new to chess

Hi guys

I played my first game of chess last month after my step daughter wanted a game. I didn't know the rules or how the pieces moved, so paid attention as my little ray of sunshine showed me what to do. And it didn't take long before I realised I enjoyed the game to the extent I looked for a good game for my phone. (Settled on one that connects to fics)

Anyway after playing about 30 games overall and losing 28 with 2 draws I have realised just how hard this game actually is. Either that or I'm not very bright and have a lack of logical skills lol.

However I enjoy playing and trying to figure out moves without making too many blunders and leaving pieces hanging. That's as bout as far as I've got at this stage. But even though I try to make a safe move every shot I still find myself getting beat down in quick time which is frustrating but understandable.

Basically I would like to improve and learn the game from the basics/fundementals first then intermediate stuff later. But I'm not quite sure how to go about it. Some advice on what I should be learning first, games-time length-opponent strength and good books to start with would be great....

I find the game relaxing and I enjoy strategy and tactics in other things like football and poker so this is deffo the game for me and if I could play at a decent level with an understanding of what I'm doing and what my opponents are doing then I'll be happy...

Thanks for reading :)

Do the chess mentor and tactics trainig

Buy a book or 7

Practice

Keep playing slow games

Avoid blitz

You could try playing the "online games" here, with 3 days per move.

1. don't hang your pieces
2. keep them centered as far as possible
3. castle your king as soon as possible
4. don't let your opponent open the castled position
5. develop all your minor pieces within move 6
6. study openings and endgames 

this should help you get fairly good at chess

Chess.com put together a wonderful series of 25 free ChessMentor courses although they seem not to be publicizing them.  Don't be surprised if you have to go over these lessons again and again before they sink in.  This is real chess, but if you stick with it, you should start to make real progress. Have fun and welcome to the Game!

http://www.chess.com/blog/webmaster/free-chess-mentor-courses

Thank you very much guys for responding, I'll get back to you all when I get back home :) which is in middlesbrough england kaynight, not too far away from where I was born and brought up in scotland........there's always one.

As an absolute beginner, one of the first things you need to learn (besides the rules, of course) is the approximate values of the pieces.  I looked at the one game you played on this site, and on move 5 your opponent threatened your bishop with his pawn.  You defended the bishop with your queen.  So he took your bishop, and you took his pawn.  This is a bad deal for you - your bishop is worth more than his pawn.  You should have just retreated the bishop.  That would have been pretty much automatic for an intermediate player.

Some general opening principles may also help you.  For example, on move 3 you played d3 and on move 4 you played d4.  You could have just played d4 right away if you wanted to play it - that actually would have been a good move if you had done it right away.  Moving the same pawn twice like that just wasted a move, and gave him time to move his knight out which let him take your pawn for free when you did play d4. 

New to chess?

Stop now and save yourslf a lot of aggravation.

^^Haha