How to improve

Hi Everyone,

I'm pretty new at chess and I was wondering what I can do to improve my chess. Does practice make perfect or do I need to do something more?  For instance, other than playing games or solving daily puzzles, what else can I do?

Thanks.

It's important to analyze your games (especially those you lost) and figure out where you went wrong. Computers can help with this. I found Fritz 8 for $10 at Target a few months ago. It does a "blunder check" which identifies places where the computer thinks I made the wrong move and why.

Also, Jeremy Silman has several good books out.

-Levi

Thank you! =)

i was just about to recommend him. jeremy silmans "amateurs mind" and "reassess your chess" is good books that will show you the most important and what to study and even recommend what you should read further. will be very helpful all the way from beginner from master

if i observe other players, would that be beneficial as well?

At the <1000-level, one doesn't need to analyze their games to know why they're losing--tactics! In harleyqueen-swing11, 6.b4? hung a pawn, 7.Bb2? left your pawn hanging and missed Black's hanging pawn, 8.O-O? again left your pawn hanging, 10.Nxc7?? hung your knight, 17.Be5?? missed a hanging rook, 19.Nf8?? hung your other knight, 22.Ba8? hung a pawn, 31.Re1+?? missed a hanging knight, and 32.g4?? left you open to a fork.

So the verdict is easy! What's the solution?

1. Slow down. Take time each move to ask yourself, are any of my pieces hanging? Are any of my opponent's pieces hanging? If you can't do that at the time controls you're playing at, then choose slower time controls.

2. Study tactics. On chess.com you could use Chess Mentor + Chess Tactics Trainer, or you could buy a book like Heisman's Back to Basics: Tactics or Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics, or Chessmaster if you prefer.

The basics of strategy as found in Silman's Amateur Mind will be more important once you can maintain 1300 in "online chess" or 1100 in "live chess".

likesforests nailed it!

1. Have fun
2. Tactics-Tactics-Tactics
3. Play slow games
4. You cannot have enough of Tactics

harleyqueen> if i observe other players, would that be beneficial as well?

Sure, especially if you're actively spotting tactics in their game before the players play them--as opposed to passively watching "Ooh! Ahh!", which I sometimes do!  :)

o awesome. thanks. ya i definitely want to raise my score!

as a newbie myself, i personally believe PRACTICE DEFINITELY MAKES PERFECT, however also as important to analyse your match at the end of each game to learn from your mistakes, making u an even better chess player!!! I would recommend the TACTICS trainer

ya, im going to definitely look into that since so many ppl suggested it. until then i'll just play unrated. hehe. and how cool! you're from italy! <3 ciao!

Practice makes Perfect

But Nobodys' Perfect

So why Practice. ..

um,lets see.....

1.play more[obviously]

2.read chess books[jeremy silman is a pretty good author]

3.analyze ALLof your games, not just the ones your lost.

chess mentor is good too,if your willing to pay

One of the hardest things to develop in blitz chess is a full sight of the board.  Every now and then play at a time control that lets you carefully examine the potentials of every piece, your side and his, before having to make a move.

As other have mentioned already - TACTICS.  Especially for beginners, tactics are very important.  I guarantee if you put some time into tactics, you'll see yourself go to a different level.  Players you once traded blows with will crumble before you.  Also as mentioned, Silman is great.  You can go ahead and get his two most popular books - Amateur's Mind and How to Reassess Your Chess, but they may not be useful to you at first.  When you reach around 1600 (I'm talking USCF rating) you can start to make sense of Silman's ideas and actually use them.

I read Robertie on Winning chess tactics..some help..will check out silman and heisman

another question: if you're not a good player to begin with, is blitz completely useless?

I have seen my game-play increase dramatically with books by bruce pandolfini..

sooooo easy to follow.. lots of great explanations for beginners.. i recommend 'weapons of chess' and ' chess openings traps & zaps' theres a whole seres called the fireside chess library i also have several huge books all on tactics and use the tactics trainer.. its important i found to find a tactics book that includes puzzles from mid-game situations too as many are soley end-game scenarios (not to refute the grave importance of end-games)

has anyone heard of the book 'how good is your chess?' by daniel king? im loving it.. GM games but it zips through the opening phase then goes way in-depth explaining the mid and end games.. let me know if anyone knows of any good books like that on mid-games, tough to come by

Yes, Blitz doesn't improve your game, and may just hurt it.

Another tip to improve is to get some free database software (like Scid, http://scid.sourceforge.net/ ), then get a load of chess games. The Week in Chess comes out every week and includes an archive of thousands of games played worldwide last week, see http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic.html . At the top of the screen, under Zipped Downloads, get the "Games in PGN" file. In the zip is a PGN file that you can open with Scid.

Now you can browse through all the games in there. For instance, I like to search for all the games where both players had a 2300+ rating and one side won within 20 moves. Or you can search for an opening position, et cetera.

Just browse quickly through them, or stop when you see something interesting (why did he do THAT??) and see if you can find an answer.

What this gives you is an idea of what a normal, natural move is. And it's fun :)

He also has a great column on Chess Cafe ( http://www.chesscafe.com , Novice Nook ), and all the old ones are in the Archives (bottom right of the front page).

Here, actually: http://www.chesscafe.com/archives/archives.htm#Novice%20Nook