Starting with this game, you could have taken the pawn on d5 with your queen instead of moving the Knight. Not doing so allowed you opponent to defend it.
You put your knight en prise on f5 which was understandably taken and later you missed in the mate in one threat.
I would say you have to practice "looking at the whole board" and try and and be aware of immediate threats. Practice basically :-)
Logical Chess by Chernev is good ;-)
You need to play longer time control games to really develop strategic thinking. I can't even play 3-minute games and I've been playing for a few years now.
If you want to play practice games of at least 20 minutes, add me.
1. Don't leave your pieces hanging
2. Develop, Develop, Develop!!!
3. Don't make pointless moves
4. Look at the whole board. Look out for weak pawns too.
5. Defend when required. Don't overlook mating attacks.
6. Get a decent playable game out of the opening. Of seems that you are doing this well.
7. Learn some basic mating patterns
8. Study tactics
9. Improve your thinking. Make plans
10. Coordinate your pieces. Ensure king safety
Good Luck!
Seriously, I will solve ALL of your beginner problems in one fell swoop.
Buy Tactics Time. Do all 1001 problems until you're getting at least 90% correct. (The problems will seem hard for you, but they're almost all 1-3 movers.)
Even if after like 500 of these problems, you will annihilate anyone rated under 1000. It won't take that long to do, either - way less time than playing dozens of 5 min blitz games.
One of the biggest dangers to beginners (and I'm not too far from there) is the sexy appeal of 'deep thinking strategy' and other grandmaster stuff. You'll be wasting your time studying these things. You'll be studying the finer points between a bishop vs knight in an open position, but then miss the 2-move combo that drops your rook.
You need to get OUT of your head that you want to learn the complex stuff, and learn the basics REALLY well. Meaning basic 1-2 move tactics.
Another good rec is the Polgar chess book. Do the mate in 1s until they're cold.
As a <1300 player, your #1 priority is NOT to make the BEST move, but to not make the losing move (to tactics). If you can get through a whole game without making any gross tactical blunders (hanging pieces/pawns to tactics), you will be 1200+ here. Contrary to what you believe, 800-1200 rated players are NOT beating you due to some deep strategic thinking - you are actually beating yourself because you blunder and err.
And I fully fall into this category of protecting myself from my own errors, even at 1200.
I saw some of you games , I think you would stabalize around 400 points rating in the coming days. Just keep playing and you will get better with time. The same happened with me and now I am stable around 650 and improving with practice.
One problem that I experienced in the beginners category is that they play like "offence before defence" but practice has taught me that at the beginners level you should concentrate on "defence before offence" after every move from your opponent your main thought process should be to figure out if any of your pieces is under attack in the coming moves or not, once you learn to defend your pieces you can move on to offence category of threatening others pieces.
I totally disagree that this poster should spend ANY time with strategy until their rating is at least 1000.
Seriously, he missed a obviously Q/R battery setup to mate.
I don't disagree that good strategy opens the door to tactics, but at his level, strategy will have exactly ZERO impact on his game compared to dead-easy tactics, especially avoiding hanging pieces and seeing obvious mate threats.
Don't study openings, strategy, or grandmaster games. Forget silman. Just do tactics time.
Waste as little time on openings as possible. Like near-zero. I guarantee that you can play even the dead-worst opening (like the Damiano defense) and still beat the pants off people at your <1000 level no problemo even with a totally unsound opening, by crushing them where it counts - in the middle and endgame.
I was able to improve my game a couple of hundred points in a few weeks by:
1) Watching well annotated videos on youtube and chess.com, focusing on my chosen openings (Sicilian Accelerated, Nimzo, English). This gave me a sense of the master strategic and tactical thought process.
2) Solving tactics problems on Chess.com, Chesstempo, Polgar book. Chess.com is easiest for me to use on my tablet though there are other tablet apps that are available.
3) Working on some typical endgame situations, e.g. King pawn, rook pawn. Many won games are lost if the endgame is badly misplayed.
I also use the AnalyzeThis app to analyze my games and the Chessbase app to review my opening positions and master games.
Hope this helps.
I always advise people to study the games of Capablanca. It is much easier to learn from him than from the games of other great players of history. Capa had an amazing ability to find plans that are simple and easy to understand, but devastatingly effective. Even against giants like Lasker, Rubinstein, and Alekhine Capa would sometimes produce a masterpiece of stunning simplicity as if an adult was giving a simple lesson to a promising child. A good collection of Capablanca's games is Irving Chernev's book "Capablanca's Best Chess Endings".
Work through this book of bite-sized exercises, from cover to cover.
And save yourself a massive number of keystrokes. Simple.
http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Tactics-Batsford-Paul-Littlewood-ebook/dp/B00SVEJH88/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1424622246&sr=1-1&keywords=chess+tactics+littlewood
There's a body of knowledge (mostly tactics and endgames) you must imbibe and KNOW COLD before your playing strength will advance.
In my experience this is one of the best books I found to get you started.
John Nunn's books are great for the intermediate stages of your studies.
Good Luck With It.
I always advise people to study the games of Capablanca. It is much easier to learn from him than from the games of other great players of history. Capa had an amazing ability to find plans that are simple and easy to understand, but devastatingly effective. Even against giants like Lasker, Rubinstein, and Alekhine Capa would sometimes produce a masterpiece of stunning simplicity as if an adult was giving a simple lesson to a promising child. A good collection of Capablanca's games is Irving Chernev's book "Capablanca's Best Chess Endings".
Yeah I second this. Playing through/studying top level games is a lot more enjoyable than studying abstract positions, and is also great for your chess
For a beginner:
"Can I take that?"
Chess is kinda funny in that a good way to approach it is backwards. Study the endgame and the middle game first, then you can appreciate the openings much better.
Just don't forget rule #1: Have fun when you play! (Don't study the joy out of it.) Others have said it and they are right--practice tactics a lot.
Hi everyone, long time lurker, first time poster here,
Firstly I apologise if there's a topic somewhere in these forums which have a "beginners" thread, I did a quick search and I didn't feel the threads that came up were relevant to my topic. Mods feel free to move this to a better home. :)
I'm a newbie but a lover of chess since early age. Recently I've started to play chess properly and unfortunately I'm not very good! I am firmly in the "beginner" category despite understanding the fundamentals of attacking and defending. The complex and intricate details of chess appeals to me greatly and I find myself studying the more advanced openings for both sides that are easily punished by my opponents (as I don't know what to do with them in the middle game). Specifically, the Dutch Defence Stonewall variation for Black and the Stonewall Attack for White. No doubt I'm putting extra pressure on myself with learning these particular openings, but as I said, the more complex the more I enjoy it.
However, I feel as though no matter how well I know these (or any) openings, my middle game lets me down completely. Often I have a textbook 10 moves or so, culminating in castling by the 10th more often than not and then I have the "now what?" moment. It's in this moment where I think extremely short term without any regard for my overall strategy, reacting to my opponents moves and so on. Perhaps it's the complex openings or generally being a beginner, but these moments consistently occur every match. Despite my opening, I usually fall apart after 5 moves or so and it's mate.
I realise that this game I wasn't playing my openings that well (developed pieces to different squares, but I am a beginner after all ;) ), but this was my most recent game. I completely fell apart, and couldn't see the obvious route the Queen was taking.
http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=1067682199
So my question is, how can I take my midgame to the next level and develop the ability to think critically with strategy? Any advice, books, games to watch, etc is all helpful. :)