An Adult Beginner's First Six Months in Chess

I wrote a little article about my experience in chess over my first six months of play as a 29 year old adult beginner. Hopefully some new players can gain some helpful insights and avoid the mistakes I have made. Enjoy.

https://www.chess.com/blog/TheOnoZone/the-adult-beginner-diary-my-first-six-months-in-chess

Nice article! I'd highly recommend this article to any other adult beginners out there!

I'm in much the same situation as you - Adult with kids, watched Queens Gambit in February this year, decided to have a go (having only ever played a few games here and there with my Dad as a kid), got hooked immediately and have developed a bit of an obsession haha. I've had very much similar experiences to you in terms of learning too, and have reached many of the same conclusions about effective learning.

The ones that stood out were

- wasting time on tactics puzzles that are really above my level, the end game stuff ( for some reason I just find the thought of it boring and I can't bring myself to study it haha),

- the ego and losing (once I convinced my self to embrace the losses as great learning experiences it really helped me). In fact that's pretty much the reason I started playing on this site (as I mostly play on that other well known free site), but I got so uptight about my rating that I couldn't relax and play well. So I started playing here for a place to play where I didn't care at all about the rating (and play my 'real' games on the other site haha), and just to play on my lunch break or something when I couldn't give it my full concentration. It was actually realizing that the rating doesn't really matter that paradoxically has helped me to start rising in the ratings again after plateauing.

-I've also had plenty of success learning the basics of a few openings, just as you have. 

Not sure if we can post other websites here, but the only 'book' I have read so far is the free one on chesstactics.org. I think this was so helpful not only because it explains all the ideas in plain English, but because you are forced to calculate and visualise the moves in your head (i.e. its not an interactive board like most websites offer). I've really noticed my calculation skills take off as I've got through more and more of this book. I'd highly recommend it to all beginners. I've got 'Logical chess move by move' lined up next when I finish with that one.

Hey thanks so much for reading and recommending the article. Great to hear from someone in a similar position to me.
Funnily enough I started playing on 'the other site' too. But I wasn't taking the games seriously and ultimately I think it was hurting my chess!
Thanks for the book recommendation, I will go and have a look and see if I want to give it a read. That's great you feel like your calculation improved too. I think it does force you to not guess with a real board, but with some discipline you can do the same online, or sit on your hands I guess! 
Logical Chess: Move by Move is good. But I found some of the openings I don't play (and will never play probably) a bit hard to motivate myself to get through. Great book though and easy to understand. "E4 a brilliant move!" I hope this joke becomes clear to you soon. 

I enjoyed reading your article. Very well written, not boring at all and there is a lot of stuff to learn from reading it. Thats why I would recommend it to everyone. Anyone can benefit from reading it, especially a beginner. I am myself an adult beginner in my first six months of playing the game. I started my journey right here on this site on December 14th 2020. Before that I only knew the rules which my grandfather thought me, but I never played a serious game. Only games I played were the one where a lot of illegal moves have been made. I also started playing because of the Queens gambit series.

Unfortunately I dont have a child yet, so its easier for me to focus more on chess than it is for you. I will check out some of the stuff you mentioned in the article. You seem like a very nice guy, so I hope we can be friends here on chess.com. I will send you a friend request and if you ever need anything chess related feel free to ask me. :)

Thanks for taking the time to post this.  I got a lot out of it.  In general the effort it probably takes for most of us to seriously improve.  I'm going to start with the way you finally resolved to handle openings.  Best wishes for your continued improvement you're earning it.

Great article! I can relate totally to what you we’re going thru as we both started the same time. 

It was interesting you planned out your path way as a beginner because I did a lot of things wrong like how you did tactics and book where as I played a lot and learned from making mistakes.

At the moment, I am doing a lot tactics training and studying book moves as I have to make up for the lost time at the beginning.

Good Chess Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/good-chess-books-for-beginners-and-beyond

Hey thanks @Arnaut10 wow, looks like you have made amazing progress in such a short time. Congratulations and keep up the good work!

@Jackson591 Thanks a lot I am glad you took something away from it. Thanks for letting me know, means a lot! Glad it inspired you to pick a few openings, I personally went with openings that sounded cool, because I didn't know any better haha. I still love the Sicilian Dragon.

That's some good insight, thanks

@Chuck639 Thank you! I am discovering, now that the article is published that there are a lot of people who started at the same time, all trying to improve as adults. Very inspiring to hear from everyone and connect to others who can relate.

Best of luck with your progress.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with the farm and tent!

Chess.com needs more interesting stuff like this. Nice story.

Thank you for sharing your awesome experiences with us! 

I think it's also true that 99% of the time you're not hearing the whole story. People who say "I started 1 year ago" sometimes mean "I started studying ___ hours a day 1 year ago" and in reality they'd been playing and doing a little study for 5 years. A true beginner (someone who didn't know how the pieces moved yesterday and plays no similar games) would very likely be rated below zero.

Having said that, can someone go from a true beginner to 1500 in 1 year? Yes, but it's uncommon, and takes a fair amount of free time / work / talent.

Kasparov went from beginner to 2200 strength in 2 years (and not chess.com ratings, this was OTB).

World class rates make the rest of us look dumb

Why are you questioning my improvement? Is it that unusual? I started as a true beginner and acomplished 1500 in less than six months. Without any previous knowledge (except how pieces move which I learned when I was 6) or studying before. My account was at 800 at the beginning and I dropped below to 750, 700. Just the other day I reviewed my first games and I was shocked with my play. Blundering pieces every single move. Its true I had a lot of free time, but I never took chess too serious to study it for real. I never read any book or something. The only thing I did was puzzles here, the limited amount I can do with regular account without any membership and the same thing with lessons. I have also been watching Gothamchess and GMHikaru and learning a thing from them here and there. And thats it. One of my goals was to reach 2000 in the next five years, but I dropped that because I didnt want to bother myself with numbers like that. I was bored one day and didnt have anything to do so I decided to watch Queens gambit. I finished it for one night and I was amazed with such a beatiful show. Few days later a video where Hikaru teaches xQc how to play chess was recommended on my yt account. So i watched it and thats when and how I started playing chess. About five years ago I got a little chess board for traveling as a gift and it hasnt been used till December 2020 when I started using it to play with my friends and family. Im sorry if thats hard to believe but its the truth.

who is it?

Hi everyone I began playing September last year during lockdown I could barely move a piece.my rating fell all the way to 200 and after my first 6 month a made a lot of progress and now I am aiming for 1800 by September I know it a lot of work but I don't have responsibility as much of you guys and I am following a training plan I really think I can a achieve more than 1800 base on my last 30 days progress if I can keep getting better at this pace.