How to Get Good at Chess

An Improvement Plan

Chess is a game of infinite complexity and endless variations. It is one board game that everyone wishes they were good at. Not necessarily world champion-level good, but good to beat people in your immediate circle. When you perform this feat, most people’s reaction is typically the same — they are impressed. Really impressed. In my case, it is usually a similar scenario. After beating a couple of people, I pull my ace in the sleeve — offer to play a blindfold match. Now, this gets everyone’s attention.

I grew up in Azerbaijan and was lucky to have been exposed to chess very early in my life. Chess is very popular in my country. After all, my city — Baku — was where Garry Kasparov is from. My father and many of my family members and friends were decent-level amateur chess players. Finding practice partners was not a problem, which was great because there was no online chess at the time. Yes, I am that old. :)

Most of my chess study has been self-study and I surpassed the ELO rating of 2,000 without any professional training and without a crazy amount of study time. Enough to smash amateurs and occasionally surprise professionals. Enough to train my sons to do well in local chess competitions.

I don’t think it is very difficult, to be honest. It is just a matter of discipline and following the right kind of training regimen. And that is what I would like to share with you — my experiences after trying multiple different methods of study.

Side note — getting to my level of chess is one thing, but becoming a professional is a whole other thing. You need professional guidance and a significant amount of time. With this clarification out of the way, let’s get right to it.

I assume you know the rules of the game and understand the relative value of pieces. You know what a win or a draw look like, and when to resign.

Step 1. Start playing.

Don’t overthink it at this point, focus on a couple of key principles:

• Safety. King safety first, then the safety of your pieces. Focus on not blundering. At every move, look at the board and identify your loose pieces, and try to make sure everything is protected.
• Activity. Kasparov once remarked that chess is all about piece activity. So in your first games, focus on opening up the position, occupying the center, and creating positions with maximum mobility for your pieces.
• Thought Process. You will gradually realize the need for a relatively simple thought process AT EACH MOVE. The simplest version will include:
  - an evaluation of the position;
  - deciding on the general approach (attack or defense?);
  - deciding on your move;
  - IMPORTANT! Last check (to make sure you are not being checkmated or losing a piece)
  Do not worry about making your thought process more sophisticated at this point. It will get there over time.

Step 2. Tactics!

This is the single most important component of the game you should invest in. Improving without sound tactical skill is close to impossible. Do the following:

• Study key patterns (types of checkmates, pin, fork, skewer, double attack, discovered attack, etc.).
• Do tactics training as often as you can, preferably daily. There are different methods to use here, my favorite is to pick a large enough sample of exercises with increasing levels of complexity, starting with one move checkmates, for example, moving to progressively more complex patterns. Solve 10–20 a day, not spending more than a few minutes on each. If you can’t solve an exercise, look up the solution and make sure you understand it. Move on to the next. The main point is not to solve each, but to “upload” a maximum number of tactical patterns into your brain. You can repeat the cycle a few times, going over the same exercises over and over to retain information about the patterns. MOST IMPORTANTLY, pick exercise material that asks you to find the best move — which most closely resembles a real-game situation.
• Enhance your thought process algorithm. As your tactical skill improves, you will start calculating further and further. At each move, you will consider candidate moves before settling on one. Make sure you start with forcing moves — moves that force a certain kind of response, limiting the opponent’s options (checks, captures, or threats).
• Recommended resources:
  - Play Winning Chess by Yasser Seirawan
  - Winning Chess Tactics by Yasser Seirawan
  - 1001 Deadly Checkmates by John Nunn (or similar books by Reinfeld or Henkin)
  - Learn Chess Tactics by John Nunn
  - Manual of Chess Combinations by Sergey Ivashchenko
  - 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games by Laszlo Polgar

Step 3. Study Master Games and Analyze Your Own Games.

• Studying master games is one of the best ways to improve at chess. It helps internalize general principles while observing the decision-making of the best chess players in history. You can also just enjoy beautiful attacks and flawless technique. You can pick the style of play you would like to explore — attacking chess (games of Alekhine, Tal, Kasparov, or Shirov) or positional chess (games of Capablanca, Petrosian, Karpov)
• Playing slow games, recording the moves, and subsequently analyzing your games can also be a powerful improvement tool. It is best to first go over the game on your own, trying to identify key moments of the game, good and bad moves, and what you could have done better. You can use a computer engine after that and it will show you exactly what went wrong. Chess engines are so powerful at this point, they are an essential training tool.
• Review one chess strategy book. In my experience, studying strategy in the abstract is not very helpful at the intermediate stage — it is better to internalize strategic principles by studying master games, but going through one reference material can be useful.
• Recommended resources:
  - Winning Chess Brilliancies by Yasser Seirawan
  - Winning Chess Strategies by Yasser Seirawan
  - Logical Chess Move by Move by Irving Chernev
  - Understanding Chess Move by Move by Irving Chernev
  - Zurich 1953 by David Bronstein
  - My 60 Memorable Games by Bobby Fischer
  - Understanding Chess Move by Move by John Nunn

Step 4. Endgame Study

I strongly recommend investing in endgame study BEFORE you spend significant time on opening study. The opening study gives you an edge short-term, but improvement of your endgame play will pay off long-term. Be smart.

