Re: I want to learn chess.
 

Get a book or two on endgame first. It's much more interesting and fun. Sort of like post-flop play. Although in limit hold'em I feel like it's impossible to be a winning player without solid preflop play, it is much less essential in chess, at the level that you and your opponents will likely be. Endgame is the easiest part to play, followed by the middle game, so learn in this order.

Bob

Re: I want to learn chess.
 

Yasser Seirawan has a nice series of books. I started with the "Winning Chess Openings" and had a lot of success with it. Someone recommended staying away from Yahoo chess, however, I think its a great way to learn and work on basics. There are also a shitload of computer programs that will definitely help a beginning player.

Re: I want to learn chess.
 

[ QUOTE ]
Yasser Seirawan has a nice series of books. I started with the "Winning Chess Openings" and had a lot of success with it. Someone recommended staying away from Yahoo chess, however, I think its a great way to learn and work on basics. There are also a shitload of computer programs that will definitely help a beginning player.

[/ QUOTE ]

fics has anti-cheat crap, real interface and competent opponents. substantially better than yahoo in all respects.


www.freechess.org

Re: I want to learn chess.
 

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[ QUOTE ]
1.e4...

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More like 1.c4. It pwns everyone.

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I'm just a newbie, I'll look into that though. Thanks. I guess this will get you off the hook for that crappy post about Led Zeppelin.

Re: I want to learn chess.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
1.e4...

[/ QUOTE ]


More like 1.c4. It pwns everyone.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm just a newbie, I'll look into that though. Thanks. I guess this will get you off the hook for that crappy post about Led Zeppelin.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm pretty sure 1. e4 is better.

Re: I want to learn chess.
 

beginners only need to know the following order of development for their opening repetoire: center pawns, knights, bishops, castle, rooks, Queen. Memorizing the specific order of openings can be counter productive, imo. tactics are a MUST.

Re: I want to learn chess.
 

I started really "studying" chess 6 months ago and its easy to go over board. For openings just pick out two basics and memorize them. (ex:Sicilian, Queens Gambit..)
Middle game is alot of logical decisions which are natural for me and can be developed over time by most. There are plenty of websites that can help you out. And most of them have many demonstrations and examples of endgame and openings. And you can watch replays of GM games while they explain.

Re: I want to learn chess.
 

check out instantchess.com for some quick games while at work or if you have a few spare minutes

Re: I want to learn chess.
 

i started to get into chess a little bit because i find the study im putting into it enjoyable. i havent read any books, but have been using chessgames.com and computer program shredder classic.

chessgames.com allows you to watch thousands upon thousands of games from all the best players in the world. ive watched a ton of bobby fischer games and as a result, have a very good idea for opening starting moves along with middle and end games. before coming to this site, i was pretty decent at chess. i opened with queens pawn and had a pretty good idea for middle games, but had horrible end game strategy. i now realize that queens pawn pretty much blows. i couldnt put people into checkmate. i would always win by building a material advantage and then trading until the board is empty. now i feel that i have a good idea of checkmate combinations and have been able to checkmate opponents early in games, something which i could never have done before.

shredder classic supposively won the national computer application championships, meaning that it is the most sophisticated computer chess player in the world, at least for its time. obviously i could never build an advantage against it, and it of course can be frustrating to lose every game over and over again, but i learned so much from it. you can download the program off download.com, but its a trial version and costs a few bucks to continue if you want to.

Re: I want to learn chess.
 

If any of you would like one of your games analyzed, you can send it to me by PM and I will post the analysis here. I think that would be a good way for all who are interested to learn.