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How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

gautamnarula.com

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Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#111

Post by nsxwolf »

Will anyone here besides me admit they've never won a game of chess, ever, not once? Even against some random little kid who only knows how the pieces move, at Thanksgiving?

I have this suspicion that some part of my brain is damaged and I'll never be able to play chess. I've made many attempts at learning, but have never improved over randomly moving pieces around the board.

Any advice on a resource that will help me at least not embarrass myself, even if I still can't win? "Play more chess" doesn't seem to be the answer. I don't think practice helps if you are practicing poor chess.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#112

Post by super_mario »

charlieflowers wrote: post #39
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #21

> "One big mistake is to rely heavily on computers for chess analysis. Computer analysis should be done only after you analyze the game on your own." This isn't correct information anymore, in my opinion. Chess engines have improved tenfold over the last four years (when the author says he stopped playing). The increase in the strength of chess engines has subsequently caused an increase in the "humanity" of chess en…

Would you mind naming some good chess engines for Mac, Windows and Linux? (I know this can be googled, but I value the recommendation from a credible source).

Stockfish is amazingly strong. It's the world's second strongest engine (after Houdini) and completely free and open source. On average modern hardware (say core i7 CPU) it's rated around 3250 ELO.

I also have HIARCS chess (rated 3190 ELO on my hardware) which is notable for its human like play, but Stockfish kills it almost every single time.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#113

Post by dwc »

tzs wrote: post #26

Speaking of getting better at chess, someone on Reddit pointed out that Shredder for iPhone/iPod and iPad went on sale at half price ($3.99 [1]) for the world chess championship. There are stronger chess engines for iOS available for free (Stockfish and Smallfish), and Shredder has some interface annoyances (the move list only shows the last couple of moves, making it annoying if you want to jump around while analyzi…

I love Shredder for exactly that reason. It makes a huge difference for us lower rated players! Also, there are not 100 knobs to twiddle to get the playing level dialed in. Instead, there are a few "styles" (solid, aggressive, etc) and a rating. There's also a setting for Shredder to automatically adjust its level to give a competitive game.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#114

Post by pk2200 »

kristofferR wrote: post #62
pk2200 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockfish (ranked #2 on the various computer rating lists) runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, Android. It's also free and open source! http://stockfishchess.org/ https://github.com/mcostalba/Stockfish

What's the best open source GUI for it?

Try 'Scid vs PC' or ChessX. You'll get a good-looking GUI, plus some cool database features.

http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/

http://chessx.sourceforge.net/

A cool feature people may not know about - many of these GUIs allow you to play two engines against each other. It's fun to watch two strong programs slug it out. :)

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#115

Post by navan »

I agree with almost everything in that article. I have been playing chess for 20+ years. During that time I have spent several months at a time seriously spending all the free time to improve my chess. I have read numerous chess books, many of them multiple times. I have an expert level rating (USCF) now. I wish someone has told me to concentrate on tactics before going after openings or strategies. Nowadays for any new beginner once they learn the rules I tell them to practice tactics.

Learning positional strategies and all the fancy openings from the books was great. But was useless to improve my results when I was beginning. When I analyzed my games with the help of computer, I found 90% of the games were decided because me or the opponent missed a simple tactic which is just 1 or 2 moves deep. If this is the case in your games you should study tactics until you can find all 1-2 move tactics. It sounds easy. But I have seen a number of class A players miss these simple tactics numerous times.

Finally you will understand opening and positional strategies only if you can spot tactics in them. Once you do not find any tactical mistakes in your game you start to play positional chess. You will appreciate making good positional moves when you do not make silly mistakes.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#116

Post by colanderman »

nsxwolf wrote: post #111

Will anyone here besides me admit they've never won a game of chess, ever, not once? Even against some random little kid who only knows how the pieces move, at Thanksgiving? I have this suspicion that some part of my brain is damaged and I'll never be able to play chess. I've made many attempts at learning, but have never improved over randomly moving pieces around the board. Any advice on a resource that will help m…

Hear, hear. I've instead tried to get better at everything but chess. e.g. playing StarCraft helped me learn basics of strategy that I wholly didn't understand the first 20 years of my life.

