The Most Usefull Chess Advice

Excellent advice for players around 1500 level!

No it's not! 

Scarblac's post made me laugh.

Here is a compilation of the advice from this thread.

1. Every move should improve the quality of the position, gain material or gain time.
2. Always assume your opponent will find the best move.
3. Sit on your g***mm hands!
4. No position is so won it plays itself.
5. When you see a good move, wait, look for a better one.
6. Look everywhere where you're opponent can possibly move to.
7. it's all about good pieces, get good pieces.
8. pretend for a moment that it's actually your opponent's move.
9. The hands are a chess players worst enemy.
10. If your less then 1600 focus on reducing blunders. If your greater then 1600 focus on tactics.
11. Always look at the possible checks on the board first before anything else.
12. You can not develop by moving pawns.
13. Dont move your pieces twice in the opening.
14. Try not to lose and wins will come afterward.
15. Opportunities suddenly appear.
16. Patience, Timing, Knowledge and Sacrifice.
17. Feed off your opponents mistakes.
18. Get a good mentor.
19. Analyze your games.
20. If you want to practice, play semi-rapid chess, not blitz.
21.  Don't fear your opponent's rating when playing.
22.  Most strong players don't read many chess books.
23.  Have your chess brain work at least 10 minutes every day.
24. Check the opening theory right after each game.
25. Attack where your pawns point
26. A knight on the rim is dim.
27.  Avoid Moving a Chess Piece Twice During the Opening is a good chess strategy.
28.  It is Better Chess Strategy to Develop the Knights before Their Respective Bishops.
29.  Develop Both Knights before the Queen’s Bishop.
30.  Do Not Develop your Chess Pieces Exclusively on One Side.
31.  Do Not Play a Piece beyond Your Own Side of the Board in the Opening.
32.  If You Have Castled Do Not Permit the Opponent to Open a File on Your King.
33.  Avoid Making Exchanges which Develop Another Piece for the Opponent.
34.  Avoid Exchanging Bishops for Knights Early in the Game.
35.  Avoid Premature Attacks.
36.  Seek a Weak Spot in Opponent’s Position.
37.  Look at pawn structure as a way to create spots for your pieces.
38.  Play the board not the person.
39.  Attack where your pawns point.
40.  Play defensively until your oponent makes a big mistake.

11. Always look at the possible checks on the board first before anything else.

Thats good advice for anyone. Although high rated players probably do it without thought.

Always check for King safety.

Thats good advice for sure. Ill add it.

 @idosheepallnigh good advices. I'll try to remember them.

The great Australian correspondence champion and teacher Cecil Purdy advised: In every position look at all checks and captures, and jump-mates, jump-checks, and jump-captures.

'Jump-moves' -- are moves that would be possible if an obstructing piece were removed.

This bit of advice comes from a recent book by Andy Soltis -- (the book is this thread, on steroids) -- it's called "The Wisest Things Ever Said About Chess" (Batsford, 2008) -- 288 chess maxims and a short (1 page) bit of explanation and annotated example.

Roughly 150 different chessplayers are quoted, most of them very famous. No chess player accounts for more maxims than Cecil Purdy... he's quoted some twenty-one times. Only one other player is cited nearly as often (twenty maxims) ... Anyone care to guess who the second most cited player in Soltis' book is?

Good, sound advice. My advice is the three most important things to do in the opening game:

1. Control the Center.

2. Develop your pieces quickly.

3. King safety (castle early).

i know this is a cardinal rule, but castling early never works out for me.  it seems like it just gives the opponent a target to aim at.  they usually just start shooting pawns right down the pipe, and  all i can do is defend.  i like to be in position to castle early but not do it until it has the  max effect for attack or defense.

MrEman, I totally agree with you and becuase of that I removed the castle early. However, I left "Always check for King safety" in the main list.

JG27Pyth, I added Cecil Purdys advice to the main list. Thats great advice. When I am coaching someone I allways tell them to look at the checks first. I think its important for low rated players. I suspect its also important for higher level players but they do it out of habit and probably hardly realize that they see these things first.

