Opening Principles:
1. Control the center squares – d4-e4-d5-e5
2. Develop your minor pieces toward the center – piece activity is the key
3. Castle
4. Connect your rooks
Tactics...tactics...tactics...
Pre Move Checklist:
1. Make sure all your pieces are safe.
2. Look for forcing move: Checks, captures, threats. You want to look at ALL forcing moves (even the bad ones) this will force you look at, and see the entire board.
3. If there are no forcing moves, you then want to remove any of your opponent’s pieces from your side of the board.
4. If your opponent doesn’t have any of his pieces on your side of the board, then you want to improve the position of your least active piece.
5. After each move by your opponent, ask yourself: "What is my opponent trying to do?"
I am a low level player, and I want to imporve. Simple, right? Everyone wants to do that. I am planing on following De la Mazas for tactics. I feel like that is a great way to improve tactics and will improve my USCF rating, which is about 900. However, I think that I should use this for improving tactical ability, and work on something for strategical ability. I am thinking of going through the book winning chess strategies, analyzing my games, by myself and with a computer, and go through master games of the past. What else can I do, especially after studying the book?