The 3,250+ essay is finished!

Do you like board games or simple browser games? Or fun, yet complicated games in general? Well chess might be for you, and to start having fun with chess, you need to know how to play. Like how to think what your opponent is doing and is trying to do, play, strategize, think of best moves, play good developing moves, not make as many mistakes, and more! You can learn how the pieces move, and how to set up a chess board so you can easily play, and you will also learn about the influential games and players!

How do you play chess? The starting question for many new players. Well, many think it is super complicated, and they also might tend to think they cannot do it because they may not feel “Smart”. And that you have to have a smart brain to play chess. Well it is not at all about that, it is about thinking. Which you can train yourself to do. The main thing you think about in a chess game is; No.1, think about what your opponent might try to do when they do a certain move, or a line of moves. No.2, you think what you can play to keep improving your winning chances until you eventually win by time, resignation, or by checkmate. And of course, No.3, you always will think if you are winning, equal, or losing. And even if you don’t often think about those things, you might still think of other things, and that is good. But you should still try to train yourself to think about those things too. It often takes a while for new players to start thinking about chess things like those that we have listed, but it takes time. For some it might take a few days to maybe a few weeks, or some can take a few months to master the thinking, but in the end, no matter how long it takes, it’s a cool skill to have learnt. And the process of learning how to think and think in a more advanced way about chess can even impact your thinking skills in the real world. Because when you think about chess, it’s like thinking about what to do next, or what should I do because of that. And it really does help you think to the point that you may become better at sports, math, english, or really anything for that matter. But of course it will help over the chessboard too. Take for example Number One chess player in the world and strong Grandmaster, Magnus Carlsen. For years he has dominated the chess championships, chess tournaments, classical chess leaderboards, and even the internet. But how did he achieve that? And the answer is simple, he was really good at chess. But then another question arises from that statement. Why is he so good? Well, he is a great thinker. He can think many moves ahead and prepare what to do. But, his dad was also a Grandmaster, so he probably learned some of his skills from his dad. But still, the Norwegian Grandmaster really is a great example for great chess thinkers. But it again makes a question arise. Is it just him that can do it? The answer is no. The number four player in the world is just 19 years of age. He is another example that thinking is important and it also supports that it is useful at a young age. Another example is again the king, Magnus Carlsen, when he was a mere 11 years old, he was awarded the title of International Master. The rank only topped by grandmaster, which he soon also received at the young age of only 13! But, if you need help, you can go to chess clubs, chess coaches, and your friends. But if you want a coach, Chess.com has a great page full of awesome chess coaches to make you better and help you train your brain! But they do not just teach thinking, they may also teach you how to play and strategize better, which will also help a lot. But if you do not know of anyone who can help, or you do not want to pay for coaching or subscription services, YouTube may help you, many chess channels such as: Gotham Chess, GMHikaru, BotezLive, Chess Vibes, thechessnerd, Anna Cramling, Bobbybojangles, and others can help you play chess better, more thoroughly, more thoughtfully, and better. They are great coaches and some of them used to even be coached, or top players. Take for example, Hikaru, his channel boasts a whopping 1.5M+ subscriber channel and he is a top 10 chess player and Grandmaster in the world, so he is a great teacher, or you can take Levy Rozman (Gotham Chess) for example, he is an International Master and a very strong player, and he used to teach kids how to play. But these players can really just talk on and on about chess and help you learn, they may also look at some viewer games too! But there are many options, so don’t stress about it. And in the words of Magnus Carlsen, “It takes time.”

