Getting Ahead in Chess

Before I really got into tournament chess, I had a serious problem on my hands. I absolutely loved chess, and I spent a majority of my free time working at it, but I really had no clue about how to improve. I knew there was knowledge out there that I didn't know yet, but I didn't know what it was. Once I figured out what I knew and didn't know, my new problem was that I had no clue how to really learn new things. I would read articles and even books, and most of the material was above my head. I eventually picked up a little here and there, but I was progressing extremely slowly for the amount of time I was putting into it. I had no idea how to accelerate my growth in chess. Looking back on my growth from being a beginning player who knew some basics to becoming a true intermediate player, I traced some of the most important measures I took and have outlined them here for you.

1. Learn tactics, and practice them daily.

If you don't know what chess tactics are already, then before you do anything else, you need to figure this out. Use a search engine and find pages talking about forks, skewers, pins and other tactics in chess. Tactics are where the pattern recognition aspect of chess severely rears it's head, so practicing these daily with tactical puzzles from a workbook or from some online resource is optimal. It will take a while for you to develop an extremely deep feel for tactics in any given chess position, but by doing just a few daily exercises or tactics puzzles, you can ingrain these in your memory and start to develop your tactical intuition.

Chess tactics are generally fairly simple ideas that have a huge impact on the position. For example, a fork is a type of tactic in which you attack two pieces or squares at once. Since your opponent can only make one move at a time, they can only defend against one of the threats. By studying chess tactics, you will begin to decimate beginner opponents just by your shear knowledge alone, without having to really out-think them. You'll see the patterns for these types of tactics coming through to you on the board, and the rest is a cake.

2. Learn basic endgames.