Should I be studying chess openings?

{"type"=>"root", "children"=>[{"type"=>"paragraph", "children"=>[{"type"=>"text", "value"=>"If you enjoy learning openings, and you already know all the basics, there is nothing wrong with spending some of your practice time learning openings. Personally, knowing an opening makes playing chess more enjoyable. Just be smart with how you allocate your time."}]}]}

{"type"=>"root", "children"=>[{"type"=>"paragraph", "children"=>[{"type"=>"text", "value"=>"En passant means “in passing” in French and it is a rule in chess that allows one pawn to capture another as it moves two spaces from its starting square if the capturing pawn was in a position where it could have captured the other had it just moves one square."}]}]}

Can I teach myself to play chess?

{"type"=>"root", "children"=>[{"type"=>"paragraph", "children"=>[{"type"=>"text", "value"=>"Absolutely! There are tons of online resources you can use, and lots of ways to play."}]}]}

What are the basic rules of chess for beginners?

{"type"=>"root", "children"=>[{"type"=>"paragraph", "children"=>[{"type"=>"text", "value"=>"Start by learning how the pieces move, and then about check and checkmate."}]}]}

What is the 20 40 40 rule in chess?

{"type"=>"root", "children"=>[{"type"=>"paragraph", "children"=>[{"type"=>"text", "value"=>"This concerns where your focus should be in your chess training plan. Some say that 20% should be on openings, 40% to middle games, and 40% to endgames. For a beginner, just focus on playing games and tactics."}]}]}

Chess For Beginners: 5 Things to Focus On First

Chess is not an easy game, but it is easy to improve if you focus on the right parts of the game early. Easy, of course, is relative, but going from 600 rated to a thousand rated is a jump in rating that most Masters could only dream of. Chess for beginners is easy to improve. These 5 Things to Focus On First will help you control your learning curve and get ahead of anyone else at your current level.

image of woman learning chess looking apprehensive — Credit: Pexels/cottonbro studio

First Steps for Chess Beginners

If you are truly brand new to chess, or even if you have played a few times with your family and think you know how the game works, it will still be an essential step in your improvement process to ensure you are following the rules and moving the pieces correctly.

1. Chess Players Need to Understand the Rules

The first thing a beginner should focus on is understanding the rules of chess. You can’t play the game and improve if you don’t fully understand the rules.

Piece Movement

I am always surprised by how often people who claim to know how to play chess falter when asked something as simple as “how does the knight move?” Understanding the differences and limitations of the pieces is a vital step in learning chess. Make sure that you know how the pawn moves, how it doesn’t move, and how each other piece moves individually. If you think you know but are still unsure about all the differences, picking up a beginner chess book is a good next step. Also, refreshing your memory with the training tools on Lichess is a great process as well.

Check and Checkmate

In order to learn any tactics, or even just how to finish a chess game, you need to understand check and checkmate. After I teach beginner's piece movement, I make sure that they understand this important part of chess. Finding checks and identifying checkmate is the building block of almost every chess tactic that you will learn.

White to play. Easy for a chess beginner! — White to play and end the game.

Castling

One of the most important rules to learn is castling. This is the move that gets your king out of the middle of the board and out of danger. Remember check and checkmate? Your opponents learned about that, too, and if you leave your king in the middle of the board, it is more likely to be attacked. Castling early is a smart strategy for beginners. We need to move our central pawns to develop our pieces, which often opens the middle of the board, making the king vulnerable to checks and attacks. Since the move also activates the rook, it is very effective, saving time and improving your position.

Chess Training Tip: How to Castle

To sum it up quickly, you castle by moving your king over two squares and putting the rook on the other side. There are rules that can inhibit you from castling, however, such as if you are in check, if you have already moved your king or that rook, or if you would be moving through a check, then you are not allowed to castle. You can castle either kingside or queenside, but to castle queenside, you also need to move your queen out of the way first. Castling is sometimes a rule that surprises casual players, but it is an important part of keeping your king safe and playing smart. I encourage students to try to castle in every game that they play.

