Play.
Improving at first
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im kinda in the same boat- and i agree with play comment, and look at your games to try figure out what was good/bad. also i picked up this book at the libary and i like it
Logical Chess Move by Move - Irving Chernev
it explains every move step by step and covers what i think are lot of the basic openings- but keep playing and good luck!
Ya you want to work on a lot of chess tactics problems, dont be afraid to go over the same ones a bunch of times until you can solve it easily. But that alone wont help you (though it will allow you to learn deeper ideas in positional/endgame chess). What you want is an understanding of what you should be doing with your pieces after they develop and youre in the middle game. The book youre looking for and the one that helped me is The Amateurs Mind by Jeremy Silman http://www.amazon.com/Amateurs-Mind-Turning-Misconceptions-Mastery/dp/1890085022/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329284132&sr=8-1 . Of course if youre just a beginner the most important thing is playing a lot of games, so don't forget to do that as well.
With one tactical puzzle book that you go over every day (like say 5-15 problems a day), reading the Amateurs Mind by Jeremy Silman, and playing games, you should get to a 1500-1600 rating pretty quickly if you really work on it.
There is a free video series on this site entitled "Everything You Need to Know" by Daniel Rensch. That sounds like the exact information you are looking for.
Hello, I'm new to chess. I'm quite familiar with how all the pieces move, but after that I have little idea of what to do. I've seen the tips, "try to control the center," and, "pick a few openings and stick with them at first," but that doesn't seem like much to go on. Are chess problems the ideal way to improve, or is simply playing a lot sufficient?