6 TIPS TO OVERCOME THE BEGINNER PHASE AND START PLAYING GOOD CHESS!

Every chess player goes through the 700-800 rating phase, and the ones who overcome it find it extremely silly when they look back at their initial games and spot multiple blunders! Even I am a 1400-1500 rated player currently and I have conquered the "beginner" stage without taking any private lessons with an International Master or anything! These are some of the things I did to achieve this goal:

1. WATCH AND READ A TON OF VIDEOS AND ARTICLES

Needless me saying, WATCH more and more YouTube videos, and READ articles and blogs just like you're doing right now! Just like studying more doesn't harm you, studying a lot of openings, endgame ideas and theories can always come in handy because you can never predict how a game turns out. It is believed that there are more chess games played than the number of atoms present, and that's why extra info will always benefit you rather than acting as a wastage of time.
Studying different openings gives you various ideas and even if you don't play the opening, you'll remember some ideas and can execute them if you reach a similar position. There are many cliche points stated in every article or blog (including mine as well), but you might find some points which are helpful for you
These are some YouTube channels I would recommend you watching-

• ChessTalk (for many opening and endgame theories)
• ChessBase India (especially the Understanding Chess video series ft. Samay Raina to understand different concepts)
• GothamChess (for more openings and endgames with full entertainment)
• Eric Rosen (for learning through instructive chess games at a higher level)
• thechesswebsite
• Saint Louis Chess Club

2. STUDY ENDGAMES

A very underrated part of the beginner learning process is studying endgames. It's quite common in games, that you reach a position in which you are completely dominating in terms of material, but you don't know how to checkmate your opponent and it leads to a draw!
I would like to suggest some of the most common and important endgames to learn-
a. King and Queen Endgame
b. King and Pawn Endgame (which after promotion leads to the king and queen endgame)
c. King and Rook Endgame
d. Knight and Bishop Endgame
(This one is a bit difficult to learn but very significant too)

3. PLAY LONGER TIME CONTROLS

When starting off and on your journey to an intermediate rating level, AVOID playing shorter time formats like Bullet and Blitz chess. These formats can be played once you can play good moves and find them quickly. Play formats like Rapid (10+0/10+5) or Rapid (15+10/15+0) to start making good moves and eventually, you'll start finding good moves in a shorter span of time enabling you to play short time control matches. Whenever someone asks my rating, I always state my Rapid rating first, because I mainly count on that and that's when I do most of my thinking. I would also recommend going from slower time controls to eventually start playing everything, like start from 10+5 then 10+0, and when you feel you are able to make good moves (most importantly avoiding blunders) go to a shorter time control like 5+3/5+0.
Often what happens is that you can't stop playing 1 min games or 3 min games because you feel that 10 min games are boring and very long. That's another reason to avoid playing short games initially as it does not improve your game and is mostly played to save time, and have fun.

4. SPEND SOME TIME ANALYSING

Analyzing your past games is a key aspect and helps you really better than any of the tips. Analyzing your mistakes and correcting them makes you remember them more thoroughly and enables you to avoid them better next time. This is a principle valid for players ranging from 400 ELO to even grandmasters. Analyze your games and try to find better moves in positions where you know you blundered and could've done better. It's not necessary to always play the move suggested by the engine. Try to find a good move, and if you feel that your opponent doesn't have any counter, then mark that move and write a note to show the alternate variation in that position.
A great place to save all of your analysis is the Study section of lichess, where you can save all of your analyzed games and you can refer to them before any important tournament. Even I've made different studies for my bad games and some games where I thought I played well. You can too classify your games and create different studies based on the color you had, or a specific opening that you played, etc.

5. SOLVE PUZZLES/TACTICS AND HAVE FUN WITH IT

This is probably the most cliche suggestion and I would still include it because of its massive importance.
An important thing to keep in mind is- You might not get the exact same position of the puzzle you solved earlier, in the game but you need to understand the main motive behind the moves and you need to make moves to get in that position. Make such moves that will lead you to that position and then you can successfully incorporate the same ideas as discussed earlier.

Solving puzzles can sometimes be boring and that's why the variations in puzzle solving have made it much more fun to solve! On lichess, you will find different sections i.e Puzzles, Puzzle Racer, Puzzle Storm, Puzzle Streak which make solving puzzles a lot faster and a lot more fun, you can test all of them and not only enjoy but improve your game too!

I hope at least some of these tips help you get better at chess and trust me, it's not very hard to get to a 1400 or 1500 rating, just follow these and claim your GM title (in a few years probably)

Written by Petra/.