How can i improve my Chess?

Hello to all! last week my friend introduced me to chess, recommending me to play in this site. Being new to chess, i started losing a lot of games. So what can you recommend to people who just started playing chess? How can i improve playing chess?

Comments are welcome

Strategy, strategy, strategy.

first lern basic mates and tactics. Search chess tactics and read that then get a book called " How to beat your dad in chess" and read that and do the exercises in the back. Then read a book called the chess tactics workbook and keep going thru those 2 books till you reach a  rating of  600 OTB or 900 on chess.com. This is important STOP PLAYING BLITZ and play more games with a little quicker pace to them (20min).

Chessmaster gave you some great advice and resources.

Those 10 minute Blitz games won't help you very much at the early stages of your development. If you're a beginner, you likely haven't built up much "pattern recognition" and are relying on calculating through your moves. Calculation takes time, and by taking time you'll develop the proper thought processes.

One of the best ways to improve is to analyse your games. Look for threats and opportunities missed, and mistakes made. When you identify those errors, try to identify where you went wrong in your thinking process.

Also, try to play against opponents that are higher rated than you (to challenge yourself and to learn their "tricks") and slightly below you (to practice what you've learned).

To get an idea of what's involved with chess tactics and chess strategy, search both on wikipedia for a pretty decent explanation.

One mistake a lot of beginner's make is to become obsessed with openings. While it is important to have strong opening play, focussing on this to the exclusion of other aspects of the game will only hinder your development (there is no magic opening that will win you the game).

If you want to practice and discuss play with an online game, feel free to send me a challenge.

In the upper right hand corner of the forums page you will see a "search" box.  Type in improving and you will come up with about 50 threads, about a dozen or so will give you beginner advice.  Best of luck, welcome to the game, and if you get especially enamored (OK, addicted) think about a diamond membership which will give you access to several lifetimes worth of chess training material.

Thanks for your posts and advices, i find them useful

I'll wholeheartedly second everything Mezmer said. If you have the time and inclination, the online chess here (as opposed to live chess) gives you plenty of time to think about your moves (3 days/move is common). I found it very fun to play, and very helpful to my game.

Hey Laura98! It is great to hear that you want to join us and play this wonderful game.

As it is vital to know what will make you win and lose in chess, I highly recommend you check out the best move in the whole universe, 1. a4!!.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/1-a4-best-chess-opening2

Good luck, champ! :)

Sigh.

I reallllllyyy hope you dont listen to the post talking about 1.a4!!!it's one of the worst openings and even with low statistics I'm not saying dont try  it cause it was the opening I played when I was rated 700 and I got to 1000 in less than 3 tournaments. But first play standard and basic openings to get general ideas for things. You'l find a team activity called VOTE CHESS to be very if not top 3 most useful things. Because when your playing as a team you can ask questions and look at hat others are thinking who are on your team. It's like a little lesson. But be awar of inactive groups were you won't learn a thing.

P.S. shortly after reaching 1000 I lost literally over 16-17 times in a row to people 1100-1300 in caseul play so I decided to stop using 1.a4 before my next tournament came.

 Woah I never see you online anymore and I thought you were gone from chess.com \. Can I still send my games to you.  I  HIGHLY recommend this guy. I got really good really fast cause of this guy . I had a 15 game match with a CM and lost by one point ! just going off of games he analysed for me in the past.