It sounds like a lot of people are just getting into Chess, so I thought I would make a post about good beginner resources.

Youtube: Watching instructional videos from good channels can really help.
- John Bartholomew is by far the best instructional Youtuber. I cannot recommend enough his "Chess Fundamentals" and "Climbing the Rating Ladder" series under his playlists.
- Gotham Chess is also a very good instructor considering he is a full time chess teacher and streamer. He has a lot of good playlists to check out.
- Agadmator has probably the largest chess channel on youtube and puts out videos almost daily analyzing famous and interesting games.
Books: I wouldn't say that starting out by reading a chess book is the best idea but here is one recommendation and one criticism.
- Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev is probably the best instructional book out there that is great for any level. He goes through every single move in over 30 games explaining why each move was made and where the player may have gone wrong. Super informative.
- Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess is a terrible book that I would not recommend to anyone. Fischer was paid a part of the royalties to have his name on it and it is entirely useless in my opinion.
Playing: You can really only get significantly better by playing but a lot of the chess websites try to push you towards rapid and blitz time controls which is not good for starting out.
- Forget the Openings: Do not try to memorize openings as a beginner. One unexpected move and your entire game plan is gone. Instead, play long time control games so you can think about every move and why to make it so you develop a better understanding of the game (and avoid falling to people who would rather memorize hyper aggressive traps and gambits than improve their actual play, setting a pretty short skill ceiling for themselves). If you are really struggling in the opening, look into studying a singular opening for white (e4 or d4) and two defenses for black (one for when white plays e4 and one for when white plays d4). This will give you a much better chance in the opening if you think you need it.
- Long Time Controls: Like the last point, play very long time controls (30 minutes each side minimum, I'd say go for 60 or 120 minute time controls). You will actually have time to think about every move you make so you have time to blunder check and actually develop a plan. This will help you really improve your chess understanding rather than make one poor move and the game is essentially over (as usually happens when you're a beginner and trying to play with 5|0 time controls).
- Correspondence Games: The longest time controls you can have in online play comes from correspondence games. These will have move time limits such as 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, etc.. So, you have a huge amount of time to really think out your moves. These can also be good if you don't have much time to sit down and play a whole game for a few hours.

Hopefully this is helpful for those of you who are just starting. For those of you who are beginners, I'd recommend setting up some 60 or 120 minute games and starting a few correspondence matches.

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