HOW TO GET GOOD AT CHESS
1)INTEREST AND PASSION
The first and foremost thing is to have a deep passion and interest in chess. You cannot appreciate chess’ true beauty if you are not interested in it, so strive to take an interest in it. The most important benefit of being engaged in chess or any other subject is that you like playing it repeatedly and develop a real passion in taking on challenges and thats the key to success in any discipline.
If you look at anyone who has achieved success in any field,the one thing they all had in common was that they all enjoyed what they did.Therefore,If you believe that you have a sincere interest in chess,start learning the game’s rules.Try to understand how each piece moves and what its significance is before you begin playing professionally.
2)PRACTICE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
If you have learned the rules of chess and learnt how each piece moves then you are ready to play a match.Start by playing against someone who is a little bit better than you. This will force you to think harder and create a tougher competition. If, however, you start by playing against someone who is much better than you, you may lose the game very quickly, as well as your confidence and motivation.On the other hand if you play with a player who is not as good as you then you might win very quickly and might become overconfident and end up learning nothing.
Practice in the right direction means to learn from those players and coaches who have both theoretical and practical knowledge in that area and have achieved some degree of success in the game. This is because they can provide you with the best advice, tips, tricks, and strategies that are necessary to become a good chess player. You can benefit from all of their experience. Whatever they have discovered in their years of playing chess, they can share it with you.You need to make sure that you learn not only from success of these people but also from failures and also what mistakes they did,you should try avoiding those mistakes in order to become a better chess player.
By solving out chess puzzles, you can further develop your chess skills. They are an excellent approach to develop your tactical abilities and opportunity-spotting abilities in a game. Numerous chess websites like chess.com and lichess.org offer variety of good chess puzzles for free which you can practice.
3)ANALYZE YOUR OWN GAMES
If you’ve just started playing chess, you should start analysing your own games. If you play online, you can do this easily but If you play offline, try writing down each move before you make it. Then, as the match ends, try carefully analysing each and every move to see where you made mistakes and what other move you could make in that particular position. If you win a match, look at the moves you made that helped you win it and determine whether there were any other moves you could have made that would have been better.There are many websites nowdays like lichess.org,chess.com which use artificial intelligence to analyse your chess game and provide you with the best possible move,tells you about you blunders and also gives the percentage chances of winning or loosing a particular match.
If you lose a game, don’t just be sad about it; figure out what went wrong. Consider whether you were scared by your opponent or the chess clock, whether you made a blunder, whether you choose the wrong opening that trapped you, or anything else.Just start analyzing your own games and gradually you will see an improvement.
4)START PARTICIPATING IN TOURNAMENTS
Chess competitions are the finest way to find out where you stand if you really want to know. You can now participate in competitions online as well.However, I strongly advise you to participate in as many offline events as you can.The reason behind this is that when you play offline you tend to gain an experience which is not possible in online mode.Try to participate in international chess events where you can compete against a variety of chess players.If you are a beginner don’t bother about winning or losing,just try to focus on gaining experience and learning as much as you can.
5)TRY MEMORISING SOME COMMON CHESS TRAPS AND BASIC OPENINGS
I am not asking to memorise all the traps or openings which is not possible at all but you should have some basic idea of openings like
Ruy lopez
Sicilian defence
Carocan defence
Queen’s gambit
English opening
You should also be familiar with some most common chess traps and also some traps which are there in every chess opening.
6)DON'T GET UPSET WITH FAILURE
Even though it’s easier said than done, you must learn to keep going in life no matter what failures you encounter. If you want to succeed, you must do this. Simply learn from your mistakes to get better. Success stunts our development, feeds our egos, and keeps us in our comfort zones, success isn’t as crucial as we think. Only through repeated setbacks and difficulties in life can a person grow strong. Every sportsperson have this quality because they know how to pick themselves up after falling short in a crucial game in front of the entire globe. Just keep working on your game and don’t place too much weight on success or failure.
7)ANALYZE GAMES PLAYED BY TOP PLAYERS
An excellent technique to enhance your own game is to analyse games performed by elite players. The easiest way to achieve this is to analyse the reasoning behind each and every move by concurrently viewing and playing their games on your own chess board. This will improve your ability to focus and teach you how to think like a professional player.
8)SECRET OF A GREAT CHESS PLAYERS
This point is more of a kind of cheat sheet for winning at chess rather than any form of guidance. I must be presuming that the majority of readers of this essay are familiar with Magnus Carlsen.What do you think is his key to staying at the top?What is the key to genuinely mastering the game of chess?
If you are a player at the intermediate level, you will eventually realise that your game had stopped developing after a certain level.Did you ever wondered why?
This occurred because the only way to become a great chess player is to count moves ahead of your opponent, which can only be done if your level of concentration is extremely high.The sole trick to become a good at chess is by increasing your ability to count more and more moves ahead.The more a player can calculate moves,it becomes easier for him to spot opportunities in a game and the more are the chances of winning. Take a look at any elite player. What features do they share. Elite players can calculate many movements ahead of their opponent and can easily spot opportunities to win the game. Your capacity to compute increasingly more moves in the shortest amount of time will improve as a result of the points described above.
I would also like to advice you that if you are beginner avoid playing too much of rapid or blitz games and the reason behind this is simple that as a beginner you just focus on calculating more and more moves don’t bother about time limit initially as it will only create unnecessary pressure if you have just started off.But after sometime you can play rapid and blitz format too.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
1)How much time will it take to improve my game?
Ans)Well the real answer to this question is, “It depends.” This is true because each person has a unique capacity for learning.It also depends how much effort a person is willing to put on a daily basis.However, to give you a rough idea, the answer would be at least 3 to 4 months.If you follow all the points mentioned above you will definitely start to see progress in your game.
2)How do I check whether my game has improved or not?
Ans)There are numerous ways to determine whether or not your game has improved. Your rating should start rising, which would be the first indication. View your rating from the previous month and the current rating if you are playing online. If it has increased by more than 100 points, your performance has undoubtedly improved.
The second sign would be your ability to defeat or at least draw with opponents who you previously believed to be slightly better than you.
The third and the most important one is that you are able to calculate more moves in a shorter span of time and you are able to look at more opportunities to defeat your opponent during a game.
3)Is it necessary that I follow each and every step given above to improve my game?
Ans)Well If you want to play at the top level then you definitely need to follow all the step given above.But if you are a beginner or a intermediate level player then I would rather advise you to participate in as many tournaments possible and start analyzing what mistakes you are making during a match and try to fix it.
4)Is it necessary that I need to know each and every opening to become a good chess player?
Ans)First off, because there might be countless variations inside a single opening, it is not possible for any chess player to memorise every single opening and its variations off by heart. Additionally, playing chess mostly serves to sharpen your thinking rather than to improve your memory.But however you shoud know the core idea behind every opening.By core idea I mean,the first 7 moves of that opening and atleast some most common traps possible in it.