Learning to Play Chess (Blog)

[Steve Pavlina]

There's actually a park down the street with chessboard tables. It's only a 2-minute walk from my house. I've never seen anyone actually playing chess there though.

I like the local club idea. I'll look into that. I found one chess club that meets twice a week in the evenings. It's about a 25-minute drive from me. They have a very minimal website though with no info other than the meeting time and location, so I can't even tell if they're still active:
Clark County Chess Club, Las Vegas

[Keith]

Guys, playing chess does not preclude Steve from playing Go. Both are beneficial and it's not an either/or choice.

Steve explicitly said that he finds Chess interesting right now, Chess just seems more interesting right now.

P.S. Since Steve already possesses a lot of the benefits one gains from chess (strategic & pattern thinking etc.), I'll be interested to see if he gains further benefit from it or if he's already 'maxed out'.

[Nathan]

I used to play chess competitively back in high school, I've played a little bit since then but you lose your knack for identifying the patterns. Not only did I enjoy it, but I found it helped my focus and logic/problem solving in school.

I'd love to have a game with you online once you think you have got the fundamentals down, Steve. Good Luck!

[Steve Pavlina]

Can someone explain how player ratings work? If I'm just starting out, do I have some minimal rating already?

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

There's actually a park down the street with chessboard tables. It's only a 2-minute walk from my house. I've never seen anyone actually playing chess there though.

I like the local club idea. I'll look into that. I found one chess club that meets twice a week in the evenings. It's about a 25-minute drive from me. They have a very minimal website though with no info other than the meeting time and location, so I can't even tell if they're still active:
Clark County Chess Club, Las Vegas

I've played chess pretty frequently in my younger days, ever since I was 8 years old, and I'd pretty much beat almost all of my friends and family on a regular basis. I did find one friend who was able to give me a real challenge and even then, he would only have a 50% chance of beating me, and those games were long drawn out games, though of course I enjoyed them a lot.

A few years ago I went to a local chess club meeting. I told them I had never been to one, and so they assigned a youngin to play me. He beat me so quick and so fast, that I lost all interest in the chess club and never went back.

I'm not really sure I understand your fascination or your interest in learning this game Steve. I read the post, but I'm just not sure I understand the "why learn this". I don't really see any benefits I've gained from chess except that when playing certain other games, controlling the center of the board can be vitally important.

I myself might enjoy playing chess once in a while against people, but I prefer playing other board games. I don't like playing against the computer - it's just not as fun trying to out-think the computer as it is to try to out-think a human opponent.

[Jaroszewski]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Can someone explain how player ratings work? If I'm just starting out, do I have some minimal rating already?

FIDE uses the ELO rating, USCF has its own rating system. They're both quite a bit complex to calculate, and you'll not have any until you become a member of the USCF. If I can give you any advice, is that you shouldn't really be looking into that right now.

One other thing: Kingston said that you should start with the opening theory. From what I read, heard, and experienced, this is the wrong approach. You should start by studying the endgame, so you learn how to mate. After that you learn middlegame, so you know how to get into the endgame.

The thing with openings is that the theory got so big, that it's not so much about thinking it through by yourself anymore, but more about memorizing a whole bunch of stuff. Most lines, nowadays, are analyzed at least up to the 12th move. The best I could do so far in my own studies is to learn patterns and objectives: I know how a Ruy Lopez, a Sicilian, a Petroff, a Slav, an English, a French, etc. look like at its early stages so I can get an idea of what to play next, but without serious study and practice I couldn't get past the 7th move. Worst of all, once I got there, I did not know how to do the middlegame, so all that hard mental work meant absolutely nothing.

All you really need to read about the opening, so far, is this section of the Wikipedia article: Aims of the opening

[Kingston]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Can someone explain how player ratings work? If I'm just starting out, do I have some minimal rating already?

Your Elo rating indicates your relative skill level within a reference group. If you play official tournaments, this reference group is the other members registered with the chess association that flags the tournament. If you play online, the reference group is all players registered at the site.

