Chess strategies for beginners

Hello,

I am a beginner who is just getting into chess. I want to get better, and at the moment most of my focus is on tactics training (via puzzles etc). I don't know any opening, end game theory etc. I am interested in learning more about chess strategies, and had two questions:

Is it too early to be thinking of strategy, and should I just focus on tactics?
If the answer is no, what are some good books/references for learning strategy? I am thinking of buying "Winning chess strategies" by Seraiwan, Silman. Is this a good book for my level? Any other recommendations?

Good Positional Chess, Planning & Strategy Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/introduction-to-positional-chess-planning-strategy

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell

Opening Principles:

1. Control the center squares – d4-e4-d5-e5
2. Develop your minor pieces toward the center – piece activity is the key
3. Castle
4. Connect your rooks

Tactics...tactics...tactics...

The objective of development is about improving the value of your pieces by increasing the importance of their roles. Well-developed pieces have more fire-power than undeveloped pieces and they do more in helping you gain control.

Now we will look at 5 practical things you can do to help you achieve your development objective.

They are:

1. Give priority to your least active pieces.

• Which piece needs to be developed (which piece is the least active)
• Where should it go (where can its role be maximized)

2. Exchange your least active pieces for your opponent’s active pieces.
3. Restrict the development of your opponent’s pieces.
4. Neutralize your opponent’s best piece.
5. Secure strong squares for your pieces.

Don’t help your opponent develop.

There are 2 common mistakes whereby you will simply be helping your opponent to develop:

1. Making a weak threat that can easily be blocked
2. Making an exchange that helps your opponent to develop a piece

Pre Move Checklist:

1. Make sure all your pieces are safe.
2. Look for forcing moves: Checks, captures, threats. You want to look at ALL forcing moves (even the bad ones) as this will force you look at, and see the entire board.
3. If there are no forcing moves, you then want to remove any of your opponent’s pieces from your side of the board.
4. If your opponent doesn’t have any of his pieces on your side of the board, then you want to improve the position of your least active piece.
5. After each move by your opponent, ask yourself: "What is my opponent trying to do?"

General Ideas.

1. Stop playing blitz, and bullet.  Play longer time controls of at least G45, or longer.  
2. Follow Opening Principles:

• Control the center.
• Develop minor pieces toward the center.
• Castle.
• Connect your rooks.

1. Study tactics...tactics...tactics.  One of my favorite quotes is this: "Until you reach Master, your first name is tactics, your middle name is tactics, and your last name is tactics”.
2. Double Check your moves.  Before making a move, ask yourself: "Are my pieces safe?"
3. After your opponent moves, ask yourself: "What is my opponent trying to do?"
4. Analyze your games WITHOUT a chess engine, then have someone stronger go over the games, or post them online for review.
5. DO NOT memorize openings. Learn and understand the pawn structure, and piece placement for the opening you wish to learn.
6. Learn Basics Mates:

• K vs. KQ
• K vs. KR
• K vs. KRR

1. Learn Basic King and Pawn endings.

• KP vs. K
• Opposition

1. Have Fun!

1. Be sure to know basic principles (control the center, basic tactics like forks, revealed attacks, etc).

2. Learn basic endgame mating patterns; King and 2 rooks, King and 1 rook, King and 2 bishops, etc. Learn to avoid tripping into a stalemate in the endgame.

3. Learn 1 opening for white, and for black learn 1 opening in response to 1.e4 and one for 1.d4.

Youtube is a great resource. Check out Levy's videos on his channel Gothamchess.

#1
"Is it too early to be thinking of strategy, and should I just focus on tactics?"
Yes, chess is 99% tactics and at your level even more.
Always look for tactics, tactics for you, but even more tactics for your opponent.
Always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it.
As long as you lose pieces and pawns to tactics all strategy is useless.

I have a very beginner question: what is the difference between tactics and strategy?

Tactics are the concrete variations of "I go here, he goes there, I give check, he moves his King, then I can take his Knight etc". Strategy is more about long term, general considerations - things like "do I want to try to exchange my Bishop for his Knight?", or "Which side should I castle?" or which pawn lever should I be aiming for" etc

Don't know what falls the quickest. My chess rating or my stock portfolio 🤔

     Tarrasch and Capablanca, two of the strongest players ever, insisted that beginners are best served by starting by studying endgames. Once you understand the simplest things you will find it easier to understand more complex concepts.

As you can see, a lot of different people and a lot of different answers to this question. Some parts I agree with, some I don't. I will offer you yet another opinion. 

I've taught chess my entire life and have had good success training kids. The number 1 thing that makes you strong is getting amazing at tactics. Tactics can get you to 2000 almost on its own. But getting that good at tactics just takes time and practice. It's like practicing passing the ball to get you better at football. You just need to keep doing it, but it would get very boring to only focus on that and not do anything else! 

I am a firm believer in looking at strategy as soon as possible. You need to know what normal moves look like. There are so many possibilities in chess that it's nice to know how to quickly narrow that down to a few reasonable moves. Playing a rook to an open file should be second nature as soon as possible. 

For this I've always used "How to Reassess your Chess" by Sillman to teach chess. Even to the youngest kids. The goal is to not want to understand too much too soon. Understanding how to use the initiative and other dynamic concepts will take a lot of experience to master and should just be skipped. But learning that you'd rather not trade your bishop for a knight or that your knight really likes an outpost is something that is not too difficult to understand and can help you find good solid moves in your own games. 

Openings and endgames are in my view not the right thing to start with while learning tactics. Openings can be played using general principles lined out above (get the center, develop your pieces and castle) and the basic endgames (apart from knowing how to checkmate someone) will become important once you start reaching the endgame with only 1 pawn difference. 

If done correctly this could be good advice, but the way it's usually put into practice it's some of the worst. I.e. learning technical endgames like king + pawn vs king and the philidor position is completely worthless to a truly new player.

Tackling endgames from a strategic perspective (large focus on piece activity and what it means for a piece to be active) and basic checkmates could be very useful, but I don't know of any books (or other material) that cover this at a beginner level.

And yeah, in general the biggest impact to your results will be developing good calculation habits (which is largely done by solving puzzles)... but as @rau4ever pointed out, this is very tedious and takes a long time. Chess should be fun too (otherwise you'll give up on it) so I also agree that learning basics in other areas is important (and plants useful seeds of knowledge even if there is little immediate impact on the results of your games).

As for what a true beginner should do (true beginner meaning you've played fewer than 100 games in your life) IMO you should start by playing 100 games at a time control around 30 minutes for each side. In the beginning it takes time getting used to how the pieces move and just looking around the board in general (as in "oops, I forgot a rook was right there and could capture me", is a common beginner thought).

So I'd start by playing, and then move on to learning the basics in each area:  openings, tactics, strategy, and endgames. I'd also solve a few themed puzzles every day (for example 5 puzzles with a fork, then the next day 5 puzzles with a removing the defender theme, etc).

Tactics: short term forcing moves (e.g. fork)
Positional: short term non-forcing moves (e.g. rook on open file)
Strategy: long term non-forcing moves (e.g. openings lines to seek play on the kingside)

Although "positional" and "strategy" are often used interchangeably. 

And in a real game all these mix together. No one will knowingly play a series of forcing moves that wins material but leaves them in a bad position, and no one will knowingly undertake lengthy maneuvers when there are immediate tactics to worry about.