Hii!
i'm a novice but i think i can answer your question.
I think you should learn tactics by doing tactical puzzles. Learn basic opening and endgame theory and don't go very deep into them.Do as much tactical puzzles you can as at our level tactics decides the outcome of the game.
Good luck with you chess!
I agree that endgames don't receive nearly as much study as they deserve from low-to-mid ranked players.
GMs know the difference... in chess.com's "GM Ponomariov preparing for the Olympiad" video, he was studying endgames!
It might be of interest to look at the table of contents of A COMPLETE CHESS COURSE by Antonio Gude.
http://www.gambitbooks.com/pdfs/A_Complete_Chess_Course.pdf
I think that a variety of topics are discussed by nearly all modern introductory books. I imagine that most discuss some endgame stuff before getting to specific openings.
"... The game might be divided into three parts, i.e.:- 1. The opening. 2. The middle-game. 3. The end-game. There is one thing you must strive for, to be equally efficient in the three parts. Whether you are a strong or a weak player, you should try to be of equal strength in the three parts. ..." - Capablanca
I usually suggest to new players get 1 tactics book + 1 strategy book
or
1 tactics book + 1 endgame book
Yeah it seems like openings should be learned first, but for them you can just use the opening principals and memorize 5 or so moves of the main lines. Your opponents wont be playing many moves of opening theory anyway, so anything beyond that is not very useful.
But also, there are so many moves... it's hugely impractical to memorize a full opening repertoire. The way people remember is they actually understand why the moves are played. They know why the moves that aren't played are bad or inaccurate as well. That's not memorization, that's understanding... and you can't understand the opening until you understand endgames and strategy. Think of it like trying to plan a over seas, but you don't know your destination... it just doesn't make sense.
Tarrasch said that a novice must start with endgame...
Who's to say that Tarrasch is right? Did he perform double blind experiments to test this idea?
Tarrasch said that a novice must start with endgame...
Who's to say that Tarrasch is right? Did he perform double blind experiments to test this idea?
Both a priori reasoning and experience leads us to the usual method of chess learning i.e. opening principals are enough in the beginning and learn endgames early on.
In any case double blind study is silly. You'd instead do something like a large sample of beginners, some who focus on openings, and others who learn the traditional way.
Study both, and type a lot less. Very simple.
Endgames rule above 1600 ratings, openings rule at your current rating. Nuff said?
Study both, and type a lot less. Very simple.
Endgames rule above 1600 ratings, openings rule at your current rating. Nuff said?
Change that to tactics (or more simply observational skills) and I might agree.
I don't think I'd say openings rule at any rating. Maybe the top 10 are not very free, but other than that...
Anyway, it sounds nice to say "study both" but that doesn't really help a beginner. They already know they should study everything they just don't know the order.
The only opening study they do is when they analyze their games to see where they deviated from known theory.
That's how I did it for many years. I think it's pretty good.
And @ the OP, if you play logically, many times you play "book" moves in the opening without even knowing it.
Put it like this. When you learn to drive a car for the first time, the most important thing is to learn how to stop it quickly and safely.
Both Torrubirubi and DeirdreSkye have valid points. My opinion on this:
I don't think there is anything wrong with Chessable at all. It just depends on the books you use on Chessable. If you buy tons of books on openings, that's probably a bad idea. Openings are only one aspect of the game, and certainly not the most important, at least for now. For example, let's imagine there are 2 players. One of them knows a lot of opening theory, while the other one plays the middlegame well. The second player will not know the opening theory, and he will not go into the theory. Once there's no more theory, the only thing that matters is who can actually play the game well.
Chessable is basically just a platform for physical books transformed into an interactive book. There's nothing wrong with it, it just depends on which books you buy.
To answer the OP's question, I would go with endgames first. The opening is important of course, but for now all you need to know are basic opening principles, and you should be able to get a decent middlegame. However, if you really master the endgame, you will be far ahead of your peers.
Endgame basics: K+Q vs K, K+R vs K, different scenarios of K+P vs K, and so on.
If you are not that advanced, 100 Endgames You Must Know is a great book. However, ambitious players may want to start Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual.
