Chess for Beginners

Category: Survey

  • Things I Need To Do To Improve

    1. Play less blitz games.

    2. Be more willing to consider candidate moves that require a Queen sacrifice.

    3. Be more vigilant towards tactical opportunities that involve a pinned piece (a king pin in particular).

    4. Go over my games (especially losses).

    5. Go over annotated master games (Tal & Alekhine come to mind).

    6. Play stronger opponents, and then try to go over the game with them.

    7. Learn how to deal with early bishop pins.

    8. Stick with and master the openings I have selected for my repertoire (The Scotch Gambit as White, The Accelerated Dragon as Black against 1.e4, and the Nimzo-Indian against 1.d4) no matter my win record.

    9. Improve my thought process, and try to use it on every move (play ‘real chess‘ 100% of the time).

    10. Have fun.

    Feel free to add your own list.

  • How Do You Learn Chess?

    I would like to take an informal poll as to how you learn chess. Some of the options would be:

    1. A good book. (feel free to write the book’s title if it has made a difference in your training.)

    2. Going over annotated games.

    3. Chess videos

    4. Chess teacher

    5. Anything else that works for you.

    Hopefully this will help beginners get ideas on resources to use for training.