Welcome back to chess. Having been away from the game for over 20 years until returning last year, I know how hard it is.
You will probably get a lot of advice, much of it conflicting. My general advice, as a fellow player without any special strength or training, is to both study with play.
1. Study: whether you get a paid membership here or rely on books, use a real board and pieces in your study. Take your time and be sure you understand the lessons presented. For now, forget about studying openings. Rely on opening principles in order to reach a playable middle game. Study endgames, practice tactics, and learn about positional play and strategy. If you want to use books for that last one, Pachman's Complete Chess Strategy is a great source.
2. Play: play games at a long enough time control to enable you to really think about your moves. This rules out blitz and bullet. After your games, analyze them, especially your losses. Figure out what you could have done better and, more importantly, why you didn't do as well as you could have. Identifying weaknesses in your play will point you to what you most need to study.
This has been very general and I surely left out a lot, but I hope it's somewhat helpful. Best of luck in your return to chess!
Hello guys. I've returned to chess after 12 years, becouse i feel like my brain is getting lazy, and i feel this is best way to train it. + you never stop loving chess, and i finallly have some time for it. Before i start questions, i feel it would be best to give some info about me.
I've started playing at 6, stopped at age 15, when i was playing league with adults for 2 years. I quit just before i got my ELO rating... never understood how that works. I've played a lot, but never really studied chess, so i always played by "heart", never memorizied some lines. I was solid, but not really good player.
1) Should i get platinum or diamond membership here? Platinum looks good enough, and its much cheaper. But i dont mind buying diamond much, money isnt really issue, but that doesn't mean i want buy nonsenses
.
2) Immortal question: good book for chess openings?
I feel pretty solid in openings rules/tactic, since it was my only style at childhood. But now i want to go little deeper, and learn all basic openings and ideas! behind it. Ofc i realize that later i will pick up some favourite opening, and study it in detail. For now something like this: http://www.chesskids.org.uk/grownups/openings.pdf is pretty good, but i imagine something covering more variants. I really dont need to go deeper than 6-8 moves right now, i just dont want to be suprised by most openings i encounter. And it has to be a book, becouse i will learn it at chessboard, im spending enough time at PC already.
3) Time format to improve my play: Now i'm playing Rapid mostly, since i feel its getting me to back to my old chess condition (plenty of games) and there is still some time to think about tough positions, unlike Blitz (and i miss openings theory for Blitz). Do you think its a good way to go, or longer time format will improve my play more?
4) How to improve in future? My plan is to learn that basic openings, and then study endgame (i really hate losing many games while im better, but unable to benefit from it at ending). After that, some mid-game tactics and then mabye some openings deep theory. While doing all that, i'm going to solve plenty of tactics, becouse so far it felt most helpfull at this site. Is it good plan?
Btw dont look at my current rating much...after 12 years, i had struggle to win even a pawn ending, forgot about king opposition
. So i'm going through lessons now, and i expect to improve a lot in a short time.
Thanks for any answers... i hope i'm posting it at correct part of forum
.