Next, you need to know how to move the pieces and set up the starting position for a chess game to begin. And there are 6 different pieces, which make a total of 16 pieces to play. These are the King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, and pawns. Which sit on either the front or back 2 rows of the 8 rowed, 8 collumned, boards. The pawns go on the front of the 2 rows, closest to the opponent. Next, there should be two rooks on the 1st row, farthest from the opponent, one on the far left and one on the far left, same goes for the knight, which shall be the farthest left and right, then comes the bishop with the same rules, then it comes to the king and the queen. The queen should go to its own color on the board, and the king shall go on the remaining square. Also make sure that a white square is on the bottom right. Now, I will list how each piece moves. A pawn moves 1 or 2 squares, it usually moves 1 square and can capture anything that is diagonally in front of it, but if it hasn’t been moved and it is on the 2nd rank, it can move 2 squares, this will also help create a very weird rule. The rule is “en passant” which means, if a pawn moves 2 squares and your pawn is directly to the right or left, then the pawn can capture the pawn that moved twice behind it(d4,exd3). When it reaches the other side of the board and lands on the last square it can promote to any piece (besides a pawn) and it must promote. Next, the knight can move 3 spaces and 1 to the left or right, even backwards it is also the most common piece to fork 2 or more pieces(a fork is when you gain a piece no matter what and you cannot prevent it). Then, the bishop can move diagonally in any direction. Next is the rook which can move straight in any direction. (by the way, no piece can go through pieces, but the knight can jump over them.) Then, the queen can go diagonally and straight in any direction. And, next is super interesting, the king. It can never be captured, so it can move 1 square, but if a piece can take it where it moves, you cannot do it. It can capture pieces too. But it does create 3 rules, Check, Checkmate, and stalemate. Check is when it is getting attacked by a piece/pieces. Stalemate is a draw, it happens when no piece is directly attacking it, and the player cannot move any piece. And finally, checkmate is a win, it is when the king cannot move, and it is in check. Your goal is to checkmate someone to win, they can also resign, offer a draw, or you can lose on time(if it is timed) But they can do the same to you. And there is a thing called zugzwang, when you or your opponent has no good moves, it is just a term but it is good to learn how to cause it to happen. Next, there are 10 levels of moves. Brilliant, Great, Best, Excellent, Good, Book, Inaccuracy, Miss, Blunder. All of them are simple to understand, “Brilliant” is the Best, Best Move and those are usually hard to find. I actually did one myself the other day, it was castling kingside (O-O) and the brilliant moves are marked with a “!!”. Next is "great” move, which you will definitely encounter. They aren't as hard to find as brilliant, but they can be a bit challenging to find, and they are marked with “!”. Next is “best” move, which means your move is matched with the computer, there can be just 1, or even up to 5. But it is marked with a star or sometimes “*”. Next is “excellent” move, which is marked with a thumbs up symbol in most cases. It is when the move isn't the best one, but it is up there. Next is “good” move, which is usually marked with a checkmark, it means it was not the best, but was not the worst either. Next is one that comes earliest in the game, “book” move, which is usually marked with a book of course. It is used in the opening, when you are playing an opening that has been named, such as ones like Ruy Lopez, Nimzowitch Indian, Caro Kann, or more, there are hundreds if not thousands of different openings and opening theory. Next is “inaccuracy" which is not that good of a move, it is marked with “!?”. Next is “miss”, when you miss a tactic, checkmate, or a free piece or fork. It is marked with “X”. And last but not least is “blunder”, when you make a move so bad that it loses a winning position or worsens a position. But, how do you know about what your moves are, you can put them into engines. But the one that shows what type of moves you played the best, is chess.com’s engine, lichess.org’s feedback is good too, but not as good. But, thinking about the moves and the moves you could play against your opponent will help you win your games. But it is useful to look at your games even if you lose, either with an engine or chess.com’s assistant engine. But if you cannot spend money for the engine, you can use lichess.com’s engine to do the same thing without the feedback. You can always practice your tactics and thinking with many trainers, game players, videos, books, lessons, puzzles, openings, and more. They will help you get even better at getting the top moves and getting your tactics going strong. And if you keep learning the tactics, openings, moves, puzzles, you will become a super strong player, and if you keep improving, you may even become a titled player! The titles for players are the following: GM, WGM, IM, WIM, NM, WNM, FM, WFM, CM, WCM. (GM=Grandmaster, IM=International Master, NM=National Master, FM=Fide Master, CM=Candidate Master, if a “W” is in front of the abbreviated title, it means “Womens”, take for example “WFM”, that would be: “Women's Fide Master.” The hardest one is the GM/WGM title. Only the best of the best get the grandmaster title, but there are of course some great players in the other titles, but they aren't usually as good as a GM. But women's titles are easier to get, but women players can still achieve the normal grandmaster title. There are still some outliers but they can be hard to find, although one IM named “Levy Rozman” is a super strong IM that is debated to be a GM. There are arguments that he is a GM, but there also is arguments that he is an IM, but no one knows for sure, so FIDE has kept his title as an IM, but who knows, maybe he will become a GM, but it is likely that he will not, and just focus on making videos for the “Gotham Chess” franchise and also put focus on commentating events/games. But he still “tries' ' to become a GM, even though he might not become one. But it is crazy that he went from a normal NY chess teacher, to becoming the most subscribed “Chess Channel” in the world, becoming an IM, commentating events, and living his best life. But it really is an example that if you focus and practice playing chess, you can be a top player too! It just takes practice, and top players are great examples to learn from. And in the words of Levy, “I love the Caro Kann opening.”

