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All’s Fair in Love and War

We’ve now covered most of the rules of chess. You are no longer a beginner chess player but are instead a well oiled chess playing machine. Well, not quite. Knowing the rules is one thing, and knowing how to strategise and think ahead is another. Beginners often find this the most difficult part of learning. As with most things, practice makes perfect.


It’s actually not that hard to think a couple of moves ahead in Chess, even for a beginner. A player should always make a move that gives them a strategic advantage.

This also goes for your opponent. Let’s say an opponent moves a piece into the firing line of one of your pieces. Do not quickly assume that your opponent is an idiot, and take the piece. Think to yourself, why did they do that? Is it a trap? If I don’t take that piece, can I make a better move that would give me a better strategic advantage? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, you have actually thought a number of moves ahead.

The video above shows just how important strategy can be at the elite level.

Chess strategy is the difference between a good chess player and a great chess player. There are many books, videos, tutorials and websites that focus solely on chess strategy. Some can be found here.

There are a couple of concepts that the beginner should take time to learn:

  • Protect your King.
    When checked, you will most likely be forced into making a move you weren’t planning on making.
  • Advance your pieces.
    Every move you make should be aimed at placing a piece into a better attacking position. If you attack, attack, attack, your opponent is forced to defend, defend, defend/
  • Own the center.
    If you can place some pieces into the center of the board, and defend them with other pieces, this effectively gives you control of the center. Your opponent will be limited to advancing down the sides, thus limiting the effectiveness of any attacking piece.
  • Sacrifice if required.
    This sounds counter intuitive, but it may be of strategic advantage to relinquish a piece to bring an opponents piece out into the open.

For further reading, we have developed an article detailing several common chess tactics. Each detailed tactic is simple to learn and provide great gains in any game.

Super Freaky Moves

Just when you thought we’d finished covering piece movement, a couple more rise from the deep. There are a couple of advanced movements that can be performed.

Pawn Promotion

Remember that a Pawn can only move forward? What happens if a Pawn reaches the other end of the board? Actually, the Pawn can be promoted to any other piece, other than a King. The Pawn is removed from the board, and replaced with another piece.

Some people play a rule that states a Pawn can only advance into a piece that has already been taken from the board. This is generally played as most chess sets do not have spare pieces.

Castling

Castling is often used to provide additional protection for the King, or to bring the Rook into a more offensive position. Beginners may avoid castling for there first few games. To paraphrase the narrator of the video, Castling involves one Rook and a King. Both the King and the Rook must not have moved. There must be no pieces between the King and the Rook. When castling, the King must not be in check, or pass through check.

En Passant

En Passant may be invoked when a Pawn moves two squares on the first move. If the opponent has a piece attacking the first square the Pawn moves through, the opponent can remove the Pawn and place the attacking piece in the first square. Sound a bit confusing? As a beginner, don’t worry too much about this. Beginners have the unwritten right to to not play any rules they do not understand.

Are We There Yet?

Yeah, it is over! This website is just an introduction into beginner chess. Hopefully it provided you with enough information to play your first game. No longer can you be classified as a beginner chess player, and therefore, I hereby ban you from this website.

Only kidding! We will be routinely adding to our article section, and updating our blog. You are of course welcome to come back as many times as you like. Please consider subscribing to our RSS feed.

If you would like to see addition beginner related content, have any words of wisdom, or (hopefully not) complaint, click on the Contact Us link on the top of the page.

If you would like to take your learning further, we have done some research on chess books for beginners. Some are shown below:

Hope to see you back soon.

Chess board and piece diagrams generated using Chess Diagram Generator.