“The best opening is the opening your opponent doesn’t know.”

“The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.

 I like that one!

too many repeats on the list

Good point so I totally revamped it:

1.  Every move should improve the quality of the position, gain material or gain time.
2.  Always assume your opponent will find the best move.
3.  When you see a good move, wait, look for a better one.
4.  It's all about good pieces, get good pieces.
5.  The hands are a chess players worst enemy.
6.  If your less then 1600 focus on reducing blunders. If your greater then 1600 focus on tactics.
7.  To improve focus on tactics, tactics, tactics.
8.a) Always look at the possible checks on the board first before anything else.
8 b)   In every position look at all checks and captures, and jump-mates, jump-checks, and jump-captures.
['Jump-moves' -- are moves that would be possible if an obstructing piece were removed.]
9. You can not develop by moving pawns.
10. Dont move your pieces twice in the opening.
11. Try not to lose and wins will come afterward.
12. Feed off your opponents mistakes.
13. Get a good mentor.
14. Analyze your games.
15. If you want to practice, play semi-rapid chess, not blitz.
16.  Most strong players don't read many chess books.
17.  Have your chess brain work at least 10 minutes every day.
18.  Check the opening theory on you completed games.
19.  Attack where your pawns point
20.  A knight on the rim is dim.
21.  Avoid Moving a Chess Piece Twice During the Opening is a good chess strategy.
22.  Develop the Knights before Bishops.
23.  Develop Both Knights before the Queen’s Bishop.
24.  If You Have Castled Do Not Permit the Opponent to Open a File on Your King.
25.  Avoid Making Exchanges which Develop Another Piece for the Opponent.
26.  The bishop pair is worth a pawn.
27.  Avoid Premature Attacks.
28.  Look at pawn structure as a way to create spots for your pieces.
29.  Play the board not the person.
30.  Attack where your pawns point.
31.  Play defensively until your oponent makes a mistake.
32.  Always check for King safety
33. Control the Center.
34. Develop your pieces quickly.
35. The best opening is the opening your opponent doesn’t know.
36. The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.

#1 is good as long as you realize "the position" means both sides of the board -- because creating zugzwangs (especially common in endgames) involves maintaining the status quo of your position while passing the move to the opponent.  Not all moves have to improve your own position.

#4  Maybe re-word to another useful tip, in quiet positions focus on your worst pieces, amateurs like to play with their good pieces, GMs will move (to improve) their worst ones.  Something along those lines.  Lenderman (who gave the all about pieces quote) also said to him the game was about gaining tempo and space, but this is too vague and personal to be useful advice imo.

#5 isn't advice.

#8 a & b is trying to say look at forcing lines first -- and it's true strong players will do this.  "Jump attacks" and "jump checks/mates" are known as discovered attacks or discovered checks by the way.

#11 one of the NMs commented a while ago that if you're focused on not losing as a way to win it can hurt your game, so focus on playing good moves instead of avoiding bad ones -- I don't know this through experiance though it seems to make sense.

#12 is self evident -- maybe change to "check to see if your opponent's last move was a mistake"

#16 is misleading and not advice in the first place.  Most strong players have read many books in the past.

#21 and #10 are the same -- (21 says it better because sometimes it is ok)

#22 and esp. #23 aren't always true, so maybe qualify the statements like in #21 by saying "is a good opening strategy" i.e. it's not true 100% of the time.

#26  This isn't right, I've heard the bishop pair with worth an extra half a pawn sometimes, but of course it depends on the position.  And to GMs with great technique this is true, but to amateurs this advice is misleading as they don't have the knowledge to know when it's worth the extra half pawn, or the technique for it to matter when they are.

#27 is self evident -- maybe change to "avoid attacking before you've finished development"

#30 and #19 are the same.

#31 is at best misleading -- You should defend when there is an attack, for defense to be your all around strategy means passive play, and passive play is always bad.  For example Petrosian was a legendary defender, but if you weren't doing anything with your position he would attack and crush you.  " It is to Petrosian's advantage that his opponents never know when he is suddenly going to play like Tal."

#36 isn't advice.

The threat is stronger than the execution.