Thanks for the suggestions! I'll take a look at my local used bookstore to see if they have that one, I know Barnes and Noble has it but I'm cheap :P
I don't often have a ton of time to play live matches, so I sent you an invitation to a correspondence game. I did unrated, because I don't know what "takeback" mode means.
I found a local chess club that meets once a week, so I'm gonna try to go check it out next week, work schedule permitting.
My recommendation would be the following:
1) Purchase the Diamond Premium Membership
2) Study chess with Chess Mentor (doing the lessons in a sequential rather than the adaptative way is better, I think)
3) Learn more about the game from the Video Library. IM Daniel Rensch has the best videos, in my opion. He has a very fun personality and an engaging voice that hooks your attention.
4) I would actually recommend not to play games and instead use the time to learn the game of chess. You will discover how much you don't know and, by learning will pick up good habits and not the bad ones. I think a dedicated learning is a good way to go if you want a seirous improvement in your game.
5) After you've done some learning you can hone in your skills with Computer workout. It gives you certain positions to practice and see how you're doing. Only after completing these 5 steps do I recommend going back to playing. I'm think you'll see a huge improvement in your playing strenth. Oh, yea, when going back to playing, I recommend playing slow games - correspondence or live standard, and not blitz.
These are my recommendations. You don't have to agree with my method completely (as it takes some serious dedication) but I hope that you'll still find something useful in my suggestions. Best of luck to you!
Those are some good points, SpiritoftheVictory. Right now I can't afford to purchase the premium diamond membership, though once I get my paycheck tomorrow I might go ahead and get a month of gold to try it out and see if it's worth saving up for. The few training problems I have solved (5 per day for free) seem very good. I also have a chess trainer app on my phone that contains quite a few basic checkmate positions for practice and a little bit of tactics training, but it's definitely nothing as in-depth as the video tutorials on here. It does have about 20 famous games with a bit of commentary on the moves and a practice mode to memorize some of the more fundamental ones, but I haven't tried that out very much yet. But I'd say what I've got is probably enough to get me by until I can afford the diamond membership.
I definitely don't want to play blitz for quite a while. I'm not very good at analyzing things quickly in real life, so it'll take a while for me to get better at it on a chess board. I can see your point about not playing games when I'm just starting out, since I could pick up some bad habits without realizing it, but honestly I'd also get really bored if I just read and read and don't ever actually play. So I think I'll play a few games, but mostly study and try to implement what I'm learning into my games.
Thanks for the tips, you've given me a lot to think about! I'm sure I'll get the full premium membership soon, just can't afford it right now :(
Chesstempo.com is a free website for tactics training. All you need to do is register with your e-mail and you can do an unlimited amount of tactics there. There are tons of good quality chess instructional videos on YouTube. Just type 'Chess Lessons' there and plenty of information will be brought to you right away. But there's really nothing out there that I know of that beats the Chess Mentor. That alone is worth the Premium Membership. By the way, you can get the Gold Premium Membership for only $29 per year and do 3 Chess Mentor lessons per day. Like you said, you're pretty busy so that should suffice for starters.
I also agree with you that studying alone will probably be too boring. So, if you're not too serious about chess then using 50% of your chess time for studying and 50% of it for playing should probably do the trick. Since you're just beginning to play, don't be discouraged with your losses. It takes a lot of time to play and learn new things. Remember, the folks who will beat you were probably playing and learning for much longer - so much so that you may consider that insane. But hey, that's the nature of this game - it's an extremely tough field. But, if you're not taking it too seriously you should be Ok. Best of luck again.
GM Yasser Seirawan makes awsome youtube videos. I used to watch them before bed, and before class. And during class if I finished my work. its a great source if your on the go. Yasser is MAD funny too, really engaging should check it out if you ever on break, or w.e =)
SpiritoftheVictory, that gold membership is probably what I'll do, I'll just get a month before committing to a year since I'd hate to be locked in only to find out that I'd much rather have the diamond version. $29 a year is a steal though. I just joined ChessTempo.com on your recommendation, and it seems like a really good tool to practice tactics, but I'm currently at a stage where my so-called "tactics" are really just guesses that sometimes happen to be right, so a more in-depth study would be perfect so I can learn WHY the tactics trainer wants me to make certain moves instead of others that look just as good to my untrained mind. As far as actually playing chess goes, I've found it extremely helpful to have the "Analyze" feature here on the site, and I've been playing out move options in the Analyze window before making my move so I can hopefully figure out what's best. Maybe once I've finished a game or two, I'll post it on here somewhere and ask for insights.
ZeCx_the_almighty, I actually just watched a bit of a Yasser Seirawan video on YouTube after seeing you mention him on another post here! Someone else was saying they're new to chess and I saw your reply there before I saw it here. I like his style from what I've seen so far... Although the kids he's teaching are WAY smarter than me. Those kids are sitting there calling out his moves like pros :P
I would say have fun with chess. Take it serious but not too serious. For me chess is an easy game to play but it is a hard game to play well. The main thing for me is to have fun and each and every day I play some chess, do a tactical puzzle or two and do a chess mentor lesson. Some days my ratings go up some days my ratings go down but each day I have fun with chess.