I've "known" how to "play" chess since I was young, so I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Learning strategy via a different vehicle helped me get past those roadblocks.

I haven't played a game of chess in probably 10 years but I know that if I came back to it, I could approach it from a much better informed viewpoint, since now I understand the high-level strategic elements that 7-year-old me didn't realize existed.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#117

Post by dwc »

nsxwolf wrote: post #111

Will anyone here besides me admit they've never won a game of chess, ever, not once? Even against some random little kid who only knows how the pieces move, at Thanksgiving? I have this suspicion that some part of my brain is damaged and I'll never be able to play chess. I've made many attempts at learning, but have never improved over randomly moving pieces around the board. Any advice on a resource that will help m…

If you are really interested in chess then there are certainly ways to improve. All of them take work, but you don't have to give over your whole life. A little every day is enough.

I can't recommend http://www.chesstactics.org enough. Tactics are crucial, both for offense and defense. Read this for understanding, not to skim, and do the exercises. Again, do the exercises.

While going through the above, or after you've finished, do tactics on chesstempo.com or another site. You will miss a lot of them in the beginning, but practice makes perfect. It's crucial to your game to be able to just see certain positions jump out at you, and timed exercises will help immensely.

For playing practice, find an online site and be willing to suffer through some losses as your ranking settles in. Maybe you have never won a game, but believe it or not you are not the worst player ever. As your rating is found, you can match up against others on your level. There are several big sites, and a ton of others. I use chess.com.

Another thing to try is "correspondence" chess, where you can play out a game over days, weeks or even months. Why? Because you can play many such games at once, you can play a bit when you have time, you can play people all over the world (no time zone issues), etc. But perhaps the biggest thing is that when you have 6 or 12 games going, you have to be able to look at a board and find the best move essentially from scratch. This ability to look at a board for what it actually is right now (instead of in the context of your plans from 5 moves ago), is a very good skill to have.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#118

Post by nsxwolf »

colanderman wrote: post #116
nsxwolf wrote: post #111

Will anyone here besides me admit they've never won a game of chess, ever, not once? Even against some random little kid who only knows how the pieces move, at Thanksgiving? I have this suspicion that some part of my brain is damaged and I'll never be able to play chess. I've made many attempts at learning, but have never improved over randomly moving pieces around the board. Any advice on a resource that will help m…

Hear, hear. I've instead tried to get better at everything but chess. e.g. playing StarCraft helped me learn basics of strategy that I wholly didn't understand the first 20 years of my life. I've "known" how to "play" chess since I was young, so I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Learning strategy via a different vehicle helped me get past those roadblocks. I haven't played a game of chess in probably 10 years…

I started looking at openings, thinking that if I just started out with a well tested, accepted pre-canned opening, I'd be in a better position to start seeing some strategy.

It looked promising at first, but I still get creamed. At least it looks like I might know what I'm doing for the first few moves.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#119

Post by jpalioto »

nsxwolf wrote: post #111

Will anyone here besides me admit they've never won a game of chess, ever, not once? Even against some random little kid who only knows how the pieces move, at Thanksgiving? I have this suspicion that some part of my brain is damaged and I'll never be able to play chess. I've made many attempts at learning, but have never improved over randomly moving pieces around the board. Any advice on a resource that will help m…

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1889323233/

Amazing beginner course. Read this book and Vol2 and you will be ahead of most tournament players on the fundamentals. USCF 2100+ at my strongest.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#120

Post by edgo »

nsxwolf wrote: post #111

Will anyone here besides me admit they've never won a game of chess, ever, not once? Even against some random little kid who only knows how the pieces move, at Thanksgiving? I have this suspicion that some part of my brain is damaged and I'll never be able to play chess. I've made many attempts at learning, but have never improved over randomly moving pieces around the board. Any advice on a resource that will help m…

Practice helps if you can learn from the good and bad moves on both sides of the board. The article mentions analysis, have you tried that? Great players draw from a big pool of previous experiences and not only their own.
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