Chess has always been a strategy based game, especially when it comes to how quickly or accurately your mind can think, chess will always challenge you.
So how exactly can you improve in chess?
Do your puzzles. Puzzles are very useful, here is an example of a puzzle on chess.com:
For this puzzle, Black is to move.
So, you can stop here for a while to find out how to get a winning position, let me try...
So, you can see from the arrows, the sequence is
54. Kf1 Nxg3+ (-M2)
55. Kg1 Qh1# (-M1)
0-1
So here, this shows that this is the correct sequence of moves, I solved 1 puzzle yay! Let us move on...
In this puzzle, Black is to move.
So, you can stop here for a while to find out how to get a winning position, let me try...
As you can see it is a 1 move checkmate pattern, called ladder mate and the king cannot escape.
As you can see from the arrows,
36. Kf1 Rd1# 0-1
Yes! We have solved our second puzzle successfully! Let us move on to the third and last puzzle!
So here, White is to move.
You can stop here for a while to find out how to get a winning position, let me try...
Ah, this technique of checking the king and taking the queen is called a fork.
1... Qe6??
2. Nc7+ Ke7
3. Nxe6 *
Yes! We are correct and we have successfully finished our last puzzle for today.
Good job everyone!
So, as long as you do your puzzles diligently, you will slowly start to be able to visualise how pieces will move on the board and your rating will definitely go up!
2. Learn your openings
When playing White:
Opening: Queen's Pawn Opening: Accelerated London System
So this opening is very good to play with white.
It starts with
1. d4 d5
2. Bf4
With White planning to go Nc3 after black's next move, this is one of the most solid openings that are very suitable for beginners.
Opening: Italian Game
The Italian Game is actually not that complicated it is just like a reversed London System but you play Nf3 first. The Italian Game goes like this:
1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. Bc4
In this opening, White pretty much protects the centre where Black will try to de-stabilise the centre with slower play. Thus, it will be a solid opening for those who learn it.
Opening: Vienna Game
This is quite a steady opening but has its own set of challenges and strategies. If Black plays Nf6 on the next move, you can actually play f4, which will convert the game into a Vienna Gambit, where you gambit a pawn and after exf4, you push the e-pawn to e5, attacking the knight, forcing the knight to retreat since the knight cannot go anywhere else safely. Then, you secure a full centre by play d4 and continue your normal development. The Vienna Game would go like this:
1. e4 e5
2. Nc3 (Nf6)
3. (f4 exf4)
4. (e5 Ng8)
5. (Nf3 d6)
6. (d4...)
() are the lines for the Vienna Game: Falkbeer, Vienna Gambit
When playing Black:
Opening: Caro-Kann Defense: Advance Variation (You may go research the Exchange Variation yourself)
The Caro-Kann usually starts with 1. e4 c5. Often White will take the full centre with d4 and when that happens, Black strikes in the centre with the move d5, directly attacking the e4 pawn and in the advance variation, White plays e5 and Black will follow with Bf5 before locking the centre with the move e6. The opening is as follows:
1. e4 c6
2. d4 d5
3. e5 (Bf5)
4. (Nf3 e6)
() is the line for the Short Variation of the Advance Variation
Opening: Scandinavian Defense
As you can see, Black is just giving away the pawn in a sense and white would usually take and you can take with the queen and retreat back to your position immediately. However, if white plays e5, do remember to do the same thing as the Caro-Kann, Bf5 and e6 to lock the centre. The Scandinavian Defense goes like this:
1. e4 d5
3. Visualise the moves on the board
For top players, they draw arrows and make pre-moves in front of you as they are quite sure that they can get a good position with it and also save their time in the game. Let me warn you, unless you are like 1600 and above, you should not be pre-moving unless you are trying to dirty flag someone but you still have to have some “predicting the future skills”. For example, before you make a move, you have to think, what am I trying to achieve and what would the opponent do to counter-attack you. After considering the risks and thinking that the move is fine, you can move your piece. There are always 4 things to note.
1. Never put your queen in front of your king as you may get pinned.(neither diagonally nor horizontally)
2. Always ensure you will not get forked by pieces and lose a valuable piece.
3. Don’t hang your pieces, take the pieces attacking your pieces of your opponent is the one hanging a piece and retreat if you cannot take.
4. After castling, ensure that you give your king some breathing space by pushing a pawn near your king by one square that does not really damage your position or the opponent can use the back rank as an advantage for them to checkmate you.
4. Always fight for the centre but do not blunder it
For example, this picture above shows quite a good position for white as it takes central space by pawns and soon, when supported by the knights or bishop, it will be hard for black to breakthrough in The Central part of the board after reinforcements by White.
5. Just analyse your game, whether it is self-analysis or computer analysis, learn from the computer, I am very sure Stockfish is way smarter than you unless you are Magnus Carlsen or Wesley So. Just analyse them with the analyse or game report button after each game. I will be teaching you more about how to self-analyse games that you played in the next episode.
Conclusion: Anyways, here we shall conclude here. These are the 5 tips I will give to for your to push past 800-900 ELO for Rapid games. Blitz and Bullet games may be different as they also involve the element of speed, which I will also separately talk about. So, when you have time, just try thinking more and fast too. Ok that’s it for now.
Recommended YouTube Chess Tips and Fun Content: IM Levy Rozman (@GothamChess) it would be very funny for some of his episodes and his 10 minute openings videos are good. See you again soon I guess…
-PhoenixChess
(The Good Writer)
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