Where to start

Hi,

I've been playing chess very casually for most of my life, and thinking about getting more serious. However the problem I keep running into is that while I know the rules well, and know some basic principles like a good opening develops pieces and controls space, whenever I go looking for info on something I think I should learn next, like say how to analyze a game properly, I just find wall after wall of headache inducingly complex text. I have used some of the lessons here and they have helped some, but I don't have the money for a premium membership and without it you only get one lesson a week. Am I trying to learn things too fast, or just not looking in the right places?

Are these lessons only one per week? I started a few videos, and it let me begin watching them... I don't know if there's some kind of timer though, maybe it didn't count because I didn't watch the whole thing.

But they're very good.

https://www.chess.com/lessons

Here's a lesson I made. It's simple but IMO very useful

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/for-beginners/the-most-important-concept-for-all-beginners

Other than that, I looked at a few of your games. You're using the opening principles, so I'll skip that. The other areas I'll briefly mention are positional play, tactics, strategy, and endgames.

Any term in italics you don't recognize, google it.

1. Positional play
Positional play is shot term improvements that don't require calculation. For example a rook goes on an open file... why? Because it controls more squares there. Easy.

Knights like outposts
Bishops like long diagonal, and don't want to be blocked behind friendly pawns (a so called bad bishop)
Kings like to be castled to a side where all the 3 flank pawns are still on their original squares.
Queens like to stay away from the action at first, and when you're unsure it's usually a bit better to have her on her own color (white queen on white square, black queen on dark square).

Pawns don't like to be an isolated pawn, or a backward pawn, or a doubled pawn. Each of these types of pawns is weak in its own way.

2. Tactics

Tactics are short term forcing sequences that usually win material or allow you to checkmate. You should make yourself very familiar with the following tactical patterns because they happen over and over in almost all games:

Pin and Skewer
Fork and Double attack
Discovered attack and Discovered check
Removing the defender and Overworked piece

Also it's useful to review these until they start to be a bit intuitive to you. For example see how many you can set up on a board on your own without any help. It may seem tedious but it's useful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkmate_pattern

3. Strategy

Positional play was short term moves you could make without calculation. Strategy are long term plans you can make without calculation.

Typically the general strategy of a position is known via the pawn structure. For example when each player's center pawns are locked, typically you seek play on the side you central pawn chain "points"

In the position below, white's pawns "point" to the kingside and black's to the queenside.

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Pawn breaks are a key part of strategy where players open lines into the opponent's position by trading pawns (lines are files, ranks, and diagonals). In the position above black's pawn break is c5 and white's pawn break is f5.

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An in general any strategy is anchored by the slow moving targets... namely the enemy king or weak enemy pawns. Piece activity is the holy grail of all chess strategy, but strategically what you do with active pieces is you surround and win weak pawns, or your surround and checkmate the enemy king.

A good example of a strategy everyone should know is when players castle on opposite sides, both players will rush to attack the opponent's king. Whoever starts making big threats against the enemy king first usually has the advantage. When players castle to opposite sides this is usually done via a pawn storm.

The following link is not required reading for you, but may be a useful bit of reference material if you find yourself wondering what to do in certain pawn structures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_structure

4. Endgame

The biggest difference between the endgame and middlegame is it's (almost always) safe for the kings to participate in the fight. Often at the start of the endgame both players will rush their kings to the center, and whoever's king is more active sometimes has an advantage already.

The goal of most endgames is to eventually queen a pawn, so players will try to advance their pawn majority to create a passed pawn.

In the position below white has a pawn majority on the kingside and black on the queenside.

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It may seem incredible, but with perfect play this is a winning position for white.

Due to black's doubled c pawns, his pawn majority can't force a passed pawn.

Here's a simple example of creating a passed pawn below

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And now here's a simple example of doubled pawns being unable to create a passed pawn.

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In endgames with a few other pieces (like a rook or knight for each player) the main idea is often to target weak pawns.

In the position below white wants to target a7, c7, c5, and/or h7. Basically any pawn that is isolated, backward, or on its original square. Pawns on their original squares are automatically weaker because it's impossible for a friendly pawn to protect them.

Similarly black will want to find ways to pressure white's pawns on a2, h2, and/or e3.

