Best Chess Tips for Beginners

1. Control the Center: Aim to control the center of the board (d4, d5, e4, e5) with your pawns and pieces. This gives your pieces more mobility and control over the game.
2. Develop Your Pieces Early: Get your knights and bishops out early to active squares. Avoid moving the same piece multiple times in the opening unless necessary.
3. King Safety: Always prioritize the safety of your king. Castle early to protect your king and connect your rooks.
4. Don’t Move the Queen Too Early: Avoid bringing your queen out too early in the game. It can become a target for your opponent’s pieces.
5. Use All Your Pieces: Try to involve all your pieces in the game. Don’t rely on just one or two pieces to do all the work.
6. Pawn Structure: Be mindful of your pawn structure. Avoid creating isolated or doubled pawns, as they can become weaknesses.
7. Plan Ahead: Always have a plan. Think about your moves and their consequences. Try to anticipate your opponent’s moves as well.
8. Practice Tactics: Spend time solving chess puzzles and practicing tactics. This will help you recognize patterns and improve your ability to spot winning moves.
9. Review Your Games: After playing a game, review it to understand your mistakes and learn from them. This is a great way to improve.
10. Stay Calm and Focused: Chess requires concentration and patience. Stay calm, think carefully about your moves, and don’t rush.
If you’re interested in more detailed explanations or specific strategies, there are plenty of resources and tutorials available online. Happy playing! 🏆

At each move think that if that move is attacking , defending or developing a peice

Good tips

A problem faced by beginners on the 400 level is that when you a playing a rapid game, your opponents don't follow these principles, they just attack, attack, attack out of the gate. It would be good if you could post a set of tips on how to get past this hurdle.

King for a reason

Thank you

Some great tips and advice to follow. Thanks

Thanks for those great tips !

snaptube vidmate 

Extremely helpful for beginners, thank you so much!

When your opponent attacks wildly (e.g. early queen out):

1. Take your time. In a normal opening, you can normally make moves quickly – you probably had the exact position before and know the best move, or every development is fine. But when your opponent goes for a crazy attack, the first thing you should do is realize that your next move requires some calculation.

A good rule of thumb is that the minimum time per move in seconds should be the numbers of the time control added together. For example, if you play a 15+10 game with 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move, you should spend at least 25 seconds (and at most 10 * 25s = 250 seconds) for these critical moves.

2. Look at your opponent's threats. For example, after 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 …

…white's immediate threat is Qxe5.

Threats are almost always checks and captures after your next move. So for every move you're considering you look at all the captures and checks your opponent will be able to play, and make sure you got them covered..

For example, after 2.…Nf6?, black's move 3.Qxf7+ is covered by your king, but 3.Qxe5+ wins a pawn for black. Therefore, 2.…Nf6? is not a good move and can be discarded from of your list of candidate moves.

3. Calculate. Many attacks are unsound, and your opponent can easily hang pawns or get their queen trapped with these wild attacks. So be on the lookout for tactics for you!

4. Develop if possible. Development means moving knights and bishops to active squares, and castling. For example, in the position above, five moves defend your pawn: Nc6, d6, Bd6, Qe7, and Qf6. Out of those, only Nc6 and Bd6 develop. Bd6 puts your bishop on a terrible spot, blocking the d pawn and making the bishop look at your own pawn. But Nc6 is a very natural development move, and should thus be at the top of your candidate list.

5. Once development is complete, plan to open the center and counterattack. Your opponent has moves by moving their queen or random pawns. If you slowly build up and improve the position, your development advantage will evaporate.

6. Realize that you have an advantage, but only a slight one, especially as black. Moving the queen early is bad, but it doesn't lose the game. It's easy to think My opponent played a bad move, so I must be winning. Why is my position not obviously winning? but that is dangerous. Make sure you understand that the position is still roughly equal and you'll have to calculate and fight for the next moves.

Thank your for this advice! I have read quite a few articles, posts, etc on opening principles aimed at beginners, but none have addressed the most frustrating problem for 400 level players (aside from blunders). Namely, what to do when most of your opponents are not aware of the principles and intrude on your efforts at development? These tips feel like the summary for a longer article on the topic. Very clearly written with helpful examples.

♟e4 is the best

Italian is best