Do tactics puzzles and or study endgames.
Most efficient route for a beginner to improve?
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Well.. get a chess.com membership!
Or watch free shows like Melik & Me where brother Josh is taught chess (he is a beginner) by GM Melik.
Some days ago I read post by some one saying "learn chess in this order: endgame, tactics, strategy/positional chess, openings."
Another thing that helped me alot was this thread:
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/quotsingle-line-chess-advicequot
Start applying those principles to your game and you'll make big steps. Then the step after that is learning when NOT to follow the principle. In other words: making the counterintuitive move.
Getting familiar with the tactical patterns of chess will help you to become a strong player. Nowadays, there are programs online that generate chess hundreds of stimulating chess puzzles.
(I use this link: http://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics.html)
Do enough of these, and your foresight will improve. What's more, you'll start to notice typical patterns, and pulling off 2-3 move tactical maneuvers will become a natural reaction.
Playing against others at your level is naturally a good way to improve. If you play online (chess.com for instance), there are plenty of people willing to help you sharpen yor skills.
You might want to consider playing with a clock, if you don't already. A 20-minute time limit is a healthy restraint that keeps you from overthinking.
May 19, 2013
0
#5
Considering myself a beginner too (one year in), what these previous posters have suggested is a load of bull. I'm kidding!
They are actually giving good advice. I've focused on doing many hours of tactics training (had several more hours before resetting my Tactics Training rating here and starting over) and it's paid off probably faster than anything else I've learned and tried.
I think the key to the tactics is consistently doing them every day until you notice improvements and then continue to drill them daily to stay sharp. The more patterns you can expose yourself to, the better you'll absorb them and recognize them in games.
It's an amazing feeling to see a pattern you recognize from your training leap out and present itself to you in a game ready for you to exploit.
I'd echo the above posters and say tactics training is the way to go.
Also make sure you learn and understand the endgame principle of "opposition" and know how to convert a winning king and pawn ending.
May 19, 2013
0
#6
1.Play long games(minumum of 25+10 minutes or longer)
2.Play someone near your strength
3.I suggest you play e4
4.Add me as a friend
Tactic training!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At the beginner level almost all games are won with basic tactics... Not strategy.
Learning basic tatical patterns will improve your rating the fastest without a doubt.
As a nonpremium member you won't be able to follow all the advice in the beginner study plan, but it's still worth reading. The study plans are found in the menu under "learn" at the top of the page. You're making the typical beginner error of trying to study openings based on the logic that if you "get" them, then everything will fall in place. As you've already found out, those darn tricky opponents won't cooperate and play what you know. Better to learn the basic opening principles and not worry so much about specific openings. Oh it wouldn't hurt to learn a few common openings 4 or 5 moves deep, but that's all.
What most experts (which I'm not-I'm just parroting the words of my betters) believe is key to beginner progress is getting your board vision to improve and practicing tactics is the quickest way to do that. Whether you choose to do so by the tried and true "book" method or go with many of the digital trainers available is up to you. Check out Coach Heisman's website at danheisman.com for great book lists and hundres of award winning articles on all things chess. The forums here are all archived and as you might imagine, you aren't the first beginner to seek improvement advice. I bet if you were to type in "beginner Improvement" or something similar into that little box in the upper right you would find many dozens or even hundreds of posts. Good luck and welcome to the Game.
Thanks a lot everyone, appreciate the advice.
I got the diamond membership for the month, so hopefully that helps, and gives me an idea of what membership to go with in the future. I'm not really digging the auto renewal feature though, anyone know how to opt out of that?
Just wondering if there's a thread, or webpage with some info on how a beginner could improve quickly at chess that someone could point me to, or some tips. A lot of the info i've read seems to be geared to intermediate players that already understand knowledge I lack.
Basically i suck at chess, and have spent a little time looking at some openings, and how to checkmate with various pieces so far. The problem (I assume), is that on the youtube video's I've watched they'll simulate what would be some good defenses from the opposition (while showing the opening). But, playing against random people, or chess titan level 3, the computer doesn't do what opposition in the youtube video's do. I'm assuming that the computer is doing something exploitable, but I do not really have the knowledge on how to exploit it, or know what to do with my pieces once I get the opening done. It's like I'm just moving them there, because that's what the opening is, but I don't know why, or what it creates beyond 1 or 2 moves.
It is kind of frustrating as I played poker proffesionaly for years, and had good instincts before studying the game. I thought maybe this would mean I'de be able to pick up chess quick too, but it does not appear to be the case as I just don't 'get it' in the same way I do with poker.
I know with poker I utlizied a couple different poker software programs, as well as training videos at the start that tought the reasoning/thinking behind the moves, hand analysis with others, and had a good tutor at the start. I'm not really sure what exist out there in terms of chess training tools.
Thanks for any tips.