Hello my friends! When you are new to chess, it can be confusing. Where should you start? What should you focus on? In this article, I am going to hopefully clear some questions. So lets begin with this article!
Opening –
When new at chess, don’t expect to learn a lot about opening lines or opening moves. Instead, have a basic plan that you can use against most openings and also understand the opening instead of ‘learning’ it. This is especially true when you are playing against fellow beginners. If you just know what you are doing, you will have a huge advantage over your competition which is mostly going to be other beginners. Also, follow basic rules like castle fast, develop pieces fast and you will have an advantage. So, in short, learn a simple set-up of pieces, or rather, understand it instead of knowing (or trying to know) a million variations.
Middle game –
While learning about the Middle game don’t learn about elaborate plans. Instead, try to just learn basic tactics and master them. By basic tactics I mean tactics such as Pin, Fork, Skewer, etc. If you don’t know these yet, then I will be publishing articles about tactics soon. Don’t try to have huge plans and try to imagine such tactics and make them happen on the board. Though this will be VERY hard, the least you can do, is try.
Endgame –
In the endgame, once again, don’t expect to learn a lot in detail. Instead, try to understand the following concepts –
promotion – bringing your pawn to the last rank to promote into a piece (preferably queen)
active king – having your king in the middle of the chess board to stop your opponent from bringing his king out and start eating up your pawns (this might be a little complicated, but if you try to understand the position then you will get it)
Checkmates – Basic checkmates such as Queen and King VS King, 2 Rooks + King VS King, 1 Rook + 1 Queen + 1 King VS King, 1 Rook + King VS King.
Resources to practice –
1) Play games – Play games on your favourite site (chess.com, lichess.org, chess24.com,etc.) to improve your opening and middle game skills. The more games you play, the better you will understand the opening you play and the middle game that arises from that opening
2)Solve tactics – Solving tactics can be used as a honing tool. You can do it on learnmyskills.com too! (Where you are probably reading this from)All you have to do is go to the create tournament option on the top of your screen and make a tournament with the theme of your choice!
Thanks for reading this article, and best of luck from the learnmyskills team on your chess endeavor!
About learnmyskills – Learnmyskills offers a variety of themes such as opening, Pins, Skewers, Fork, and the other things that I mentioned in this article! Learnmyskills.com is within the top 5 best tactics sites in the world
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