Chess, how do you get good?

been playing online chess for the last week. against the easiest opponent. probably 50/50 win rate now.
any tips for getting better at it?

last time i played i was 13.

Get sent to prison in America?

I think you have to smuggle each piece in up your bum though…

been playing online chess for the last week. against the easiest opponent. probably 50/50 win rate now.
any tips for getting better at it?

Find someone who started playing today, and you’ll always be a week better at it

Repeat as required

Practice sadly. That, and really starting to think what you’ll do a few moves ahead, regardless of what your opponent mihgt do. Attack, rather than react.

I used to be pretty good back in my school & university days and what worked then was playing a lot (which is easier now given you could play against the computer), and also spending quite a bit of time reading up on openings.

You also ideally need to be playing against people who are at least at a similar level to you if you want to improve.

Attack, rather than react.

That’s one option although another is to build conservatively and wait for your opponent to make a mistake. Works well against less experience players – less so against good ones!

Practice – read some books – play out some old games from them. I spent most of my childhood doing this.

If you can find it not for this price: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fischer-Versus-Spassky-Chess-Century/dp/0004105761

In my experience you don’t, you just go back to playing draughts instead.

IME you read loads of openings so you know what to do at the start to whatever they do- this made it dull for me as I was trying to remember what to do next rather than working it out

Ignoring that level of serious then go for play more games
Oh and play as white – that is easily the best way to win

In the old days i could beat my computer chess game on level 8 as white and level 5 as black

I could force draws, usually at,7 by relentless trading of pieces

I could force draws, usually at,7 by relentless trading of pieces

Computers used to be poor at endgames so it was a good strategy to trade pieces as quickly as possible. Doesn’t seem to be as much the case with modern chess software though.

I’ve played chess on and off for many years. Was quite good at school then stopped playing then got back into it with a work colleague, we used to play at lunch. Initially he’d thrash me but once I worked out his tactics and remembered my own it all suddenly clicked and if anything I became slightly better than him.*

*we were both shit if you judge us on national chess tournament standard…

Ton, join chess.com

Subscribe to gold to get 25x tactics a day.

Search for me: Stonerov *

And let’s play. I only started learning properly 6m ago. It’s a great platform to use. Lessons, games, computer, android and apple apps and online on a website.

* Everyone else welcome to come and thrash me too.

Once you’re a chess grandmaster in few years you could try and work out WTF is going on with those coloured pegs in Mastermind. If you do, kindly report back. Thanks.

On a similar theme, I started playing backgammon a few weeks ago (something I have wanted to do for years). Good game but still get my ass kicked on level 2 at the moment!

Working hard at it makes a difference, but if you don’t start young and/or have a lot of talent for it you’ll get stuck at a mediocre level. Computers have also improved hugely over recent years, it used to be easy to beat them at the easier levels but nowadays an iphone will slaughter even pretty serious players.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Chess-Nigel-Short-Introduction/dp/0091783208

Helped me

Be russian….

Or a computer…

Read some books. My daughter got quite good. She used a points system for evaluating moves and counter moves in advance. All totted up in her head.

Play your opponents game. Always try to think how you would play their pieces. Then imagine playing their opponent and what would they do to beat you. Do that.

Slightly weird but works better as an explanation when drinking and playing. I ended up beating the guy after three nights at a taverna in Greece and he left the bar leaving me no-one to play.

I was 17 so not sure if this still works

I played it at school and was told I was very good, like you I started playing online and got the bug again!

Practice makes perfect is my advice.

Great game!

Yeah practice. But nothing replaces talent. Some have it some don’t. I played club chess for a few years. Fairly average grading around 1500.

We played some school teams. Young players grading tended to lag behind their improving ability as gradings were only published once a year back then I think. So every so often you would play an opponent graded below you and get thrashed effortlessly.

I got conned into a game at a friends against someone I didn’t know. Another effortless thrashing.Afterward I got told he was the Scottish junior champion. Now a FIDE Master.

To improve – practice, study a few openings, and study the end game. It’s possible to save a draw or get a win out a fairly even position in the end game when playing average or weaker players. Strong players will all be good end game players.

practice is working. beating the novice level every game now. time to move up. need to be a bit more patient though. 😀