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i don't know what your fide rating is, or if it is uscf, and for now i would assume you don't have any. i had to learn the game all by myself up until this point so i know how difficult it is even just sorting out which information to take. 

set up a rating goal, i would propose 1700 in rapid here. that means 10 minute games at least. nothing below that as you need time to implement your thinking process.

now the point is not to try to win at all costs just to reach 1700, but to focus on key areas and let the rating rise on its own. stick to the plan until you reach 1700.

train yourself on tactics. use the puzzle rush here. i think you have one free try for puzzle rush and puzzle battle per day for a free membership. you should aim to solve the diagrams as fast as you can until you can't possibly get any faster. make a habit of this. it shouldn't take that much time and gives a huge return in value.

play openings that are simple and straightforward. 1 e4 for white. 1 d4 d5 and 1 e4 e5 for black. i know you have good grasp of principles. i saw your old games. i just hate the 1 e4 nf6 you played. that's not beginner-friendly. leave that for later if you really want to play it.

now, for the thinking process during an actual game, here is what i propose.

first the underlying concept around which everything revolves is this.

when a player moves a piece, or a pawn, it leaves something undefended (a square or a piece it was previously protecting or controlling, or a combination of both), and on its new location it now controls something or attacks something (again either a piece or a square or a combination of both)

now for the actual process:

after your opponent makes his last move, ask yourself, can i take advantage or the piece or square he just left by moving that piece? either by winning material or forcing a checkmate.

you can win many hanging pieces this way. but let's say the answer is no, which means there are no tactics yet.

now you focus on trying to improve your position by improving your pieces. naturally you should look for the most forcing continuations first, as this leaves no room for the opponent to do something else. he has to react in a specific way and that allows you to control the outcome.

they are checks, captures, and threats, in that order. usually in a position there shouldn't be so many of them so you can look at them and be able to figure out if they lead to something or not.

if you manage to see a forced checkmate or win of material at the end of a forced line starting from one of these forcing moves, then good for you.

before you actually play the move you saw was good, you need to perfrom the same algorithm you did for the opponent at the beginning of the thinking process, but this time for your move instead of his,

so ask yourself, if i play this move (visualizing that you did), can he now take advantage of the square or piece i am leaving undefended, or not? if the answer is no, then that means your move is tactically safe. and now it's okay to play it.

ideally you should do this for all moves you intend to play, as a sort of blunder prevention mechanism, but for now you can apply it as much as you can visualize, as i know from experience this is daunting to do in a real game.

now if none of the forcing moves lead to anything, now you need to try to improve your position by improving your pieces. usually it is good to start with the piece that is not doing anything or not doing much compared to the rest. again i would recommend you perform the blunder prevention algorithm above before you actually play the move.

this all sounds tedious and i admit it is, but that's why it's difficult to be really strong in this game. it takes a lot of work and discipline. of course i don't know how strong you want to become, but i would like to assume stronger than 1800 and maybe a lot more.

Thanks for the quick responses, both of your responses help a lot. I'll read through them again and try out everything suggested tomorrow. Much appreciated.

for me, watching gothamchess and agadmator pretty much launched me to 1000, after that, i bought modern chess openings and while i didn't understand it at first, once you understand the notation it all comes together. St. Louis chess club also has some very good videos for openings and stuff like that

Here are some general tips that will help you improve:

https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement

Good luck.

Have a look at the Chessable website. There lessons are called 'Books'. There are a huge amount of good quality free books covering openings, tactics, strategy and endgames. The learning is based on spaced repetition but the authors make use of this in a wide variety of ways.

Dear DeadMan456,

I am 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 general way to learn. 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 analysing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem that it can't explain you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why is it so good or bad.

You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.

In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). 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.

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

This is it exactly.  I run the analysis, and it says that something is a blunder or a mistake, and I can't see why.  It's the same way with puzzles, or with chess magazine articles where they show notations for existing games.  Why is something a mistake?  I don't see it yet.

But the advice here is great.  I find that by constantly watching and learning, it is helping.  I think these bits of advice will help!  Thanks for taking the time to assist us.

so I've been trying to apply some of the stuff that's been talked about here, the problem I've been running into is that I keep feeling like my pieces are locked up without any safe or good options. Like when I hit the midgame, the only moves I see lead nowhere. Thanks a lot for all the help so far.

Former world champion Euwe authored a two volume series on middlegame strategy.

Pachman authored, IIIRC 3.

You've read a whole paragraph about it, so sure, you're not an expert yet, lol.

Chess isn't that easy.

Hi

If you're unsure what to do, then find your worst placed piece and improve it. This is usually a piece that is not influencing very many squares. The easiest example is a knight or bishop on the back rank, but it can also be a knight or bishop that is blocked by friendly or enemy pawns.

If you think all your pieces look good, then start advancing pawns to open lines and use your good pieces to infiltrate into the opponent's position.

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If your pieces are very bad, and you can't find a way to improve them even if you were given a few moves in a row, then it's probably too late to fix your position. In that case, after the game focus on how such a situation happened in the first place. In the moves leading up to that position, where could you have moved to have more active pieces?