Moving on, we have to talk about incredible games and incredible players in the chess world. But to start off, I would really like to talk about the players first, so here we go! To start talking about the influential players of chess, we have to back hundreds of years, starting from Ruy Lopez. He wasn’t too influential but he has many openings named after him and he has studied and made books on now famous openings. He was a pioneer to the study of opening theory and he was a priest! Next person we will talk about is more recent, Bobby Fischer, he was an American Grandmaster and one of the highest rated players of all time. He also won a world chess championship! He pioneered the high rankings of chess and dominated the game for a while. Another person like him is Garry Kasparov, the Azerbaijani grandmaster and world champion. He dominated the ranks and is referred to as the best or second best chess player, either tied or right below Magnus Carlsen. Next to come is the Norwegian Grandmaster, Magnus Carlsen, the current raining #1 player, and five time world chess champion, he also reached the highest Standard chess rating/elo ever, at a staggering 2882! He made so many people inspired to play chess and play it competitively. Next is Levy Rozman, he has the most subscribed to chess channel. He is a very good chess player and teacher. He is renowned in the chess community. He has also been a huge part in some of the chess explosions, with millions of new players coming to the game. He also used to be a real chess teacher and coach for kids. He is an International Master from New York. Next up is the new world champion, Ding Liren, he is a Grandmaster from China. And he is known as one of the “Luckiest” world champions. Because he wasn’t even supposed to play in the tournament that leads up to the world championship, aka the candidates tournament. And then he beat Ian Nepomniachti, to then win the world championship in the rapid tiebreaks. It was a crazy Match, 7-7, to go to the tie breaks, draw, then on another tiebreak rapid, to WIN! It was truly a testament, and it inspired many to play chess. Just like how other people won the world championship in the past. Now, we also have to talk about some awesome games that have been played by top players. One game I would love to talk about, that is a great example of skill, is the game Magnus played against Vladislav Vladimirovich Kovalev, and worse yet it was in a tournament, then, he was late to the board, causing the clock to go down to 30 seconds, so it was really hard, then he came back, and dominated his opponent. And the thing that saved him, was the 1 second bonus time that he got after playing each move in the blitz (3|1) tournament. Another game that was played by two very high rated players and was very educational was a game played by Magnus, and Hikaru Nakamura in an online tournament. They each played the first move of the well known, king's pawn opening, (e4, e5), but then they added a twist, by them each playing the “Bongcloud” by moving their king to where the pawn originally started at. This now prevents the king from castling and now puts the king in the middle of the board. This opening is the epitome of a funny joke. It is a funny opening to play and you should definitely play it sometime. Next game we again have Magnus, this game that he played against Jon Ludvig was a true statement that even the best of the best, still can lose games. It was an en passant checkmate, he played en passant which allowed the bishop to check the king and then there was the pawn that just took the pawn, blocking one way to escape, and another blocking the other way, and his own pieces disallowing himself to move in different directions away from the pawn too. In a statement from Jon Ludvig, “I just beat Magnus with an en passant checkmate.” Since that game was so crazy, it went viral on the internet, and International Master and most subscribed to chess content creator Levy Rozman that owns the Gotham Chess channel made a 20-minute video about it, covering how crazy that Jon Ludvig checkmated Magnus with en passant, which is already a move that isn’t played much in top level competition, let alone even in any games. The next game we have to talk about is game 2 of the WCC (World Chess Championship, Ding Liren V. Ian Nepomniachti), when after each of the grandmasters played their respective first three moves, ding played h3. An astonishing move that no one really plays much at such a high level, or high level competition in such of Ding's position, and even though Ding lost that game, it was still a game that went viral, just because of the move h3. And the last game I would love to cover, is another high level game with Magnus playing against the now renowned cheater, Hans Niemann. When arriving at the game, he knew at the time that Hans had cheated, so he withdrew from the tournament and later stated why he chose to withdraw. In a statement from Magnus, “Hans Niemann is cheating.”

In conclusion, I would like to do a short recap on what I have talked about in this article. First, I talked about how to think in a game of chess, and I gave information about the game itself. Next, I talked about how start and play a game of chess, like to start, I talked about how to set up the board for play, then I talked about how to play, I next covered all the quirky rules in the game, then I covered all the “types” of moves you can play, and the engines that show you, then I showed you all the titles you can achieve for “mastering” the game of chess, and I talked about some cool titled players. Next I talked about Incredible games, and players. But, this essay was intended to teach newer players to the game, and I enjoyed writing this essay. Thanks for reading.

-Hudson Smith (Author) (this took a while, so I hope you liked it!)

wow

It was not chat-gpt, just my brainpower somehow.

Nice job, impressive

Not that I can read that 🤣🤣

That sure was a lot of typing!

The technical term is "TL/DR"

very nice but i typed at 5,230 word essay about chess.

i just wrote an essay for college on chess too. But you had a typo "next, there should be two rooks on the 1st row, farthest from the opponent, one on the far left and one on the far left, same goes for the knight, ..."

TheNameOfNames yes, it happens, i dont care to fix it, was for english class, hated the teacher so much, decided to be petty, but typos happen, i did most of it while listening to a boring teacher, i can make typos and yes ik i can just chat gpt it, but whats the fun in that.

most i had to write was 2000+ words my teacher was amazing gave us extra credit, its the only class i got an a in in my entire life

haha nice

And? Do you want a prize?

Proof reading and editing are important parts of the process

Sorry but that's only for 5231 word essays.

Missed it by that much.

A miss is as good as a mile.

lmao

By "academic writing assistance" I'm assuming you mean buying a term paper.