2. Checkmate Patterns

Understanding the rules of chess is important, but understanding its patterns is the next step. Hopefully, you have a good grasp of the rules of check and checkmate, so next you can focus on learning different checkmate patterns. A checkmate pattern is a repeatable sequence of moves that can be used in certain situations in order to checkmate the king.

The Ladder Checkmate

One example of this that I teach early on to beginners is the ladder checkmate. A ladder checkmate is a checkmate using two rooks, or a mixture of a rook and a queen. Learning this kind of checkmate pattern will help you convert games where you should be winning. Even if you are up two rooks in an endgame, if you don’t know the pattern to checkmate in that position, it won’t matter.

The king is stuck on the back rank, with one rook delivering the check and the other stopping it from leaving the back rank at all. You can reach this point by walking your rooks up the board, forcing the king back.

You move the rooks as though they are walking up a ladder, one hand after the other, until the king is pushed all the way to the side of the board and you have checkmate. Sometimes you have to set your rooks up on the other side of the board if the king threatens them. Still, generally this is the easiest way to win these kinds of endgames, and you can even promote a pawn and use a queen and a rook in a similar way to win many games where you are up lots of material.

Other Basic Patterns for Chess Matches

There are lots of other basic checkmate patterns that will help you win games. It is essential to know how to win games with these kinds of endgame patterns, but also just how to set up other checkmates as well for yourself in your games.

King and queen checkmate
Rook and king checkmate
Queen and helper checkmate
Dovetail checkmate, etc

Learning these basic patterns will ensure you can finish and win games where you did everything right and have a winning position, and just need to complete the win. Don’t leave wins and rating points on the table; take them whenever possible.

3. Opening Principles

To reach those winning positions, however, we need to set ourselves up for success. Playing with sound opening principles does just that. Many beginners think that they need to learn specific openings, and I think that is fine if it is something that you enjoy. Still, if you really want to improve, it will ultimately take some of your focus away from other things on this list, so good opening principles are the best way to focus your time.

How to play with Good Opening Principles

When trying to improve at chess, using good opening principles will always make your games easier to win. I always teach three things for the opening of a chess game:

Control the middle of the board with a pawn. It sounds simple, but so many beginners, and even intermediate players, think they are going to outsmart hundreds of years of chess knowledge somehow, and somehow win by playing 1.Nh3. Don’t do it! The principle of controlling the middle is simple: it improves your pieces.
Develop your knights and your bishops. After a starting move like 1.e4, you want to start developing your knights or your bishops into the game. If you leave your pieces on their starting squares, you might as well not have them!
Get castled. I already talked about the importance of getting your king safe, and it is vital to do so early!

Learning other openings can also be fun, but as you learn them, try to be aware of how they reinforce these kinds of principles. Playing Italian theory follows these opening principles as well.

4. Chess Training: Tactics

One of the biggest focuses you should have as a player trying to improve at chess is on tactics. Finding or missing a fork in a game can easily be the difference between winning and losing.

How to Train Tactics

Improving at tactics is the same as improving at learning musical patterns or at shooting a basketball: through repetition. By using books or online resources, you can drill specific kinds of tactics over and over so that you are primed to see them in your game. Remember, finding a tactic in your game is not just about spotting a fork once you know there is a fork in the position; you have to be ready at all times during your game to notice the fork pattern and realize there is a fork to play in the position. Through repetition, you can train yourself to do just that. You can use free resources like Lichess to train specific tactical patterns.

5. Playing Chess Matches and Games

Lastly, the most important thing to focus on to improve at chess is playing more chess. If you want to learn an instrument, you have to play it; if you're going to get better at basketball, you have to play basketball; and the same goes for chess. Make sure you are playing long enough games so that you have time to apply the other things you have been learning. I recommend playing at least 10-minute games, but longer is always better if you have the time. Once you have played more games, you can also take time to analyze those games. Focusing on analyzing your wins and, more importantly, losses, will help you to spot the ways that you can improve.

Frequently Asked Questions

There are three main ways to train and improve at chess. The first is playing the game, the second is studying of some kind like reading a chess book or learning an opening, and the last is through puzzles and practicing tactics.

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