I need your help winning a bet

You have a month?

Don't worry about openings at this point, although it is helpful to learn and use basic opening principles, like try to get your pieces developed (out onto useful squares) before launching an attack, castle early, avoid bringing the queen out before you are developed,  try to control the center of the board, that sort of thing.  There are exceptions to basic principles but they are very useful if you don't know openings.   Too often beginners move pawns for no reason and this weakens your position, so don't move pawns unless you have a good reason to. 

Try to keep pieces protected by other pieces when possible, as unprotected pieces make good targets for tactics.

As mentioned earlier, learn basic checkmate patterns and do the free chess mentor courses.

To improve you must practice, so try playing a few games per day.  This means dividing the time you have available for improvement between studying and practice.  Also, after you are done playing go over your games (especially when you lose) to try to figure out what you should have done differently.  It helps if you can find a stronger player to help you do the analysis, but you can figure out a lot even if you do it alone.

If you are willing to spend a few dollars, sign up for a membership here and spend half an hour per day doing problem on the tactics trainer.

Young people tend to learn a lot faster than adults, but even middle aged players can improve by working at it steadily.

         I thought you just wanted to win the bet. For now just study. Chess can be an addictive drug. Ifyour in it for the long haul, win the bet 1st, then we can talk clubs, and engines, etc.

Some of the forum regulars will find this hard to believe, but yes, you can actually play chess on this site!  Of course if there's a chess club nearby and you can find someone to play with and then analyze your games after, that would be great.  Don't expect to win any games though!

It might help to upload a few games here so we can see what your strong points and weak points might be.

Saying that, it would help more if you actually post gamea longer than 10 moves - the longer the better for evaluation.

barefoot_player

Thanks BigHickory,

What do you mean by pieces being "developed"? I'm guessing you mean knights and bishops, but where is it advantageous to have these pieces? If I had to guess, I'd say knights towards the centre and bishops towards the edge of the board?

What is the advantage of castling exactly? Should I always look to castle?

Sorry if these questions are idiotic. I imagine they are. On the plus side, I just did the "Mate in 3" lesson first time round on the Free mentor courses and I had to stop myself from physically celebrating! 

How do I do that?

A vile falsehood, I'm sure! 

            WHAT???    You can play chess here??   How long has THAT been going on??      To the OP; YES, castle early and often. Its a defensive move to protect the king.

You say castle often, can't you only castle once per game and providing neither the rook or king have moved yet?

So, as a general rule, the earlier I castle the better? And the rook I use to castle, that's then used primarily to protect the king?

             I'm just messing with you. Its a silly joke. You can only castle once. In my opinion, do it as early as possible.

At least 3 Tactics Trainer puzzles everyday.

I fear I may be enabling a new chess addiction here.  Don't necessarily expect your posted games to be commented on though; it's a bit of a hit and miss proposition.  The more annotations you add though (so we understand your thought process at the time you made the move), the better your chance of a response.  I picked this as maybe the best post on the subject, but feel free to "search forums" for "how to post a game" yourself.  Someone even made a video!

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/a-guide-to-posting-your-games-on-chesscom

Dear OP:

just play (against a person) here.

then you won't have to make anything else (like uploading the game).

then I can see how are you playing and give some advice (limited to my low understanding of the game, of course).

Here's my advice. New players tend to make too many pawn moves. Just make as many as you need to to get your pieces into the game. Another mistake weak players make is getting their queen into the game early. If your opponent does this, gain time by chasing his queen while simultaneously getting your pieces into the game. Another mistake beginners make is they get mated by some silly trap like the Scholar's Mate and other such stuff. Just watch out for the f7 square if you're black. Other than that, just familiarize yourself with the basic material winning moves like forks (attacking two unguarded pieces at the same time) and skewers (attacking a piece with a queen, rook or bishop when there is another piece behind it). If the piece behind the skewered piece is your opponent's king, it's called a pin. I absolutely wouldn't bother learning any openings. I'm about 1800 USCF and I don't know any openings. Well, that's not entirely true, but I certainly don't study any openings.

You can pos game a game by making a text file and then pasting in a comment box.

Alternately, you can click on the small chessboard on the upper left hand corner of the comment box to upload a PGN file. This is the better option as people can actually view the game with the least amount of problems.

Go for it!

barefoot_player

Here's the second one. Pretty sure I got caught with the "fried liver" thing, but I redeemed myself with some good pins with my castles...

And here's me getting beat.

And here's my very latest game.....