Tarrasch said that a novice must start with endgame however...............torrubirubi doesn't agree
Oh my God! What a dilemma?Who should we believe?And why no one told us that torrubirubi doesn't agree?
In the future there will be sidenotes in the books of great players and trainers:
"Torrubirubi doesn't agree with Capablanca"
"Torrubirubi doesn't agree with Tarrasch"
"Torrubirubi doesn't agree with Averbakh"
I envy guys like torrubirubi. He doesn't even have to try to be funny.
Torrubirubi is the typical "I know nothing but I think I know everything" online patzer. He doesn't even know what chess is , he never actually had a decent training program or a decent coach ,he never had a chance to see a good trainer working with novices or kids, he has never played in OTB tournaments , never even had an OTB rating , he has no idea how skills develop or what the practical difficulties of chess are, yet he feels he is qualified to give advices about chess training and even doubt good trainers.
Careful because guys like Torrubirubi are dangerous. They do wrong things or sometimes right things for wrong reasons and they try to convince others to do the same mistakes. In another thread he suggested Chessable to a 6 year old kid. Thankfully his mother asked in a chess club and all good players and trainers told her that Chessable is harmful for kids and novices. The same suggested an IM and FIDE certified trainer here in chess.com and the same suggests my trainer (also IM and FIDE certified trainer)to kids and novices(both these IMs have created GMs). He conveniently of course forgot this discussion and didn't mention it.
The saying that "if you want to improve you have to work on all aspects of your game" is an urban nonsense that will be repeated , I have no doubt about it , by several online patzers.
If you want to improve , you need to improve your skills. As I already said, it doesn't matter how good you are in the opening in the middlegame or in the endgame. If you don't have skills , you have nothing.
Let me repeat what skills do:
1)Analytical: Allows you to find candidate moves. The most important skill for every chessplayer
2)Evaluation: After analytical , the most important skill because it allows you to choose the correct moves and plans!
3)Calculation: Allows you to see clearly the position after several moves.
4)Tactical awareness: Allows you to indentify and eliminate the danger before it appears.In higher levels it becomes increasingly important to prevent your opponent from creating threats.
5)Combinative vision: Allows you to create tactics and not just wait to appear out of nothing. This also becomes important in higher levels when you will have to be creative to win.
6)Positional intuition: Allows you to eliminate the irrelevant and focus to what is important sometimes without even the need of calculating.
Without these skills developed , opening doesn't matter and not surprisingly opening develops none of them. In opening you have to accept moves others have played and evaluations other have made. In the opening you are trying to parrot some moves and imitate GMs while in the endgame you are trying to think like a GM. It is easy to understand why the endgame is so much more important for the training of your mind and for developing skills.
Openings are important , no dout about it but in life and in chess everything is a matter of priorities.For a beginner it is more important to understand the rules and develop his ability to evaluate what is good and what is bad. Understanding the rules is important to understand the exceptions. The best way to learn the opening is to develop a proper thinking process.
Try to understand the opening principles and play long time control games(his suggestion about rapid is one more nonsense). Find your mistakes and most importantly, find the reasons. Every mistake , as long as it is a thinking one(that is why you need long time control games), highlights a serious flaw in your thinking process. By learning theory , you don't fix the flaws , you hide them. These flaws will hurt you by creating gaps in your understanding that opening study can't fix. Once you fix these important flaws , opening study will help you take your game to the next level. The same thing that can be harmful if done wrong can be extremely beneficial if done right and this is the case in every field.
The funny is that novices advocating opening study are usually the ones that don't understand opening.
As you can see, after most than a year of intense opening study in Chessable , he still doesn't understand even the basic opening principles. The worst is he is even unable to see that , he thinks he does things right and he even suggests to others to do what he does(as I said , some can be funny without even trying)! Hopefully my free lesson will teach him a couple of things that even 1000 rated kids know and he won't repeat mistakes like these.
p.c. The free lesson to torrubirubi is a kind offer of chess.com!
You should spend more time learning chess than writing hours and hours of nonsense in the forum. Funny that you took exactly this game to show how weak I am. Sometimes I am with friends and a play a blindfold chess game here, with one of my friends making the moves for me. I am a horrible blitz player and even worst blindfold chess player.
