Current Events > How do you get good at chess?

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Ive always thought that it would be really cool to become great at chess but I suck at it really badly. Its hard to stay motivated when you get your butt kicked in every game. Does anyone have recommendations on YouTube channels or books I could look at to improve my skills? Also, how important is it to play with a real board? Ive only ever played online
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Probably studying openings, end games, mid games, etc. General theory. Maybe checkout gothamchess on YouTube
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emblem boy posted...

Probably studying openings, end games, mid games, etc. General theory. Maybe checkout gothamchess on YouTube

Ive looked at the Ruy Lopez Opening and The French Defense over the past couple of days. It feels overwhelming to learn all the different ways that things can play out. Ill check out that channel, thanks
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The best way to learn is to do, and chess puzzles are super helpful. You can do a few of them for free per day, but I pay $5 a month for chess.com, which gets me unlimited puzzles and lessons. I do them whenever I have time to kill and its helped improve my skills a lot

Studying openings though is the first step. You will make it very hard to win if you have a bad or unplanned opening. Look up the London opening on youtube. Its an easy beginner one thats almost foolproof. Gotham Chess as well as a few others are really great teachers.

And DONT learn another opening until youve mastered the first one. You will overwhelm yourself with too much info. Practice one opening for as long as it takes to get it down, and that could be weeks. Take your time and youll see big improvements ^^

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Thanks, that makes sense
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lichess is the best option for chess, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Free, fast, clean, browser based, and has all sorts of puzzles and guides.

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That's the neat thing about chess, you don't
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You don't, you have to be born with the skills to plan ahead quickly.

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Guide posted...

lichess is the best option for chess, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Free, fast, clean, browser based, and has all sorts of puzzles and guides.

Ive always used chess.com and it bugs me that they lock so much stuff behind a paywall. I guess Ill try lichess

Irony posted...

You don't, you have to be born with the skills to plan ahead quickly.

Im not just trying to not be a scrub anymore, not become a grandmaster lol
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By playing a shit load of games against a wide variety of opponents, and putting yourself in a wide variety of situations to develop into a better player.

Studying openers, watch and analyze other peoples games to supplement playing a shit load of games.

Every time you take a Pawn, that's +5 exp. So start a game, capture a few pawns, then quit. Start a new game, capture some pawns, then quit. Rinse and repeat until you've gained enough levels to take on the Queen.

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You play against good people.

How do you get good at any game? Play it with the cards stacked against you with an opponent well beyond yourself

In other words, find a way to watch the good players do what they do and figure out why

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Chess puzzles, watching other games and reading analysis of them, reading books on theory especially early game sine that's the foundation of any game. X opening goes for the middle so that mid game it can open a diagonal path for your fianchetto'd bishop to be a game long threat, etc. Understand the philosophy. And of course, just trying to self analyze when you have so many free programs that give the best moves nowadays, those help when you're skilled enough to begin seeing why they are good moves.

Also a few general tips are that trading pieces even if you both end up even is fine and you shouldn't be afraid to do so, just try and make sure at least one good piece gets an opening to move in afterwards and you might start noticing more uses for things like bishops.

Trading a bishop or knight to force the enemy king to move before they can castle and especially if they have to move forward is monumental in destroying their defenses and if done right can even get you ahead in turn advantage.

A rookie mistake is seeing an opening and doing moves out of order because you end up with the same positions by turn 4 or whatever. It's a bad way to play because the openings are designed based on what they open up, deny, and so on. Doing a pawn move before the knight move? Oops now the opponent can move in a bishop to checj your king or whatever, ruining the setup you were going for.

And of course, try to only stick to one or two openings per color at first. I like the London system D4 on white for mobility with the first turn advantage, and king's or Queen's Indian on black for the fianchetto'd bishop that never needs to move in most games, somewhat cancelling the turn disparity and shutting down a lot of same side castling strats just by existing.

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Eric Rosen is my favorite streamer and has a ton of free content. I like him because he's very consistent, pleasant and fun to watch. GothamChess gets on my nerves but I think a lot of younger people like him. Rosen also loves traps and fun openings and he goes at the best pace.

GothamChess recommends the London System and that's a good opening to learn. Personally I like the Italian Game because it's super easy to remember both as white and black. I stick to queen's gambit declined when I'm black and they go for the queen's gambit. Learn that and you'll be able to play chess but people will still hit you with tricky/annoying openings.

So my recommendations are:

1. As white, learn to play E4 the first move. This will often let you play into the Italian game. You'll need a counter for the following openings from black:

a. E5 (play the Italian game)
b. The Scandinavian defense (Eric Rosen has a great video on this, it's his first video)
c. The Sicilian (entire books are written about this, but learn the basics)
d. The Petrov (learn how to counter the Stafford gambit. Eric has a ton of content on this because it's his favorite thing to play)

if you do this you can play chess.

As black I recommend learning Queen's Gambit lines (declined is easy to remember) and the Sicilian.

Oh, and do yourself a favor and learn how to play the Fried Liver attack. Most will defend against it and there are some nasty counter gambits like the Traxler but it's a lot of fun.