You usually start out at 1000 or 1200, but this does not matter because it takes only about 10 games before your rating is stable and at the "true" level. When you win you go up en when you lose you go down. It is a fixed formula that calculated your rating automatically.

Your rating is related to your percentile rank within the reference group, and reflects how likely you are to win from someone. For example, 1178 is at the 27th percentile, 1370 at the 56th percentile, 1720 at the 90th percentile, and 1978 at the 98th percentile. When you lose from an equal, you lose about 5 points, but when he is far below you you can lose much more, and vice versa. That is because it is an estimate. If you beat someone way better than your rating, you probably are not bad after all, so the rating is increased more than when you beat an equal.

[Kingston]

Originally Posted by Jaroszewski

One other thing: Kingston said that you should start with the opening theory. From what I read, heard, and experienced, this is the wrong approach. You should start by studying the endgame, so you learn how to mate. After that you learn middlegame, so you know how to get into the endgame.

I did not mean study everything. You are right that a beginner should study all phases, and that is why I recommended "The Chess Player's bible", which gives that complete start. You should learn just a few common (and interesting) lines up to the 5 th move or so. I only know about 5, and that gets me far enough.

The main thing is: get to know all the beginner concepts of all three phases, and then just play lots!

[mlc82]

Hey Steve, I learned quite a bit by playing through the (really in-depth) tutorials on Chessmaster 10th Edition (http://chessmaster10.ubi.com/uk/), I think it retails for around $20 and is a pretty good teaching tool as well- I learned much easier by going along and doing onscreen than from trying to read chess books personally.

[munish]

Originally Posted by seeker5

I'm not really sure I understand your fascination or your interest in learning this game Steve. I read the post, but I'm just not sure I understand the "why learn this".

Instead of pushing humans out of the game and turning it into a battle of machines, chess is evolving into a man-machine collaboration._S.P.

[oneday]

if you play on a online site, they might have their own rating system (similar to others).. but when people talk about their ratings in real-life, and over the internet they are usually talking about their USCF (US Chess Federation) rating.

You get a rating by playing in official chess tournaments and is calculated very confusingly. Your rating is not considered a true rating until you have played 25 games.

if someone has a rating 100 points higher then you, then the higher rating person will probably win 6 out of 10 games. if 400 points higher than you, then probably 9 out of 10 games.

Here is a nonofficial breakdown of the ratings:

Over 1100 indicates Premier

900 - 1100 indicates Advanced

700 - 900 indicates Intermediate

500 - 700 indicates Advanced Beginner

Under 500 indicates Beginner

---------------------------

the ratings go as high as around 2800. (grandmasters are the really high numbers)

hope this helps steve

play me sometime when you get a little better

-rj

[fynyx]

Dear Steve Pavlina and fellow bloggers,

1) My meagre development at playing chess stopped, once I concluded I lacked the potential to read many potential moves ahead, following from the interplay of so many alternative ways of play.
Like higher university math, the complex management process of it all humbled me into surrender.

2) I believe Steve understands chess as a game, much more than he is telling here, or perhaps is aware of.
Being many years in the industry himself, perhaps this is a new enjoyment of yet another new play form?

3) For years, I have been amused with variants of standard Western (International) chess.

There still is the Chinese variant, that I grew up with, very popular in my corner of the world.

My teenage love of Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, yielded an early 3D version involving mythical creatures of sky, ground, and caverns below.
It was authored invented by the original creator Gary Gygax himself.

And the Star Trek Next generation TV series yielded another 3D version involving sliding boards.

Despite mentioning variants here, I still actually admire how even the standard variety alone, opens play to infinite possibilities. Kudos!

4) At the same time, I continue to be interested in things like:

What if the versatility of chess play were combined with the intricacies of other game forms, like:

a) the card deck possibilities of Magic the Gathering?
b) the tabletop miniature gaming tactics of Warhammer 40K?
c) the layered storytelling plots of White Wolf's Vampire: the Requiem roleplay?
d) the human-player politics within online games including World of WarCraft?

