Studying Chess

I love studying chess, but I don't know what I should study first. There's so much to learn.

very true

It depends on what you already know, but people have many opinions on what to study first or most often. My general guideline would go something like this order:

- learn the rules of chess (how pieces move etc.)

- study common checkmate patterns and theoretical endgames (patterns like backrank mate, or endgames like King + Queen vs King checkmate, or King + pawn vs King endgame)

- solve lots of chess puzzles/tactics (which helps you gain "pattern recognition")

- learn chess "opening principles" https://www.chess.com/blog/KeSetoKaiba/opening-principles-again (I also included MANY links to other resources at the bottom of this blog post)

- learn how to analyze your games with an engine, so that you can learn from your own games

- play chess... a lot. Analyze every game you can win, loss or draw. Repeat a ton. Now you are a chess player

Hi there,

I am rated over 2400 online (https://www.chess.com/member/ppandachess). I created a free course that will teach you a training plan to improve. Feel free to check it out: https://www.panda-chess.com/daily-improvement-plan

Learn and apply the most important principles of chess. - (core of my teaching)
Always blunder-check your moves.
Solve tactics in the right way.
Analyze your games.
Study games of strong players.
Learn how to be more psychologically resilient.
Work on your time management skills.
Get a coach if you can.

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

I suggest you to learn tactics first, such as

-finding forks

-finding skewers

-finding tempos

-finding good sacrifices

-finding good checks

Can anyone teach me how to play?

When I watch someone's game I find out many great moves but when during my own match I fumble out why???

Finding great moves is important, but if you blunder pieces it means that you aren't good yet, it takes many games of training to lower the amount of blunders per game.

Dear mr. wimpydog. You know something about opening principles. You move pawns in the center, you develop your knights and bishops, you castle. It is a good start. But you blunder your pieces. As long as you will be hanging your pieces, any theoretical knowledge will not help you. Before every move, you have to look at all your opponents pieces and all aquares they can move to. Look at every your and opponent piece and realize how many times it is defended and how many times it is attacked. Obviously, it will take you a lot of time. Play at least 15+10 or 30 min games. Just play slow games until you stop blundering pieces and only then will be usefull learning some theoreticall stuff.

I think a book about games of the masters is the most efficient way to get into chess.

For example Bobby Fisher's classic "my 60 memorable games".

I was about to say the same thing but another good recommendation would also be "The mammoth book of the world's greatest chess games."

Dear Wimpydog44,

I'm a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one given way to learn and improve.

First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analyzing your own games. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.

In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames) and if you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.

If you would like to learn more about chess, you can take private lessons from me (you find the details on my profile) or you can visit my Patreon channel (www.patreon.com/Bgabor91), where you can learn about every kind of topics (openings, strategies, tactics, endgames, game analysis). I'm planning to upload at least 4 new videos per week, so you can get 4-8 hours of educational contents every month. I also upload daily puzzles in 4 levels every day which are available with a FREE subscription.

I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck with your games!