Then you can get into middle and end game stuff.

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berlyman101 posted...

Eric Rosen is my favorite streamer and has a ton of free content. I like him because he's very consistent, pleasant and fun to watch. GothamChess gets on my nerves but I think a lot of younger people like him. Rosen also loves traps and fun openings and he goes at the best pace.

GothamChess recommends the London System and that's a good opening to learn. Personally I like the Italian Game because it's super easy to remember both as white and black. I stick to queen's gambit declined when I'm black and they go for the queen's gambit. Learn that and you'll be able to play chess but people will still hit you with tricky/annoying openings.

So my recommendations are:

1. As white, learn to play E4 the first move. This will often let you play into the Italian game. You'll need a counter for the following openings from black:

a. E5 (play the Italian game)
b. The Scandinavian defense (Eric Rosen has a great video on this, it's his first video)
c. The Sicilian (entire books are written about this, but learn the basics)
d. The Petrov (learn how to counter the Stafford gambit. Eric has a ton of content on this because it's his favorite thing to play)

if you do this you can play chess.

As black I recommend learning Queen's Gambit lines (declined is easy to remember) and the Sicilian.

Oh, and do yourself a favor and learn how to play the Fried Liver attack. Most will defend against it and there are some nasty counter gambits like the Traxler but it's a lot of fun.

Then you can get into middle and end game stuff.

A couple of days ago I played against someone doing The Sicilian Defense for the first time. Id never seen it before so I had no idea what it was but I somehow won in the end. It was really annoying to play against and I dont think Id have much fun being on the other side either. Ill check out that Eric Rosen guy through. Do you think the Italian Game is better than Ruy Lopez? Ive been using that one a lot for some reason
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the Sicilian is super annoying to play against at first so you'll need to learn some lines eventually. it doesn't come up as much in the beginner levels.

the Ruy Lopez is what I'd consider more advanced but if it works for you then go for it.

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Honestly, there's a reason chess used to be used as an IQ test and would be used to promote people to generals. You can only prepare yourself so much and level up so much if you lack the inmate intellectual acumen to be good at it in the first place.

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You start playing when you're like 4
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MajesticFerret posted...

Honestly, there's a reason chess used to be used as an IQ test and would be used to promote people to generals. You can only prepare yourself so much and level up so much if you lack the inmate intellectual acumen to be good at it in the first place.

you can definitely learn and get good. how fast you can depends more on your learning speed, environment, and motivation. very few people hit their upward limit on... well anything really but chess is a good example.

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MajesticFerret posted...

Honestly, there's a reason chess used to be used as an IQ test and would be used to promote people to generals. You can only prepare yourself so much and level up so much if you lack the inmate intellectual acumen to be good at it in the first place.

*innate
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Takes at least 2000 hours to become terrible at chess.

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Also, IQ doesn't matter. Chess tests 1 thing: your strength at chess.

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Be born an anime protagonist

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There's lots of good advice so far certainly, but if you really want to get better, the key is self-accountability, and I have one foolproof suggestion....

If you hang a piece, you resign. Immediately. No excuses, no trying to save the game, no trying to "time out" your opponent if it's a blitz game. If you're rated much higher, and you know you can come back....it doesn't matter. And most importantly, if your opponent misses the hanged piece you still resign.

Eventually, after making the same mistakes, you'll get annoyed enough to stop doing it and see a big jump in your game.

Good chess players just don't hang pieces, period. And when you play someone who's good, if you hang one, you don't recover anyway, they make you pay for it.

To be clear, getting the worst of an exchange is not what I'm talking about (eventually we all face opponents who are just better and just keep winning exchanges until they finish it). I'm just talking about just losing a piece with no compensation

I mirrored the opening for this old Casio chess computer until I could the best way to do its first twenty opening moves. Twenty five years later and only a few people manage to come back from it.

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MajesticFerret posted...

Honestly, there's a reason chess used to be used as an IQ test and would be used to promote people to generals. You can only prepare yourself so much and level up so much if you lack the inmate intellectual acumen to be good at it in the first place.

you're talking out of your ass dude. you can be very good at chess if you worked hard @MajesticFerret

jedisamurai posted...

There's lots of good advice so far certainly, but if you really want to get better, the key is self-accountability, and I have one foolproof suggestion....

If you hang a piece, you resign. Immediately. No excuses, no trying to save the game, no trying to "time out" your opponent if it's a blitz game. If you're rated much higher, and you know you can come back....it doesn't matter. And most importantly, if your opponent misses the hanged piece you still resign.

Eventually, after making the same mistakes, you'll get annoyed enough to stop doing it and see a big jump in your game.

Good chess players just don't hang pieces, period. And when you play someone who's good, if you hang one, you don't recover anyway, they make you pay for it.

To be clear, getting the worst of an exchange is not what I'm talking about (eventually we all face opponents who are just better and just keep winning exchanges until they finish it). I'm just talking about just losing a piece with no compensation

I hang way too many pieces so maybe this would help me out. Thanks
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