New member: wondering about openings/midgame

I would urge you to go to Chess Mentor and check out Silman/Arne's great teaching on "Endings, Openings & Taste of the Middle Game."  They take you through the main openings and the best responses to them: masterful, very helpful, and you'll learn just what you need at this time in your progress toward learning  to play chess well and learning about the game itself.

    The stock response to your questions is "study tactics."

Everyone and their mother will tell you this, studying tactics is essential for the beginner. I would suggest that in addition to tactics (try farnsworth's tactics site at chesstactics.org)  you look at Dan Heisman's articles on chess cafe online (in the archives)

Best of luck.

You are right where I am at. I just joined here yesterday to try and improve my game. You from Austin Texas?

lol.. good luck..

Don't wonder about the openings, learn tactics and the basic endgames.

In the beginning it's enough to take control (if you can) over the center, develop all your pices before you try "stupid" attacks, remember your king safety, weak back ranks loses many beginner games, if they remember to castle :)

By the way, the first thing you should learn is the basic check mates!

King and queen vs king

King and rook vs king

King and two bishops vs king

If you want to, take a look at:

King, bishop and knight vs king

King and queen vs king and rook

Do you know anny of those mates?

i agree..!! we should learn all these at the beginner level..

no idea man.

The elementary mates k+q/k+r vs. k are essential. Mating with the two bishops and b+n less so but maybe spend some time looking at them (two bishops foremost) if you have time.

No less important is getting the hang of k+p v. k. You need to know which positions are won and which are drawn.

Practice tactics every day. This will be fun anyway and it will make you stronger as much as anything can at this stage (and down the road as well).

Opening principles should be learned and thought about as you open the game and replay games, especially master games.

Learn which moves constitute each major opening, if only to be able to open up a conversation with another player on the topic, but don't study lists of moves to reproduce in your games. The latter method can use up a lot of time but not really improve your strength much.

Seeing the opening in terms of the general principles,  on the other hand, makes for an excellent foundation for the time when you are experienced and will be studying specific positions in the opening.

I can cite some opening principles if you don't have any on hand.

Q vs R is totally beyond a beginner player, and they shouldn't study it. It's worthless. Much the same, B+N is hard work (less so than Q vs R), so I don't see much point in studying that.

I bet most 2000 rated players would have a struggle, if not simply fail, to beat a tablebase in Q vs R.

It is crucial to recognize the variations from opening to middlegame, alot of chess players have developed tactical, with stategy, keying in on checkmate.

Also check for reversed, openings, based on the white squares vs black squares, as this could lead you to various moves your unfamilar with.