What are good ways to get better at chess?
I learned the basics as a kid, just like how the pieces move and what is legal. I don't feel like I have ever managed to develop a sense of strategy, and I both think that I need to think for too long about each move, but also still make obvious mistakes like not noticing a threat and losing a piece for no gain.
What would be the best way for a player of my level to improve? Read a book about openings? Follow through games by great players? Obviously part of it will be play lots of chess, is there a particularly good website/app for this? Is playing against humans better than bots?
I'm not likely to have access to much in person games like a club or anything, this would be something in looking to do in my spare time, as and when possible.
10 replies
lichess and lots of speed chess…
also chess youtubers… hikaru is the best player who streams… gotham chess has a lot of more beginner videos….
I got a random app and just increased the difficulty as I start winning consistently. That helped train up a bit.
Chess.com is a pretty great resource.
chescom is corporate garbage, all of the paid features on there are free on lichess
and people cheat on there CONSTANTLY
When I tried to understand the game better I found the lessons on chess.com helpfull. They introduced me to basic concepts like "the four squares in the middle.are the most powerfull ones" . I was also lucky to have a couple of ppl at uni who I'd play with. We weren't good, but we sometimes explained our moves to each other.
I would highly recommend to get a book of chess games that's annotated by someone who knows what they're doing, and play through the games from it on a separate chessboard, reading the notes and how the person is describing the strategies and values at play during the game. That's what I did and it taught me a whole lot that I never would have really absorbed or come to on my own.
Do you have any particular books you would recommend?
I don't, sadly... I actually looked to try to find the book I used for it, but it's been so long that I couldn't properly remember what it was. Maybe go to the bookstore and pick up a few and see if they have the right structure (a series of games and then annotations of what's going on in them, and also if the author's text seems like something you vibe with).
Sorry if this is unhelpful lol... I looked over some books online but I'm not sure what is good and I don't want to give you some recommendation and then it not be worthwhile.
No that's cool, thanks for the advice! A couple I've seen recommended online are Chernev: "Logical Chess Move by Move" and Sierawan: "Winning Chess Brilliances", so I'll keep my eyes out for a used copy of one of those.
I recommend daily games. I don't think lichess supports it, but available on chess.com for free.
Each player has 24 hours for every move. Practically this means, you just look at the app once a day to make a move. You can have multiple games running in parallel. This takes away the time pressure and allows to think of really cool lines, and you can make notes for the various lines your opponent might take you to.
Feels a lot more like an adventure like this for me and more relaxed than having to deal with time-management on top of it all.
Other notes:
Revisit videos or other material on one or two openings for black and white. As it's not so fun, when you can't get into an even mid-game because your opponent got an early edge just by using memorization. E.g. there's videos titled "9 ideas every queens gambit player should know".
learn endgame scenarios like checkmating with two rooks, checkmating with two bishops, pawn endgame, etc. Gotta know what you're playing towards and how to close out a game.
depending how serious you are, reviewing your matches is a great way to learn. chess.com allows for a few free-of-charge computer-assisted reviews of your games per day, which is helpful to quickly see obvious mistakes. This could also be done with a locally run engine, and other ways.
Play on lichess.org, it's generally a nicer place than chess[.]com
(Maybe controversial but it's my opinion) De-prioritize learning openings at first. Maybe learn them later in more detail when you want to optimize details. As White, just learn your favorite opening and play that - you'll always be first anyway, so your opponent has to react to your opening. As Black, just learn how to counter the most popular White openings (which is also why most Black openings are called "xyz Defense", because they're reacting to what White does). There are also a few Black openings that can be played against anything White does, so maybe prioritize these so you have to think less about the opening (e.g. King's Indian Defense, Modern Defense). That's about it for starting out. Mid-game and end-game, positioning, tactics, converting winning positions into victories matters FAR more and you will make the most mistakes during mid- and end-game anyway. There is a lot of openings content on Youtube for example, which might suggest that openings are super important. But really, they're just easy-to-produce low-effort content for chess masters.
Watch videos of master-level games with good commentaries, explaining each move. Try to understand the reasoning behind the moves. Why a move is good or bad.
Play a lot of Rapid. I'd recommend Rapid because it's not as slow as Classical, so you can play tons of games (playing a lot is important for experience), but still not as ludicrously fast as Bullet or Blitz. I don't like the too fast time controls because this really just causes players of any skill level to make blunders they otherwise wouldn't have done.
After each game, do a computer analysis and see where your mistakes were (also if you've won!). This is also very important because otherwise you sometimes can't know where you made a mistake or where you played sub-optimally.