EPTChess - Page 2
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Thaniri
1264 Posts
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phantomfive
Korea (South)404 Posts
That's the fastest way to learn board vision. Then once you're feeling good with those, learn some endgames, especially pawn endgames, and some positional chess. Edit: I should add, the best way to practice tactics starting out is to go through a lot of them quickly. Don't spend 10 minutes on a single problem, look at the answer and figure out what you weren't seeing, then move on. You're trying to improve your vision of the board, try to see things quickly. | ||
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Fumanchu
Canada669 Posts
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WarSame
Canada1950 Posts
If anyone wants to add me my ID is War_Same. I just reached my highest 5 minute ranking ever, 1346.  | ||
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Warble
137 Posts
Learning algebraic chess notation is easy. It only looks like a foreign language, but you'll learn it in 2 minutes if you follow my instructions. Go to this Wiki page and look at the picture of the chess board at the top right. It has numbers and letters around it and has the captain "Algebraic notation": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_chess_notation Every move starts off with a letter denoting the piece and then the square it moves to. Knights are denoted by N because K is already used to denote kings. With pawns, you can use P, but most people just leave out the P. Use an x to denote a capture. 0-0 is castling kingside and 0-0-0 is castling queenside (it's the number of squares the rook moves). With these basics, you'll pick up the rest as you play. There are also online apps or programs like Winboard that can read notation for you while you get used to it. I play on FICS and wholeheartedly recommend it as the best free community. It's staffed entirely by volunteers and has a very active community of players across the entire skill spectrum. There aren't many GMs, compared to the fee-based servers like ICC, though. There are chat channels (including a server help channel), you can store friends and private messages, save your best games to a journal to show off to your friends, play an abundance of different chess variants (including Fischer random, suicide and bughouse), it tracks your rating against different time controls and variants, holds frequent tournaments (non-cash, of course), there are bots that run lectures, and they "stream" the big international tournaments live. You should download Babaschess because it's the most user-friendly interface for FICS and allows you to just jump straight into the chess. You can play as an unregistered guest, but most of the features, like ratings and private messages, won't be available to you. And most players tend to have guests muted because, being unregistered, they're less accountable. Just a note of caution: they only allow one account per person per lifetime, so think carefully when choosing your username. This has resulted in some unfortunate outcomes. If you do decide to join FICS, playing with a team is probably the best way to have fun, so check out teamleague.org, which runs tournaments on both FICS and ICC. The time control is 45 45, which is a good pace for learning. The weakest division has a rating cap of 1600, though, so you'll feel like a bronze playing in a plat-or-under tournament, but some of the teams are very open and social and open to making new friends even if you're not on their roster. I don't know how chess.com converts to real ELO, so I'll assume it's a perfect equivalent. I find it unusual that your teacher played you in a lightning game. I don't see any educational value in that. Think of a chess teacher as a private tutor for your child. School teachers have to be qualified and follow a standardised curriculum - but anybody can become a private tutor. So you have to shop around, discuss the lesson plans they have for you, and ask questions to make sure they're the right one for you. Others have already suggested resources, so I'll throw another one in: check out chesscafe.com. The Novice Nook column is aimed at lower ranked players. They have archives of all their past columns. The sample virtual mentor analysis you gave is too advanced for you. I would also recommend against looking at the more advanced resources suggested by others above. You'll find them useful eventually, but it's like learning to split marines while you still miss SCVs. At your level, you'll be learning to look 2-4 ply (half-moves) ahead to make sure you don't drop material and don't miss any chances to win material. That's 1-2 full moves. So if you're analysing move 10, any analysis after move 12 will be useless to you until you're rated about 1200 real ELO, where you start looking at more advanced tactics. At your level, it's all about counting material and making sure you don't fall behind. Equal trades are fine. That sample virtual mentor analysis would probably begin to be useful to you when you're around 1400-1500 when longer sequences of moves become meaningful to you. And no matter what your level, every single move, you should be asking yourself these questions, in this order:
Once you get to about 1000, you also start to ask those questions about every move you try out in your head. Until you get to about 1800, your losses will largely be due to one of the first two, and up to 2000 you'll still be losing because you missed the third. Learning not to lose to any of these is like learning to always be building workers, not getting supply blocked, and keeping your money low. That's not to say you can't start learning grand strategy now. It's just that it won't affect whether you win or lose. It's like a bronze player worrying about holding off a 111. Sure, a master could wipe him with a 111, but even if he knew the counter, he would still lose to the master because his macro is bad. And if another bronzer used the 111 on him and he didn't know how to counter it, he would still win if he remembered his probes and pylons. But knowing that a 111 is dangerous, and what's good and what's weak against it, allows the bronzer to enjoy watching GSL. In other words, learn strategy if that makes it fun for you. But you're still at the stage where you're learning to macro, and that means keeping your king safe and not falling behind in material. | ||
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GolemMadness
Canada11044 Posts
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Funnytoss
Taiwan1471 Posts
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Bengui
Canada775 Posts
If you do, you should really watch Patterns Everyone Must Know: Basic Tactics by Daniel Rensch. | ||
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Smancer
United States379 Posts
On October 02 2012 00:47 Bengui wrote: If you're using the chess.com chess mentor, I assume you have a diamond membership? If you do, you should really watch Patterns Everyone Must Know: Basic Tactics by Daniel Rensch. If you are using Chess.com there is a team liquid group with 40 something members. | ||
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