Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond...
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell
Ultimate guide for beginners?
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Welcome welcome!! I was in exactly the same place as you around a year ago!!
Regarding guides, please see these chess.com beginner study plans: https://www.chess.com/article/view/study-plan-directory
But for the most part, your first couple of years of learning will revolve around avoiding simple mistakes: https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-10-most-common-mistakes-among-chess-beginners
One mistake I would highlight (because you mentioned it) is focusing too much on openings. I and almost every other chess beginner on the planet gets way too interested in openings... because they sound cool and sexy, there are tons of Youtube tutorials about them, etc. Most people start seeing real improvement only when they stick with one opening and work to understand the CONCEPTS (not the precise moves) behind the opening, and then spend the rest of their time understanding basic tactical and positional ideas. Some argue that hardcore study of openings is only relevant for advanced players, who already have several years of study done.
Feel free to add me as a friend and DM if you have any more questions 
all the best for your chess journey!
Apr 9, 2022
0
#4
I would check out GM Aman Hambleton “habits series” where he does a speed run.
No theory and ingraining solid habits is a great start.
https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=chessbrah+habits+rules
May be stick to 15/10 rapid for a long while. 15 mins is a decent amount of time to put in quality thoughts or moves and the increment is a game saver for the end game or time scrambles.
I actually perform much better in 15/10 over 30/0.
I would never play anything less than 15/10 and that's because this is a game of thinking and I want enough time to think a little. Studying opening moves and not knowing the reason behind them or why we play any move is not a good idea. There's pretty much nothing on here of any value to actually learn the game as the content is all directed at players who are already pretty advanced, but I'd recommend Chess Vibes on YouTube, where you'll find content actually directed toward modest level players looking to get better, and Nelson is a fabulous teacher. I've no association with this by the way other than being a fan. Gotham Chess also has quite a bit of good stuff, and will also teach you how to get better and climb the ranks, where the content on here sadly enough don't really have much instructional value for anyone, mostly just masters annotating other master games, and maybe if we become one some day they will be a lot more relevant. I learn more from one of Nelson's videos than 10 of the ones on here, maybe 20. I still watch the chess.com content but I am a lot more selective now and am still spending most of my time watching these YouTube ones because their goal is to make me a better player not just show me some cool moves by players and against opponents far better than myself, what a concept! Good luck!
Apr 9, 2022
0
#6
Here are my top 10 principles for chess beginners. Learn these well and you're on your way. (And do study some basic openings, there's just no way around that.)
1. You do know that the king is the most important piece, right? Don't make any moves that expose and endanger your king. Like so beginners do.
2. The queen is the most powerful piece, but not invincible. Beginning players want to get their queen out early thinking that she'll bludgeon the opposition into submission. Don't. A queen that's out-front early is a liability. You'll lose her, and then you'll lose the game.
3. Don't leave pieces hanging (unprotected), where they can just be picked off for free. So many beginners think they can charge forward and overwhelm the enemy, just like in those big battle scenes in movies. Chess is not a movie, and your pieces are quite finite, so treat them that way.
4. Yes, the center is the most important part of the board, so you're missing that big point if you're trying to capture all of the squares at the edges. Most chess openings are intended for you to either directly or indirectly possess or attack the center because that's the "high ground" where you can control more of the board from.
5. You need to move pieces out, especially pawns to create space for yourself to maneuver. Sure, your knights can leap over other pieces. But if that's mostly all you do, you'll get cramped up and have few options when your opponent comes for your king. You should be aware of a basic order of moving your pieces out: a couple of central pawns (usually in files c, d, e), knights, then bishops, then possibly the queen to the second or third rank.
6. Be aware of pins. Basically, that's when a lesser piece is blocking an attack on a more important piece, and so it's not free to move. This limits your ability to maneuver, and so can let your opponent gain some kind of advantage. Generally, you want to inflict pins on your opponent and avoid having them inflicted on you. There's times when allowing a piece to get pinned makes sense, though, because it keeps you out of worse trouble. There are different types of pins, which you can read about somewhere else.
7. Diagonals, especially long diagonals that can be exploited by your bishops (and sometimes your queen, too), can be of great importance in a game. Diagonals sometimes are involved in pinning pieces. The longer they are, the more power they can provide you.
8. Pawns work best when they support each other. Leaving pawns hanging or in some higgledy-piggledy structure will allow your opponents to pick them off and move their attacking pieces around them to inflict pain. Pawns in a diagonal chain are best, with the base pawn having some protection as well. And at the endgame, if you've taken good care of your pawns, you can wield them to inflict pain on your opponent.
9. Think of every move, yours or your opponent's, in terms of what it achieves, either right away or in the near future. Is the move threatening? Is it a strategic attack on an important center square? Is it supporting another piece? Why make the move at all? Unlike when picking stocks, picking chess moves randomly does not bode well for success.
10. Finally, a word about tricksters. They're out there. Usually they're also beginners, and they've studied a few traps with which to quickly gain an advantage. Good players don't fall for them, and if you get get at the above 9 principles (especially #9), you won't either. Be aware of Greeks bearing gifts, like what appears to be free piece intended to lure you into making foolish forays into the open. If something looks too good to be true, then your opponent is either a terrible player or is about to spring a trap on you.