By the way, I saw some of your games and found hilarious how you sometimes blundered in a complete winning endgame. You are a funny guy. Yeah, make weak players learn only endgames and make them lose all the fun they have in the game. You are a caricature of a coach. Learn first to play good chess before offering your service as a super coach. You are a patter like me, and your dogmatic views on chess aremjust ridiculous. To put yourself in the same level like Tarrasch and Capablanca is simply ridiculous.
Most strong players will say that there is no phase of the game that you should ignore completely. If your tactical and strategical skills are weak, you will not survive until the endgame. If you play good tactics but ignore the opening, you will probably get positions on the middlegame that a lot of tactics can happen...for the opponent.
OP, If you have few time to learn, go for the Chernev’s book I mentioned above, and do,some tactics and basic endgames in Chessable. As I said, the book on endgame is for free, and I guess you will have a lot of fun learning it.
Whatsever you do, don’t hire this Sky-guy, he has a horrible reputation in chess.com - arrogant, aggressive, and believing he is the best coach in the world. He just want your money to tell you how weak you are.
Most strong players will say that there is no phase of the game that you should ignore completely. If your tactical and strategical skills are weak, you will not survive until the endgame. If you play good tactics but ignore the opening, you will probably get positions on the middlegame that a lot of tactics can happen...for the opponent.
With endgames you actually ignore no area at all. They prepare you to play good all phases of the game while as we saw from your game with openings you can't even play the opening good!
And you are the new Capablanca and Tarrasch. Actually I was not aware that a non-beginner would be able to ignore a very elementary danger of a passed pawn in a winning endgame as you often do in your games.
And you think you are a kind of new Capablanca, right? Yeah, funny that somebody with your skills even dare to offer to coach other people. Only a horrible coach would recommend a novice to ignore the opening.
Only a horrible coach would recommend a novice to ignore the opening.
The good thing about ignorants is that they can't hide their ignorance.
One of the horrible coaches that suggested that novices must start from endgame was Suetin , Petrosian's trainer and second when he won the world championship and for many years Moscow's senior coach overseeing the development of promising new talents. He created grandmasters(Andrei Sokolov among others , top players(Vasily Ivanchuk among them) and one world champion(Tigran Petrosian). Horrible coach indeed.
Maybe not spending so much time in Chessable and studying chess a bit more seriously would prevent you from throwing one nonsense after another.
Do you know Jonathan Hawkins? It's a guy that wasn't the typical prodigy. He was A-class when he was 18 years old. Thanks to intense endgame training he manage to be British chess champion and GM at the age of 31. He wrote a book called :
AMATEUR TO IM:Proven Ideas and Training Methods
This book which is about "proven ideas and training methods" is ONLY endgames.
I repeat , it is ONLY endgames.
Here is what he says in the introduction:
Openings were my topic of study and I could memorize opening theory with no problem. I actually made some improvement in playing strength with this rather artificial method of study. At some point though, this all changed and I became addicted to studying the endgame. I filled notebook after notebook with endgame analysis. This is what led to my biggest improvement. It also felt as if my better understanding helped me to assimilate more knowledge.
Now — eight years, approximately 400 rating points and two GM norms later — I
am passing on some of the endgames I studied to you. These represent literally my first steps up the chess ladder."
Today he is a coach but according to you a horrible coach!
His system gave him the GM title.Your system till now has proved inadequate to make you understand the basic opening principles after more than one year!
Man, how I envy your ability to be so funny.
And an answer to some funny personal attacks. I never said I am Capablanca and nothing I say is mine. Next time if you are going to lie at least do it clever.
If you see a endgame of Petrosian you realize he was an endgame monster
Only a horrible coach would recommend a novice to ignore the opening.
... One of the horrible coaches that suggested that novices must start from endgame was Suetin , ...
Is that a statement to ignore the opening?
Hi!
I'm a pretty new chess player and I've heard that I should start with studying endgames. This feels weird to me. Openings feel like a more natural place to start studying since they build the foundation for the rest of the game. What should I do?
I'd love some good tips from experienced players!
Cheers, Lonteon