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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

#121

Post by nsxwolf »

dwc wrote: post #117
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…

I will definitely take a look at chesstactics.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#122

Post by clavalle »

xerophtye wrote: post #73
thewarrior wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I have read that article. I do understand that true mastery can take a lifetime. The posted article gives specific chess exercises which when practiced for 3 - 5 months can produce a marked improvement. I was asking whether there any such exercises for programming.

What about those "Learn code the hard way" tutorials? anyone tried em?

They are as good as you could hope for a guided tour.

They get your feet wet and let you get your bearings.

But there is still a large gap between having knowledge of a language and performing synthesis with one.

It would be interesting to have a tutorial series for those that get past the syntax stage.

I could imagine being given a small problem and asked to craft a solution. Your entry could be graded, perhaps by humans, perhaps by machine analysis -- it shows how you could improve and some of the top level solutions and what make them better. If you don't meet a certain threshold, you are given another problem of the same level, rinse and repeat, until you are truly solving problems with the language of choice at a level and style that is comparable to your top rated peers.

Seems like a hard problem, but not impossible.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#123

Post by phaus »

EdwigePelagia wrote: post #102
phaus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blog spam is for generating ad revenue or gaining attention for a product. This guy isn't selling anything, and there aren't any ads on his site(at least none that I see on my iPad). If you don't like what he has to say, that's your perogative, but that doesn't make his article blog spam. The guy's been on HN for a year and a half and that's the first time he ever posted anything from his site. He likely just found o…

>Instead of complaining, wouldn't it be more productive to take your own advice and post some of the resources that you found useful? No. Pointing out the low quality of this article is pretty easy and helpful. It's not like the opportunity cost of my very simple (but powerful) criticism is precluding me from making my contributions to the world. I think we should all spend a lot more time shooting down people who do…

So on one hand you are criticising a 19-year old for attempting to add value to peoples' lives without asking for anything in return, because you feel his efforts are insufficient, yet you yourself are actively refusing to bring anything worthwhile to the table.

>I think we should all spend a lot more time shooting down people who don't deserve attention.

I agree. I hope its not lost on you that this is exactly what I've been doing.

No one is above intelligent criticism, but we have yet to see any of that from you.

This is a place for people that like to build things. Having a needlessly negative attitude isn't conducive to making that happen.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#124

Post by mahmoudhossam »

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?

It also works with GNOME Chess.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#125

Post by LanceH »

nsxwolf wrote: post #118
colanderman wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except for a few traps, the opening is largely irrelevant to beginners.

Study endgames first, you learn how the pieces move.

Then study middlegame tactics to see how they work together.

Lastly you study openings to get to your preferred middlegame.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#127

Post by anatoly »

z0r wrote: post #40
Tloewald wrote: post #9

Anyone care to provide similarly practical tips for Go?

http://www.kiseido.com/go_books.htm Pick up "Tesuji", "Life & Death" and "Attack & Defence". Use "Tesuji" and "Life & Death" to learn the how and why of basic go tactics and to prepare yourself to study problems in general. Keep "Attack & Defence" for when you are ready to learn how to actually play go on a strategic level. Pick up the "Graded Go Problems for Beginners" vol 1 - 4. Pick up "1001 Life & Death". Pick up…

What's the best place to play online, for an absolute beginner?

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#128

Post by kriro »

birken wrote: post #5

And for those that are interested in building their interest in chess in a way that is more entertainment than education, I highly recommend watching "live commentaries", IE chess players playing against other people online while commentating it live. My personal favorite is IM Greg Shahade (aka curtains), who has hundreds of these videos online [1]. There are also a bunch on youtube from other sources, but in my opi…

Not as exciting as watching the brown trouts swim but close enough.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#129

Post by mrcactu5 » 

  I’m going to define “good” as the 90th percentile 
  among the player pool you’re competing against.
This is a very interesting definition of "good". Appropriate for Chess, but has interesting ramifications elsewhere.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#130

Post by gcv »

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…

I'm in a similar boat: my brain just doesn't enjoy chess. I tried studying it, and it bored me to tears. Go feels better to me because it has far simpler rules, but significantly greater depth. (Or maybe I recognize the patterns more readily.) Poker feels better to me because making decisions in the absence of perfect information models real life.
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