[Steve Pavlina]

I've played a few more games and am now able to consistently squash the computer player at level 2 on the Windows Vista chess program. Onward to level 3. I'll move on to human opponents soon, but right now I'm learning a lot by exploring possibilities with liberal use of the undo key. It helps me understand the consequences of different potential moves.

I've also read up on opening moves. I liked learning the strategic and tactical significance of each possibility, such as control of the center and development of attack posture. Now I understand why 1. e4 is considered a strong opening.

It was fun playing a game and seeing the computer do something I could anticipate. I'd move 1. e4 and recognize him responding with the Sicilian defence, so I already knew what move to make next.

I felt like Inigo Montoya saying to the man in black, "You are using Bonetti's defence against me, eh?"

Perhaps the computer player doesn't realize I'm left-handed.

[Kingston]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I felt like Inigo Montoya saying to the man in black, "You are using Bonetti's defence against me, eh?"

Aah.. jargon! It so beautifully excludes the oblivious

[Trezker]

Anyway. You chose chess, it may not be the game of gods but it's a good choice.
TIP: Don't use undo, let yourself feel the impact of your mistakes and it learns faster. Also this allows you to deal with awkward situations and learn to fight better from a disadvantage.

Grasshopper: Which is the greatest game ever invented?
Master: Chess.
Grasshopper: But what about Go?
Master: Go has always existed.

A very good feature in Go is the simple handicap system. You can play someone a lot stronger than you and you will both have a challenge finding the right balance.

If you're gonna play Go after Chess. Remember to lose your first 100 games as fast as you can.

[Steve Pavlina]

I played two games of Chess Titans at level 3 (out of 10) today and won both, the first one barely and the second one decisively. I'm getting a good feel for the early and mid-game strategy. My weakness is the end game. I need to learn how to achieve checkmate with different kinds of pieces. I'll move up to level 4 for the next game. I'm trying to play at least one or two games a day (15-20 minutes per game).

I'm quite enjoying these games. Once I figure out how to play the end game, I'll probably try my hand at some human players online.

I think the reason I find Chess more enticing than Go is that I wrote a computer game years ago (called Dweep) that was strategically similar to Chess. It was only single player, but you had to figure out the right series of discrete moves to reach your goal. The levels were single screen on a 16x10 grid, and every move was completely deterministic, but some levels could take more than an hour to solve. You had to learn to think several moves ahead. Playing Chess reminds me a lot of that game except that now I'm playing against an opponent.

[Steve Pavlina]

Today I setup an account on GameKnot.com for playing chess online. If anyone wants to challenge me to a game there, my handle is stevepavlina, so please feel free. It's free to register for an account.

I've only played about 15 games total thus far (against computer opponents), so I doubt I'll be much of a challenge if you're halfway decent, but I don't mind getting trounced for the learning experience. I'm open to playing total beginners too, as long as you at least know how the pieces move and what checkmaste is.

If you aren't familiar with the site, the games aren't in real-time, so you can take as much time as you need to make a move, days if you want. You get sent an email when it's your turn to move. So this way I could probably handle a goodly number of simultaneous games. I only ponder my moves for a few minutes at most.

The site automatically assigned me a rating of 1200 when I joined, so that wasn't earned. It says that once I play 10-20 games or so, my rating should adjust to a reasonable approximation. I'm curious to see where I land ratings-wise.

I didn't want to post this on the blog, since I'd be concerned about getting invites to 1000 games at once.

[Dan.Linehan]

I'd definitely be down, PM anytime tomorrow if you'd like to setup a time.

[ellie]

Oh I haven't played chess in years. My dad taught me chess when I was about 7 years old. Great game.

[Iamsuperman]

Steve, I consider myself an imformed amateur so I should be able to beat you.

Just to let you know, depending on how they've got the rating system setup, your rating might be a little wacky if you play a lot people who have just signed up.

See you in the ring!

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

I'd definitely be down, PM anytime tomorrow if you'd like to setup a time.

No need to setup a time, since the games aren't in real-time. You get an email notification when it's your turn to move, so there could be hours or even days between moves.

[Dan.Linehan]

Nah, I'll pass on the slow game.