Thanks for the good advice, I'll try to take it to heart :) I've been looking around the forums a bit and it looks like there's a good community on here, I'm really looking forward to playing people and learning more as I go along.
One question: how do people post a game on the forum? I've seen posts where someone has a game and you can click through to see the moves along the way, and I was thinking I'd like to post a game I won a few days ago and see if anyone would like to make suggestions on how I could have played better, but I haven't figured out how to post a game yet.
@ OP, I see you purchased a Diamond Membership here. Good for you! Like I mentioned before getting better will take a titanic amount of effort but it can be done. It's a humbling and a character building experience. Best of luck to you in your future endeavors!
I don't see the "game or sequence of moves" tab thing on the mobile site, and I'm not at my computer right now, so I'm trying to share this from the app and I hope it works right. So here's my game, I felt like I did a pretty good job of exploiting the opponent's mistakes and gaining tempo early on by pressuring the overextended queen.
[Event "Let's Play!"]
[Site " Chess.com"]
[Date "Oct 21, 2015"]
[White "maawolfe36"]
[Black "Seksonski"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "1159"]
[BlackElo "991"]
[TimeControl "1 in 3 days"]
[Termination "maawolfe36 won by checkmate"]
1. e4 d5 2. Bd3 dxe4 3. Bxe4 Nf6 4. Nc3 Qd4 5. Nge2 Qe5 6. d4 Qe6 7. Qd3 Bd7 8. Bf4 Nc6 9. d5 Qd6 10. Bxd6 Nb4 11. Bxb4 e5 12. Qc4 Bxb4 13. Qxb4 c5 14. dxc6 a5 15. Qxb7 Bxc6 16. Qxc6+ Ke7 17. Rd1 Ra7 18. Qd6+ Ke8 19. Qd8# 1-0
That didn't appear to work, so here's another try:
Check out this #chess game: maawolfe36 vs Seksonski - http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=120203608
I don't think much of your opening... no obvious tactical blunders, at least to me. Doesn't look too bad, though your opponent didn't exactly make life difficult. You know the en passant rule.
By the way, you can send me a challenge if you like.
Thanks for the comments, and thanks TheronG12 for fixing it for me.
I haven't memorized any openings yet, so that's my excuse for it being so weird. You're right, the opponent definitely wasn't a grandmaster, and I was fortunately playing fairly well, all things considered. I'm glad you didn't see any major blunders, that means I at least did alright. If anybody else notices anything major about my game, I'd love to hear any input. Thanks for all your help, everyone!
Your other game had a few blunders though.
You were playing an opponent much higher rated than yourself though
and it was expected that you were in for a tough game. I recommend that you look up the berlin defense on the book openings on this site. After you look it up you can view master games with the opening and get a feeling of what the most common moves are and generally have a better understanding of the opening.
Thanks for the commentary on that game! It's really helpful to see those blunders pointed out so I know what to avoid in the future.
I think the only reason he moved 6. d4 was because he was taking it easy on me to help the game last longer, since he was giving me tips all along the way. He offered to play me so I could learn against someone better, so he didn't want to end it too quickly.
I definitely made some rough missteps, and I'm trying to learn how to spot which move is better than others. My hardest problem at this point is trying to figure out what my opponent is thinking, because I don't know much about tactics and strategy yet so I end up over-analyzing unlikely moves while accidentally ignoring the real strategy. I've been reading a lot and practicing a bit on the tactics trainer, so hopefully we'll see my game getting better before too long :)
I also found out that I don't like 960. At least, not yet. It's just too hard trying to figure out openings for someone who's so new to tactics.
Hey folks! I'm new to the forum here, so I thought I'd take a minute to introduce myself.
I'm fairly new to chess. I've known the rules, how pieces move, en passent, all that fun stuff ever since I was a kid, but I never got into tactics or becoming a better player until recently. So far I've got Pandolfini's "Ultimate Guide to Chess" and "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess," and I'm about halfway through reading Pandolfini's. So yeah, basically I'm a noob.
Unfortunately, I don't have many friends who play chess, so I'm really limited in who and how I can play. My fiance enjoys playing with me sometimes, but she's even more of an amateur than I am so it's not a lot of help to get better. And besides that, I don't really know anyone who plays, so I usually end up just playing a computer engine. I have Fritz 13 for my computer, and a pretty good chess app on my phone that I play with frequently, but I've heard that computers can be a very different experience from playing a real person.
I'm really busy with work, and I travel a lot so I don't often have much time in a day to set aside. I'd really like to play some people online, especially noobs like me or better players who don't mind helping out a new guy, maybe give a few pointers, etc. So if you fit that description, hit me up!
One question I've been wondering about: does anyone know of a good chess audiobook? I know most chess books have diagrams and illustrations that would be impossible to convert to audio, but I'm in the car a lot and I listen to a lot of audiobooks, so if there are any good ones that would help me get better at chess, that would be awesome.
Anyway, that's a bit about me. If you want to play me or have any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it :)
--Michael