes your opponent flustered, and he probably won’t think very well. Failing that, of course, is hope chess: just move blunder and hope your opponent doesn’t see it. It usually works. The flipside is also true: on a bullet time control, think for a long time. You will most likely get a checkmate before your time runs out.

Lose Some Tempo! 

Tempo is the amount of moves you have over your opponent. So, if they get a “free move”, they basically get a tempo. See here:

Some people think a tempo is great. I’m here to tell you that it’s not! Tempo is overrated, and free moves aren't as great as a free lunch. Nobody needs tempo, so neither do you. Nevermind that tempo can sometimes get you pieces; the people who tell you that are most likely liars. Most likely.

The Endgame:

The endgame is when the game boils down to a few pieces, namely, pawns, and most of the major players have been cleared off the board. When that happens, the minor pieces have much more mobility.

Trading Lots of Pieces

Trade as many pieces as you can. Even if they're not good trades, at least it clears up the board. And, we want to be nice to our opponents! Do one to others as you want them to do to you, right? Karma exists in chess, so let’s be nice. Nice get's us the win.

Passing (Your Opponent's) Pawns

Let your opponent’s pawns have a whole file to themselves. Since pawns move SO slowly, your opponent will waste moves trying to promote their pawns. Don’t you dare fall for that trick yourself, though! Instead, block your pawns with other pieces and try to hamper their great mobility as described above. Don't stop to think aboutt his strategy, just roll with it and go to the next one!

Don’t Control the Open File

Files are for nails, not for rooks! Don’t put your rook on any square where he can see the other side of the board, because that is just silly. He would need glasses to see that far, and plus, nobody’s gonna mess with a rook. He’s just fine where he is, don’t waste a turn moving him.

Lazy King

Well, if you’ve been following my strategy, the king should be out in the center of the board! But he’s probably tired by now, so let’s give him a nap. Bring him down to his starting row so he can take a royal snooze and watch all of the pawns promote on his rank. We want him to have plenty of rest so he can run away from queens later in the game. If, by chance, you did NOT activate him in the opening, don’t do so now! He likes to watch the action from the edge of the board! What's funner, fighting a war, or watching a movie about it?

Sacrifice Pieces (Even Better Than Trading Them!)

Earlier, I mentioned that we should keep the queen for the endgame. Well, not for long! Trade your queen out as soon as possible, maybe for like a rook, or bishop. Also, knights suck in the endgame. The little L's they make when they move actually stand for loser – I think. They are so tricky how they go across the board, and you should save your brain power for more important things. Bishop pairs also stink, so trade them for an apple, or, you know, a knight of something. Scattered pawns all over the board are the trick, you don't really need anything else for success.

It actually works!

These strategies have proven to help people, um, win. No matter what elo you are, you can trust that these strategies will bring you through. I mean, look at this game I played with Worstfish! 

He's like, one of the best bots, and he lost to this strategy. Why they call him Worstfish, I don't know. They should call him Bestfish. 

I'm not the only one who thinks it's great: check out what these "grandmasters" have to say:

"This blog is so [...]helpful!" ~ Bobby F.

"The strategies in this blog helped me get to my current elo of 288.2! Great stuff!" ~ M. Carlsen.

"Speed chess is so much easier and faster! I make my [opponent] look like a fool." ~ Hikaru.

No matter who you are, or what level you are at, these strategies will get you playing top notch. I guarantee you will notice the results immediately.

Conclusion:

Well, you’ve made it this far in the blog. These top strategies will get you becoming a grandmaster in no time! But before you run off… APRIL FOOL! These so-called “strategies” will get you an elo of, like, 200, or maybe less. If you really, REALLY want to become a better chess player, just reverse these strategies. Each of the titles are color coded: Red = bad advice, blue = good advice if you do just the opposite, and green = good advice. You’ll be a GM in no time. Or at least, you’ll have a good laugh while losing.