I play chess competitively and have managed to get my rating up to 1700 on chess.com in rapid. Here is my essay on chess where I talk about how to improve your skills at this game.
How to Get Better At Chess
I believe that chess is a game unlike any other because it teaches us various skills that pertain to the real world. Instead of thinking from just our perspective, chess teaches us to see the advantages and disadvantages in our position as well as in our opponents. It develops our strategical thinking, allowing us to deduce various positions and find the one that will be most successful. Chess improves our memorization skills through remembering certain checkmate patterns, openings, or even being able to visualize how a position will be 20 moves ahead. As you get better at chess, these skills will also improve. This is why in addition to playing chess, it is important to learn how to get better at it.
There are three stages in a chess game, the opening, middle game, and endgame. Many beginners after learning how to move the chess pieces dive right into learning opening theory which is the various different ways of starting a chess game and memorizing a series of moves in that opening. Even though it may seem conspicuous to start with the opening theory, this is a big blunder. Chess is more than just memorizing a bunch of moves to play against your opponent; it is also about being intuitive, using your reasoning skills and knowledge to make the correct moves. The opening theory will be completely useless when you get into the middle game and the end game because you will no longer be part of the opening. This is why it is important to practice puzzles first. You can do this by buying a chess book with puzzles or even buying a membership to a chess site that gives puzzles. These puzzles are very critical in your journey to improving at chess because you will be enhancing your perspective and strategical skills. In order to get better at anything, practice is key. Similarly, play many chess games, but review the game afterward using a chess engine. This is so that you learn from your mistakes and learn why you need to play a different move next time you reach a similar situation. Regardless if you won or lost the game, you can learn a lot from analyzing it. After practicing puzzles, then get into memorization. However, don’t memorize openings yet, but instead, memorize checkmate patterns or important positional strategies. Most of a chess game happens in the middle game and the endgame which is why you first develop these strategies first.
After learning from puzzles, and other strategies, now study openings more intensively. Remember, the number one key in chess is to control the center of the chessboard. If you control the center, you control the game. The Queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard, but don’t bring it out very early on in the game. This is because as your opponent is developing their pieces, these pieces could attack your Queen; this will force your Queen to return thus giving your opponent a tempo. A tempo in chess is basically a free move, in the process of retreating a piece, your opponent will be getting a free move allowing them to control the center more. When just starting chess, you will notice that most opponents will play the classic e4 e5 openings (the two front pawns moving 2 squares up). This is a very classic opening that the famous Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest legends of chess used to play all the time because it effectively controls the center at the very beginning of the game. But the reason why I don’t like to play this classic opening is that it is a very familiar opening that you will see a thousand times. If you really want to surprise your opponent and take them to unfamiliar territory, play something unique. This is where gambits come into place. A gambit is where an opponent will sacrifice a pawn or two or even a minor piece (a bishop or a knight) in order to get a future positional advantage. My favorite chess opening is the Danish Gambit, it is known to be the most aggressive chess opening that tends to confuse my opponents, especially those who have never seen it before. Other good openings to learn are the Queen’s Gambit, French Defense, and Caro Kann. There are hundreds of different chess openings, each with many variations. Don’t overwhelm yourself by learning as many chess openings as you can though. Finding the ones that you are the most successful with and continuing to improve them through experimentation and learning from computer analysis is a good method in getting better at chess. After getting out of the opening, this is where your middle game and end game skills come into play.