Beginners 📈: 4 weeks plan! 🔥

Main Study Plan

1. Play Games

Rapid/Slow Games  – The most important time control will be games that are 10 minutes or slower.

Daily Games – Daily games don’t give the same focused effort as having a clock, but they can be beneficial in addition to rapid/slow games. Daily games are useful for beginner players who want unlimited time to work out strategies during their games.

2. Tactics (pin, forks, checkmating patterns…)

Spend at least half of your tactics time working on quick tactics. The strongest chess players can instantly recognize patterns, and that’s a skill you’ll keep building as you approach chess mastery.

 3. Endgames

Checkmating with a queen:

Checkmating with a rook:

4. Strategy

Chess Strategy is a deep and complex subject. In this series, we'll break down chess strategy into the essential basics. First, we'll take a look at:

4.1. The difference between strategy and tactics

Chess strategy refers to your ability to make a good plan for the position. Tactics skills on the other hand refers to how good you are at seeing a combination of moves (usually 2-5 moves deep) with which you obtain some advantage.

4.2. The value of the pieces

• Pawn = 1 Point
• Knight = 3 Points
• Bishop = 3 Points
• Rook = 5 Points
• Queen = 9 Points

The King can't be captured, so it is not given a value.

4.3. Good/bad pieces

Here are some general tips (as always in chess, there are exceptions) for each piece:

-King.

Good: in the opening and middlegame it should be castled, safely protected by pawns; active in the endgame.

Bad: exposed and uncastled in the opening and middlegame; locked out of the game or far away from the main action in the endgame.

-Queen.

Good: active, participates in the main action, has lots of maneuvering space.

Bad: passive, serves as a blocker for a pawn or a target for the opponent’s pieces.

-Rook.

Good: placed on open files, 7-8th (1-2 for Black) ranks; doubled rooks are especially powerful.

Bad: no open files and maneuvering space.

-Bishop.

Good: there are open diagonals, attacks both flanks and has a nice “shooting range”.

Bad: limited in maneuvering, blocked by pawns.

-Knight.

Good: placed on key squares, e.g. in the centre or near the opponent’s king (e.g. on f5 if Black castles short).

Bad: on the rim of the board, on the 1^st or 8^th rank.

-Pawn.

Good: controls important squares and can potentially be promoted.

Bad: isolated or doubled.

📈 My Chessable course: Everyone's First Strategy Kit

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