• Start with pawn endings. Make sure you do not skip this, pawn endings will help you understand the most fundamental principles of endgame play.
• Then move to rook endings, particularly some key standard positions that you can find in any quality endgame book. Follow by studying queen endings, light piece endings, then unbalanced positions, etc.
• Recommended resources:
  - Winning Chess Endgames by Yasser Seirawan
  - Endgame Strategy by Mikhail Shereshevsky
  - Endgame Manual by Mark Dvoretsky

Step 5. Study Openings

Now you are upgrading and professionalizing your game. You need to build an opening repertoire for white and black pieces, addressing most high-percentage responses by the opponents. This will save you time and make sure you do not waste time and energy for the first 5–10 or perhaps more moves. Improving your opening play will also help you arrive at playable middlegames and sometimes win games right out of the opening.

The reason why it is best to delay opening study is that when you are a beginner, you cannot really determine what openings will match your style and preferences. You don’t really have a style at that stage. But as you get into the intermediate level, you develop likes and dislikes. Maybe you prefer swashbuckling sharp games, maybe you like locked positions with a lot of maneuvering. Whatever it is, you will pick openings that make the most sense to you.

• Study the Openings chosen. Play 5–10 key games in each opening to understand the general ideas and themes. Then focus on studying most high-percentage lines. Check out the main opening mistakes in the variations you have chosen — best not to experience them in your matches!
• Play fast games. Playing a lot of blitz games gives you an opportunity to accumulate a lot of practice in the openings you are studying.
• Recommended resources:
  - Winning Chess Openings by Yasser Seirawan

Start with Seirawan’s book and then progress to the opening-specific resources. There are dozens of books for each opening variation you will choose. For example, Neil McDonald’s and John K.Shaw’s have excellent books on the King’s Gambit. Sergey Kasparov and Michael Melts are my main sources for Scandinavian Defence. Richard Palliser and Carsten Hansen’s books have been my key reference materials on Closed Sicilian.

Congratulations. If you have done all of the above, and have practiced enough slow chess, you are now a strong intermediate or potentially even an advanced-level player. At this point, you are well equipped to design your own chess study, but you might want to:

• Practice, practice, practice. Play regularly and work on increasingly complex tactical exercises (you can use specialized software, such as CT-ART). Try playing chess solitaire where you pick a side of a master game and try to predict the master’s choices, then check it against what actually happened in the game.
• Continue improving specific aspects of the game — studying dynamics and tension, prophylactic thinking, pawn structures, exchange variations, positions with bishop versus knight, sacrificing material, and so much more. Check out Davorin Kuljasevic’s book How to Study Chess on Your Own.
• Some additional resources for advanced players (to name just a few):
  - Theory and Practice of Middlegame by Alexander Panchenko
  - Winning Chess Middlegames by Ivan Sokolov
  - Test Your Chess Skills by Sarhan Guliev
  - Breakthrough, Chess games of Kramnik by Vladimir Kramnik
  - Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces by Igor Stohl
  - My Great Predecessors (five volumes) by Garry Kasparov
  - Modern Chess Strategy by John Watson
  - Chess Strategy in Action by John Watson
  - Grandmaster Preparation series by Jacob Aagard
  - The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by David Bronstein (my personal favorite)
  - The Complete Manual of Positional Chess (two volumes) by Konstantin Sakaev
  - Perfect Your Chess by Andrei Volokitin and Vladimir Grabinsky
• Study Mark Dvoretsky’s books. Dvoretsky is universally recognized as the best chess coach ever — his books are very high, even grandmaster-level material. Studying his books will probably make you feel inadequate. :) But if you study even one diligently, a significant improvement in your playing level is guaranteed.
• There are a lot of instructionals on YouTube, tutorials on various websites (like chess.com), apps, and many other materials. Of very high level are the DVDs produced by ChessBase covering all possible subjects, ranging from openings to tactical and strategic training.
• Buy and systematically use a strong chess engine — for opening analysis, storing and analyzing your games, etc.
• Finally, participate in tournaments. You don’t need to aim at a win, just have fun and see how it feels. To be clear, you don’t need to have done all of the above to play in tournaments. You can start playing whenever you want and periodically test your level against other chess players in a formal setting.

Good luck!