Great list, one in particular stands out for me. The majority of games at the lower levels are lost by way of blunders, so the cardinal rule of learning chess is to not make blunders, clear mistakes that you should have seen at your level. A blunder for a beginner by the way is different than a blunder by a grandmaster, and beginners aren't expected to be calculating far ahead like masters can, but the novice mistakes are ones that you should be able to see had you cared to spend enough time looking.
The bare minimum for every chess player is looking first at how your opponent's move changed the position. As we get better we improve this, starting with what that move does and then as we move along thinking a few moves more ahead and trying to figure out why they might have played the move and what sort of plan they might have. At the beginner levels there often may not be much of a plan but it's still important to think about what they could do at least.
Then we consider our own plan in that context, and while we may not be developed enough as a player to come up with anything but simple plans, a simple plan is still better than no plan.
Avoiding blunders is really all just about putting enough thought into your play, and while we'll still make bad moves, if we did our best to figure it out and could not, at least we tried and this is all part of the learning process as we build our skills.
So the number one mistake by far is...not thinking enough during the game, which is like driving a car, taking your eyes off the road, winding up in the ditch, and wondering what happened.
Lower level players may find speed chess fun, and there are players of course that can bang out moves without thinking very much and play well, this takes a lot of experience, where you rely on memorizing the major lines of openings many moves deep and also relying on known patterns and quick glances to get you through the rest of the game.
There's one way to tell if you are ready for this and it comes down to how many mistakes you make which you would not have if you had given yourself enough time to pay enough attention to what you are doing. If this is happening you must give yourself more time if you want to eliminate losing games due to stupid moves.
The most important tool we have by the way is to carefully analyze after the game, do not play another one until you have done this. This also applies to games you've won. This is where you learn the lessons. No matter how badly you may be playing now, if you pay close attention to what you are doing wrong, you will get better and better.
Apr 9, 2022
0
#8
kingcobra7777 wrote:
Great list, one in particular stands out for me. The majority of games at the lower levels are lost by way of blunders, so the cardinal rule of learning chess is to not make blunders, clear mistakes that you should have seen at your level. A blunder for a beginner by the way is different than a blunder by a grandmaster, and beginners aren't expected to be calculating far ahead like masters can, but the novice mistakes are ones that you should be able to see had you cared to spend enough time looking.
The bare minimum for every chess player is looking first at how your opponent's move changed the position. As we get better we improve this, starting with what that move does and then as we move along thinking a few moves more ahead and trying to figure out why they might have played the move and what sort of plan they might have. At the beginner levels there often may not be much of a plan but it's still important to think about what they could do at least.
Then we consider our own plan in that context, and while we may not be developed enough as a player to come up with anything but simple plans, a simple plan is still better than no plan.
Avoiding blunders is really all just about putting enough thought into your play, and while we'll still make bad moves, if we did our best to figure it out and could not, at least we tried and this is all part of the learning process as we build our skills.
So the number one mistake by far is...not thinking enough during the game, which is like driving a car, taking your eyes off the road, winding up in the ditch, and wondering what happened.
Lower level players may find speed chess fun, and there are players of course that can bang out moves without thinking very much and play well, this takes a lot of experience, where you rely on memorizing the major lines of openings many moves deep and also relying on known patterns and quick glances to get you through the rest of the game.
There's one way to tell if you are ready for this and it comes down to how many mistakes you make which you would not have if you had given yourself enough time to pay enough attention to what you are doing. If this is happening you must give yourself more time if you want to eliminate losing games due to stupid moves.
The most important tool we have by the way is to carefully analyze after the game, do not play another one until you have done this. This also applies to games you've won. This is where you learn the lessons. No matter how badly you may be playing now, if you pay close attention to what you are doing wrong, you will get better and better.
Great write! Most of your points are right on the money.
The best way to avoid blunders is to practice tactics before a chess tournament rolls around (or if you aren't playing in chess tournaments, just games in general). For tactics training to be effective, you have to solve the tactic before moving any of the pieces. This method forces you to think about your plans in conjunction with your opponent's plans.
During a game, it can be difficult to identify a tactical pattern if you have never seen it before. However, the more experience you have playing chess the more of these patterns you will have seen, and it would become progressively easier to avoid blunders (and catch your opponent's).
Add the tactics training with game experience and your playing strength would improve dramatically.
Hello chess players I've recently got into Chess and am becoming obsessed with it so I want the ultimate begginers practice guide. I'm talking what to focus on, popular methods and patterns, good websites, the works I got Chessable because of a youtube ad and am focusing on opening fundamentals https://vlc.onl. My biggest problem is just remembering all the different openings or getting others mixed up but have noticed a lot of them have similar patterns like moving the pawn to E4 and then bringing out your knight to F3 Also throw in any big begginer mistakes or bad habits and replace it with good ones. Hope you guys get some good material and helps out everyone's games!