Beginner’s Guide to Chess

A time comes in everyone’s life when they are met with the challenging, rigorous, and surprisingly subtle art of chess. A crucial time which decides whether you pursue this masterful, elegant sport or continue your mundane, chess-free life robbed of the excitement and elation it brings. Chess is simply more than a game- it is a mindset; a mindset angled for logic, comprehension, and perceptivity. Chess is a beautiful lesson in subtlety, trickery, and logic that has the potential to greatly improve your strategic awareness and analytical thinking. All being very important skills to nurture, as they will greatly assist you in becoming a well-rounded, intelligent member of society. The first step- as always- is to begin.

This beginner’s chess guide will ensure you pre-emptively pinpoint every recurring mistake and area for improvement in order to commence your chess journey with a soaring head start.

Learn Your Openings

There is nothing that ruins a first game like not playing your opening properly. Especially when not being a particularly advanced player, you can easily fall prey to gambits and other opening traps. The best, most effective method of sidestepping this- especially at beginner level- is by learning 2-3 solid chess openings which will ensure a clean entrance into a game and that provide you with a good position for the middle play. Surprisingly, I managed to achieve a 1200 rating while not having formally learned any opening. I knew the first few moves of the Scotch because I always played the first few moves strategically and continuously used the same opening for white. However, the gaps in my understanding of openings and the undue detriments became apparent when my opponents began playing more advanced gambits, openings, and variations. Playing one opening constantly (which I didn’t even know very well) and developing my pieces simply wasn’t enough when my opponents were actively “coming out to get me”. Consequently, I was forced to widen my knowledge of openings by learning the Vienna game, finally learning the Scotch, and others such as the Caro Kan and French defense. Tidbit to note, you should be learning openings for both white and black to ensure you can play in various ways to both start the game and respond to your opponent with the black pieces. As you progress past 1800, openings- as long as you don’t blunder- don’t matter as much because players start to have a better understanding of the middle game and can generally reach better positions even after a suboptimal opening line. In summation, learning a few solid openings will ensure you have the skills to reach a good position for the rest of the game and providing the potential for a victory.

Develop Positional Awareness

This skill isn’t limited to chess, however as chess is the topic of this article, I won’t be delving into the outreach of positional awareness. Positional awareness is incredibly important in a game which requires coordination while not pointlessly blundering your pieces. The crux of positional awareness is understanding that your pieces are one machine- one army working together to defeat the enemy king. Developing better positional awareness comes only with practice and starting to understand the movement of the pawns and pieces coordinating together. This will lead to a better understanding of the game, of attacks, checkmating strategies, as well as not randomly blundering a bishop like Magnus Carlsen in the Speed Chess Championship. Some may call it a sacrifice, but it certainly isn’t when you lose. As a chess beginner, I also greatly struggled with “seeing” the board and coordinating my pieces into a coherent attack. As you play more games, you will start to see opportunities for attacks and ways your pieces can coordinate to gain a better position or even an advantage. Another way to improve your positional awareness is by doing chess puzzles every day. Puzzles are a fantastic method of practicing your analytical skills, allowing you to take your time to evaluate a position and seek the best move. Not to mention, you can start to learn checkmate patterns and apply these skills in games. Puzzles also allow you to see the best move according to a chess engine which allows you to learn the strategic advantages of various positions. Developing positional awareness will ensure you have a clearer trajectory in your games and that you can more easily form attacks rather than constantly defending and allowing your opponent to take the lead.

Just Develop- Play Solid

An issue with many beginners arises when they try to play more elegantly and sophisticatedly by bringing the queen out early and completely disregarding the rest of their development. Some even get their queen trapped with a few ill moves. Especially with the abundance of Fried Liver attacks in beginner games, players begin to make a habit of poor development leading to unfavorable positions in later games. Especially at a level where positional awareness isn’t very advanced, it is more important than ever that you play solidly, sticking to a few well-learned openings and developing your pieces in a timely manner. Make sure your pawns are strong and well-structured because otherwise your opponent could find many ways to break the center at the start of a game and infiltrate your position. This can be done through many solid openings such as the King’s Indian and…the London System. Yes, as much as it is made fun of, the London System is a solid opening which will greatly improve your position early in the game. If your opponent makes the mistake of bringing their queen out early, you can even begin learning ways to thwart their attacks and chase their queen around the world while getting a great head start in development. As an early chess player of 400, I remember the novelty of the Fried Liver attack- I started bringing my queen out early at every game. At first it seemed very effective, but as I progressed, I found my opponents easily thwarting this attack and starting their own against my queen and very underdeveloped position. Quickly, every game turned into a loss. One of the most important chess lessons, especially for beginners, is to play solidly and always finishing development.

Checks, Captures, Attacks

As aforementioned, it is difficult to coordinate your piece as a beginner. Generally, beginners cannot “see” the board very well and are unable to and ideas. A great way of formulating your next move is by following the principle of “Checks, Captures, Attacks”. As any rule, this shouldn’t be taken too literally. Don’t give a pointless check which threatens the integrity of your position and don’t capture a piece which leads even greater loss of material. Every time when considering your next move, consider the checks, captures, and threats (or attacks) you have, and the checks, captures and threats your opponent has in response to your potential move. This is the first step to calculating in chess. As you follow this line of reasoning, you can start a gain a better grasp of opportunities such as discovered checks (a discovered check happens when a piece moves out of the way to uncover a check given by another piece) and other forcing tactics such as forking (when you threaten more than one piece forcing the opponent to release control of one- generally leading to their loss of material). Whenever you feel lost in a chess game- slow down and evaluate the position while looking for the checks, captures and attacks you have available. Simply put, this greater awareness of the game is bound to help you form clearer lines of attack in games and perhaps even improve your win rate- provided you use the principles correctly.

As a beginner, it can prove incredibly difficult to develop a comprehensive understanding of the game. I hope you will incorporate these principles in your play and start your chess journey with a clear understanding of common mistakes beginners make. This will hopefully allow you to improve quickly and effectively.