Where do I begin and how do I get better

Do tactics on tactics trainer on chess.com and on chesstempo. A good book to read is How to Beat Your Dad at Chess

Free Chess Mentor lessons; master these and you're on your way!

http://www.chess.com/blog/webmaster/free-chess-mentor-courses

Apart from using the great features on this site, what else can I do to improve my game?

Kind Regards

John

Logical Chess: Move by Move, written by Irving Chernov, is a book which helped me a lot.

Do a bit of everything. Learn basic tactical patterns, checkmates. Learn opening principles and a bit of theory in the lines you play. Look into king and pawn endgames. Obviously play a lot. most importantly like carlsen says, enjoy what you are doing. Ultimately the best way to improve is probably to join a club

Wow! You did those quick.  Try 10 years of monthly columns (many awardwinning from the Chess Journalists of America-who knew?)from Coach Heisman.

http://danheisman.home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Articles/Novice_Nook_Links.htm

Thanks for the comments so far, is there anything else I can be doing, any specific books that are a must or computer software.

Kind Regards

John

This site is gold:

http://www.chesstactics.org/

This should help you with the opening:

http://exeterchessclub.org.uk/content/ten-rules-opening

And I used Wikipedia to learn endgames. Silman's Endgame Course is really good but I found pages like this useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_and_pawn_versus_king_endgame

Books I wouldn't worry too much for now. Just play some, try and look at your games for mistakes and use the internet to search for any topics that interest you. As long as you're not just reading and you give positions thought you should learn with most content.

Some Chess.com articles are really good. They also have these study plans. You wont be able to view all content but they will give you an idea of the sorts of things to learn:

http://www.chess.com/article/view/study-plan-directory

Besides playing live games here on chess.com I reccomend you start a few Online Chess turn based games with 3 day per mvoe so you can really think deeply about every move you make and study your own games at the same time.

Someone who is really big on playing slow correspondence chess is Aww Rats, here is his group:

http://www.chess.com/groups/home/nm-aww-rats-free-video-lessons

And here are his videos:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDghkp2J0_kr3zoHS3ZNIFzcrAtAhmAfk

They helped me a lot and he has a private group as well that you can enter for a small donation that gives you the really good videos.

They have helped me improve tremendously.

The free chess mentor courses that have been mentioned a few posts up are really good too! So much is being explained in there, I highly recoomend you do those as well.. Lot's of tactic training int here as well. Opneing principles are being very well explained in there as wel.

Good luck on your journey :)

O, and one more thing, go over the games you played and see why you lost, what moves you could have done better and what were good move your opponent played. This helps a lot and is fun too!

All of the above comments give great advice. For me, I found studying the endgame really helpful. I bought some cutsie mating patterns on my kindle and that helped me a lot. (By the way, kindles are amazing for Chess books. I can get classic chess books for half price and the kindle is way more convenient to study from since you don't have to prop the book open to move pieces.) 

I also find having a friend who plays chess to be super helpful. Because we can sit and talk about our games and flip through the moves analyzing everything. 

Most of all, I have found doing chess puzzles ridiculously helpful. I do them constantly and my rating and understanding has begun to grow very quickly.

The Mammoth book of chess is an excellent book that covers the whole game from openings to endgames. Do plenty of tactics, learn a few basic openings and study Grandmaster games - you'll pick up ideas from them without even realising it. It will takes months rather than weeks but eventually you will notice an increase in your strength....

I am not exactly a strong player myself, but the standard advice to get beyond "novice" is-

#1 Study tactics.  Start with things like the basic mates, and then learn paterns like forks, pins, discovered attacks, etc.  All the theory in the world won't help if you can't see basic tactical threats, both offensively and defensively.  

#2 Learn the basic principles of opening play.  Don't spend alot of time trying to memorize extensive opening theory.  The time that you do spend on opening study should be focused on trying to understand the reasons behind the moves, not just trying to commit strings of opening moves to memory.

#3 Spend some time on endgame study.  Again, like openings this can be a rabbit hole, don't get bogged down.  But many new players completely ignore the endgame.  The ability to get a head in material and them simplify into an endgame is a powerful tool to have in your tool box.  But see #1, that is how you get ahead in material.

#4 Play often.  And while Blitz can be fun, be sure to play a fair amount of longer time controls, and play some online (correspondance) chess as well.  Go over your games, especially your losses, and try to see what went wrong and what went right.  

#5 When you get to the point that you are not losing material to basic tactics, and you are catching your opponent with the same, its time to try to get a little theory/strategy/positional thinking.  Modern chess theory says that chess is about accumulating small advantages.  Learn about things like space, pawn structure, etc.  A starting book might be Yasser Seirawan's Winning Chess Strategy. (I like his books in general, there are several others in the "Winning" series, if you are looking for books that are accesable to the novice) A more advanced book would be Silman's How to Reasses your chess.

Nicely said ;)

Endgames first.  ENDGAMES FIRST!!

I mean, start with a good handful of basic gameplay heuristics (develop pieces to strong squares before queen moves, don't make a lot of early pawn moves, castle when you find a safe side, don't exchange without a reason, connect your rooks, occupy files or strong diagonals, etc.), but you need to know how to win to win.  Not just the very simple endgames (but if you don't have those, start there!).  King and N pawns.  Same and opposite bishops (and weak and strong).  How to use your knight in closed endgames.

The point is, as you learn endgames more and more, you will learn where you need to take the game.  Why do you not want to push that exchange that leaves with you a flank pawn?  Where do you need your rook while your pawn chain is finishing off it's exchanges?  The follow through is key to understanding the ideas behind positional strengths.

Tactics next.  Not every game gets to the endgame.  Once you've figured out the basic mating patterns in endgame theory and are starting to look into the more complex endgames, you can start really drilling into tactics.  Pins.  Skewers.  Forks.  Discovered attacks.  Look at sites like http://www.chesstactics.org/ for the basics.  Practice.

Once you are really deep in endgame theory and your tactical skills have all the basics covered, once you are starting to not lose simple exchanges and are starting to play more solid, then you can start introducing some opening preparation.  Pick some openings that are well analysed and lead to the types of games you are now starting to realise you have strengths in.  This is one of the points why you wait on openings, because you need to have the endgame/positional knowledge and tactical/calculational feel that let's you say "I'm really enjoying XYZ type of play and so I want to play openings that work that way".  Pick a repertoire for white and black starting with one move or response for each of the early positions.  So start with one white move (e4? d4? c4? Nf3? ...) and one response for each of the main white openings.  Train to the most popular responses to your specific choices and just build up your repertoire line by sideline by variation.  Theory will lead you from opening to middlegame and give you a strategy for each line.  Where are the good outposts?  What pawn breaks are strong?

Eventually, by building these, you will start to connect your game into a logical whole.  You'll begin to see how to bring things together in a game and how the stronger players approach the positions that happen.  Keep these up.  Keep doing endgames, just push yourself deeper.  Keep practicing tactics, just increasing the combinatorial complexity.  Keep building your opening repertoire.  Keep at it.  You can start picking up books on deeper theory, like pawn chain patterns or hypermodern ideas on space and control and getting deeper based on where you want to learn, but by then, you'll be a lot more aware of what you enjoy learning and where your strengths lie.

Get Capablanca's book Chess Fundamentals, it's a great starting place, and just play a lot. 

Try initially to play and study the game about 8 hours a day.