How to Win at Chess

Let me state up front that I am not a chess master or even an expert. My highest USCF over the board rating was 1793. My highest USCF correspondence chess rating was 1940. I did make it into the top quarter of tournament chess players in the US. I have been playing in chess tournaments offf and on since November of 1974. I have read many books on chess and magaizine articles on chess. They have helped me some, but obviously not enough considering my current rating.

One of the books that I have yet to read is Think Like A Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov. The ISBN is 978-0713478853. I have read excerpts from the book, though.

At my level of chess most games are won or lost because someone messed up. I rarely win because of a brilliant move that I found. Likewise, when I lose it is because I messed up somewhere. I am still trying to figure out how to error proof my chess games. In the remainder of this article I am going to make some suggestions on how to improve your play and avoid errors. Let me state up front that I cannot make any guarantees of your individual results.

I took chess lessons from a USCF Life Master named Tom Stiers. One of the first things that he taught me was to look at each move that I was planning to make and then to consider each possible reply that my opponent can make to those moves. I have lost many games because I overlooked one of my opponent's replies! The problem is that this advice is difficult to apply if you are playing a game with a fast time limit. If you take the time to look at all of your opponent's possible moves you will lose on time forfeit! A balance needs to be made between analysing a positon and moving quickly enough to stay ahead of the clock. I have always done very poorly at blitz chess because if I take the time needed to avoid blunders I lose on time and if I move quickly I blunder. However, even in correspondence chess games, where I have plenty of time and can use books and magazines to help me, I still blunder at times! One of the things that can help in correspondence chess games is using databases of master games. I have taken the time to create databases of old master level games ordered by opening. What is time consuming is going through these games and marking the moves that win for White, the ones that win for Black, and the ones that draw. However, the payoff for doing this analysis is knowing which moves to avoid when playing either Black or White.

Getting lessons from someone who is better at chess than you are is also helpful, if you can afford to do so. Taking chess lessons from Tom Stiers actually hurt my chess rating! Instead of building on what I already knew he created confusion by changing my openings for both Black and White. When I was playing these new openings in tournaments I would forget what he showed me to play or I would end up in positions that I had never seen before. Because I didn't understand the ideas and theory behind each opening I would often be lost! If you are going to pay for chess lessons, make sure that your teacher is not only beter than you are but also someone who knows how to teach you. What works for John may not work for you!

There are chess books that you can buy (see the links below). Some are on general theory and have names like My System,Pawn Power in Chess, and Think Like A Grandmaster . Others are more specific to openings or endgames. If you stud any well written chess book it can only help improve your chess game. You can also buy chess software like Fritz and you can buy lessons on DVD. Grandmaster Roman Dzindzichashvili DVDs can be a big help to you in improving your chess game, if you can afford to buy them.

You can check out my chess games, and my beginner's page, at my chess site. I also have a book store that you can check out. All of these wonderful things that may help you to improve your chess game are located at http://www.mikeseroveyonchess.com.