RedRing, I don't have time to mentor you but www.chesskids.com has some excellent lessons for beginners (click on "Resources" and then "Lessons" on the top menu. Beginners often fall into the trap of spending too much time on openings, but all you really need to know about openings for awhile are ten rules ; make sure you know basic endings (queen checkmate, rook checkmate) and then spend most of your time studying tactics.
New Chess Player...I mean REALLY new
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Jun 10, 2008
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In the beginning, it is likely that you will have to work hard to defend your material - this means prevent the opponent from capturing more pieces than you do. Watch out for knight-forks (where the knight attacks king+queen for example you can't rescue both), pins (a bishop firing at the king through your queen will lose the lady too), discovered checks etc. Read up on those tactics.
Then, when you are no longer throwing away pieces, you can start thinking about what positions are 'good' and why. Even if you can't immediately win material, you should still move to improve your situation after all.
If you don't know/understand chess notation you should get familiar with it a.s.a.p. Play 1. e4 in your games as white and preferrably 1. ..e5 or 1. ..c5 as black - stick to these openings until you feel you are getting the hang of it.
Good luck!
hey redring, glad to hear you've taken up an interest in the mad, mad pursuit of chess. before you ask, none of us know why we do it. we just have to. and here you are.
my advice: accept--right now before you've played hardly at all--that you are going to lose a whole BUNCH of games, usually pretty badly. you will be outmaneuvered and outmanned and you'll feel pretty dumb most of the time. learn to accept and, yes, to LOVE the fact that you're getting trounced. because that's how you learn.
my dad used to tell me that i had to miss one thousand free-throws before i could expect myself to be a good free-throw shooter in basketball. i think the same goes for chess--you have to lose one thousand games before you can expect yourself to be anywhere near good. because learning from failure is human nature (and the game is damn good fun).
i myself have not yet reached my goal of 1000 losses. so perhaps you and i should see who gets there first.
bring it.
Thanks for the advice so far everyone.
Yea, the way my mind learns things can be extremely frustrated, I tend to aggressively go at something the first time I learn it and fail miserably, rinse and repeat over and over until I pick up strategy along the way, and do better each time. It's not the most self esteem boosting way of learning but learning by making mistakes is how I get things. I'll be sure to look at everything everyone's said, and keep playing, at least 2 games a day if I can against the computer. Prob. more if I have time.
Edit: One thing that kinda frustrates me early on is, I can't "see" the movement of the knights. Knights are what kill me because I haven't mastered them yet, and I'm not so use to their movements that I can see their movements like a Rook or Bishop because of how awkward their attacks are. They're not butchers like the Rooks or Bishops, they're hard to capture and hard to attack with so I find myself falling into their traps and not being able to make my own yet. It's especially difficult when the opponent is using a buddy system with a pawn to cover the movements of the Knight and protect it from attack.
Practice is good, but remember there are many players with 10,000 games under their belt who never broke 1200--studying is also crucial to improvement.
Find articles written by Dan Heisman. He's a great writer for beginning players.
Whether attacking or defending, ask yourself, "Now what can he do?" Think exactly one move ahead in all possibilities. Imaginine your move and than every one of your opponent's moves and then look at the situation. It is the underconsidered next move that is most likely to defeat you, not an inaccurate long combination. The above is only one piece of advice. The "pieces" are completely synergistic.
i'll mentor you even though i just a little better
Me too. I'm new. I've been playing against my computer game Chess Titans for a few months. On the first level I played until I won 48% of the time. On the 2nd level I checkmate 5% and draw 5%, for several months now.
I got real tired of moving the pieces around with no real plan, or knowledge of what I was doing. So decided I needed some lessons.
I just checked out the www.chesskids.com that somebody posted above. I love it! Answers basic questions I was too embarrassed to ask.
I think I'll spend a couple of days just learning how to write chess.
Best to you RedWing. And thanks for your post.
Catharine
With each game I can find my self getting better and thinking ahead even more.... but I can't be that computer!! :( . He sure doesn't go easy on newbies...
One day... One day I will beat him.... then again... then again... then I will move to normal (BTW Easy? Who is that easy too??!?! :P)
I think the mistake I made was I was doing good at first, then my confidence blinded me from making mistakes.... tsk tsk.
Hey, I decided to take up an interest in Chess. I've never played any more than the average person, so I'm probably fairly bad. I wanted to give it a shot to improve my strategy planning skills and learning to anticipate things better.
ANYWAY, I was wondering if anyone could give me some really basic advice to start off with, I'm going to try and keep with playing it until I'm at least... a fairly ok player or better. I can't beat the computer on easy... please give me advice and help me stick with it, and try to keep it very simple at first... I know little more than an average person does about Chess. I know certain basic tactics like making moves to force your opponent to move where you want them to, and anticipating your opponent's behavior based on his style and what not, but I want to be a pretty good chess player so.... mentor me!