Mistakes Beginner Make When Learning Chess

This Post Was originally written by Daniel Schipper

Learning chess is hard. Don’t let masters who learned the game as babies confuse you! Even getting to 1000 rating is no small task. I learned chess as an adult, taught hundreds and hundreds of kids the game, and have seen every mistake one can make along the way. There are three types of mistakes that I see: mistakes in process, practice, and patience. If you can solve for these three kinds of mistakes, your rating, and your enjoyment of chess, will go sky high. 

(Credit: Pexels/Abhishek Navlakha)

A Chess Players Self Examination

Before we dive into these three kinds of mistakes, I want you to take a moment of self-reflection and examination. Examine for a moment how you study, play, and think about chess. What does your normal process of learning look like? Are you watching a youtube video and then playing bots? Do you already have a chess coach? When you play games, what does your analysis process look like? Take a quick mental snapshot of your chess right now, so that you can honestly reflect on if you are making these mistakes that I will mention.

Mistakes in Process

Chess is a game of processes. One small slip up in your process on the board, and you might hang checkmate. But what about the learning process? These are some mistakes that I have seen people make in the processes that they use to learn chess. Later we will dive into problems in the actual way you practice what you are learning, but first, we need to see how you are learning. We can start, by looking at the absence of any process.

Not Having a Process

To start, there is nothing wrong with having no plan or process when it comes to getting better at chess, as long as you don’t care about getting better at chess. If you just want to play chess and have fun, then it is more than okay to not stress about how you are going to get better and just play and enjoy the game. But if you are reading an article like this, then you probably care about improving your chess and want to have the process in place to do just that. So the biggest mistake I see people who want to get better at chess have, is not having any plan in place to improve. If you don’t think critically about how you can get better, you probably wont.

Not Having Clear or Obtainable Goals

In chess, it can be difficult to track your progress, especially if you just count wins and losses. If you want to improve, give yourself clear goals, but make sure they are attainable. Pick a rating goal that is not too far from where you are, and could reasonably be reached with consistent play and study. If you are under 1000 rated, you could make that rating a goal to strive for. But, if you find reaching a rating goal to be difficult, or too stressful, make yourself a goal based in time spent, or games played. Try to play ten rapid games in a week, for instance. Then you are not relying on whether you win or lose to achieve your goal, just on how hard you work.

Unobtainable Goals by Chess Beginners

I have seen far too many new chess players, especially adults who are new to the game, immediately set the level of grandmaster as their goal. Reaching grandmaster is almost always too lofty of a goal, in the same way that making it into the NBA is an unhelpful goal to someone who wants to start playing basketball in their local gym. If you are a parent, this can still be an unhelpful goal to have for your child even if you are starting them very young. Start with simple goals involving play time, study time, and puzzles solved.

Not Playing Enough Games

If you want to get better at chess, you have to play. I see far too many players spend all of their time on studying, watching chess content, or doing puzzles, and they don’t just play chess! Playing chess is what you want to get better at, so you need to practice real games. Reading a chess book is great, but if you don’t implement enough playing time into your study plan, your process is not going to work.

Playing the Wrong Opponents

When you play your chess games, you need to play the appropriate opponents. This means no bots! Playing bots is not a good practice for playing against real people. Bots, while sometimes less stressful to play against, do not play like humans. It is also tempting to play the easier bots because you win more often, but we need to be challenging ourselves! If you can, find a friend or partner who is around your skill level, or even slightly stronger than you, to practice with. Playing online, or in official OTB tournaments, is great because it automatically pairs you with someone near your skill level.

 (Credit: Pexels/Pavel Danilyuk)

Mistakes in Practice

Once you figure out the process that will help you improve, there are some common mistakes a beginner can make in their actual play and practice. I am not talking about the blunders you make on the chess board. As a coach, I rarely care if my student blunders when they simply miscalculate or don’t see a tactic. If I were teaching a language, how could I be upset with a student for not knowing a word that they have not yet learned? But, if you have learned the word, and you just don’t take your time to think and remember, then a teacher might be disappointed.

Playing Too Fast Leads to Chess Blunders

Playing too quickly is the number one mistake I see students make in their practice. How can you improve if you do not take time to process what is happening on the chessboard? The same can be said for going through chess puzzles. If you speed through a puzzle and don’t actually calculate, then getting it right or wrong barely matters. You won’t learn as well as you can if you don't take your time. Slow down. Think.

Not Varying Your Practice

If you want to improve at chess, you cannot practice in only one way. Just doing puzzles, for instance, will make you better at tactics, but it will not help you improve in strategy. You need to vary your practice, and learn all parts of the game. Try to build a study plan that includes puzzles, openings, endgames, playing games, and studying master games. By hitting multiple parts of the game, you will optimize your improvement.

Practicing Alone

Obviously, playing chess takes another person, but don’t be afraid to find a practice partner to study chess with as well! It can be very rewarding to pour over a puzzle with another person. You can also set up sparring positions where you run through those same positions multiple times until you master them. Practicing alone is sometimes all that is available, but don’t give up on finding a practice partner, or if that is difficult, a coach can serve lots of the same purposes.

Problems With Patience

Any new skill you are trying to learn, be it an instrument, sport, or art, you must be patient with yourself. What does that mean in chess? We already talked about how you need to be patient on the board, especially as a beginner, and that is very true. Most beginners play way too fast and will blunder without even realizing it. Another way a beginner will blunder is by moving off the board too quickly.

Not Analyzing Your Losses

If you do lose a game, take a breath. Don’t give up, but also don’t move on to the next game just yet. Chess is incredibly difficult because the best way to get better is to ruminate on your failures. And that is not fun. Take a second to look through your game and try to identify the moments that you think are blunders, then decide if you could have avoided that mistake, or ask yourself why you played that move. By taking the time to decipher why you made a mistake, you can learn how to avoid the mistake in the future.

Don’t Quit!

Chess is hard. It would be understandable if you wanted to quit. Instead, take time to figure out what it is that you like about chess. If you like playing with your friends, but want to try to get better in order to beat them? Maybe add some puzzles to your practice instead of just playing Bullet! Instead of giving up on the game entirely, figure out what it is that you enjoy, and focus in on that. And if that means you don’t have the perfect study plan, then so be it! Have fun. Learn to love the beauty in the game of chess. Part of that beauty comes from the depths to which you can dive within the game. If you have more fun in the shallow waters, then thats great, just don’t climb out of the water all together.