New challenge: some questions before I start

Hello,

I am looking for a new challenge in my life and I decided to learn how to play chess competitively. I learnt the basic rules when I was a child but I have never played seriously yet. I don't want it to be my main occupation, but I would like to spend at least a couple of hours per day on chess as I'm a university student I have some spare time.

So, my final aim will be to get the best as possible, that's why I would start with the correct method in order to not waste time at the beginning. I would like to ask you some questions for understanding how to start:

1. Is it possible to learn by doing? When I face someone better than me, I tend to understand what he does and why so that I can use the same strategy in the future. Is this a plausible way to learn or I just need to study books so that the games become mainly an "execution" of the strategy studied before?

2. I tried to play against the AI in this website and it highlighted the best move in that scenario. Is it reliable? Can I use it to learn?

3. I would like to study theory apart from playing. Is there a path that I can follow? I should start from the opening? Or from the endgame?

Thank you in advice for your answers,

Gaemac

 1. In the beginning it's more important to play than study or read. Play a lot of games where the time control is long enough to allow you to avoid basic mistakes, and ideally you play against people a little better than you. Analyze the games afterwards to find some of your mistakes.

2. It's better to play against humans. Engines suggest moves based on massive calculation. They're often precise, but sometimes impractical. They don't use general ideas, so if you play an engine and try to assign general ideas to its moves you'll often guess wrong. Other then something like piece activity (pieces tend to be more valuable when they control a lot of squares).

3. I like Seirawan's "Winning Chess" series of books. I believe the first book is this one

https://www.amazon.com/Play-Winning-Chess-Yasser-Seirawan/dp/1857443314

After that I recommend his tactics book (or to find a way to do themed puzzles online. Chess.com's puzzles are not as useful for beginners IMO because they're not organized by theme).

Many thanks for your answers. I am just playing to memorize the movements of any piece and read the situations faster. It's working right now. Then I'll pass to the books.

"To improve at chess, you should - in the first instance - study the endgame." - Capablanca

"To improve at chess, you should - in the first instance - study the endgame." - Capablanca

I think the biggest pitfall that many beginners fall into is memorizing moves in the opening.  Memorizing moves only does well up until someone makes a move that you haven't memorized; then you're right back to where you started with no idea whether the move they made is a mistake, a side-line, or a novelty.

Opening study goes in phases.  To begin with, learn the basic principles and choose 1 or 2 openings to try to understand from those basic principles - good ones for this are the basic e4-e5 and d4-d5 openings.  Once you're seeing new moves in your games, apply the basic principles and you'll probably be following one of the main lines of a formal opening.  Very little opening study is needed at this phase.

While you do this, you practice tactics a lot (stuff like forks, pins, and skewers) and learn some strategical theory (stuff like pawn structures and the great bishop/knight debate - hint, it all depends on the position which is better), and you apply that to your study of your chosen openings, maybe learning 1 or 2 new openings in the process - popular alternatives such as the Sicilian, French, or English.

Only after you have a strong grasp of tactics and strategy do you move on to learning opening theory, because now you have the foundation to understand WHY a certain move is made and why other moves may not be as good (yeah, I'm personally not there, yet, not really).

That said, learning opening theory can be fun, and as long as your not just memorizing a tree of moves, then it should be fine to learn the theory behind your favorite openings.

I looked for some information now that I am a little bit more into chess. So - also thanks to your help - I decided to work as follows:

1. I'm using Scid, starting from a "basic" opening to see the best (and most common) plays. I try to understand why the move I saw on the screen is correct, which are the pros, the cons, the alternatives and so on.

2. I'm doing lots of tactics exercises.

3. I'm watching some top-tier matches trying to guess the next move at every turn on each side.

4. And of course I play!

If you have some more advice to help me I'm here.