A few months ago I got to play a blitz game against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the reigning World Blitz Chess Champion, as a prize for being the last one standing in a 35 board simultaneous exhibition (where I missed a forced draw, agh!). I never thought I’d get to play a world champion, and am grateful to MVL and the Marshall Chess Club for making this possible.
Below is the video of game with a live 2D board; pgn and analysis will be added to this post sometime between now and the inevitable heat death of the universe.
When I was a teenager, I was notorious at the Atlanta Chess Club for getting into time trouble. I’d play a game with 30 minutes per side and struggle to not lose on time, eventually forced to blitz out a flurry of moves without thinking as the final minutes and seconds slipped away on my clock. This same problem persisted at longer time controls too: 45 minutes per side, 60 minutes per side, 90 minutes per side, even three hours per side—I’d still run short on time!
I was paralyzed by indecision. In many games I’d end up in a difficult position where there were several reasonable moves to make, but I couldn’t foresee exactly what would happen if I chose one. Oftentimes I felt something better would come along if I waited and analyzed the board a bit longer. I’d tell myself that I was doing the right thing by patiently investigating the position more deeply, but more often than not I would spin my wheels retreading the exact same analysis I’d already done. After a certain point, there were rarely any new insights.
In retrospect, I realized this was just a way to defer making a decision since I didn’t have confidence in my ability to make one. As long as I don’t move, I haven’t made the wrong move. As long as I don’t move, I can still find the perfect one.
In the end, I’d burn a bunch of time, panic, and finally throw out a move that was no better in quality than the move I would’ve made if I had spent two minutes thinking instead of twenty. But now I had less time remaining for the rest of the game. In some cases, overthinking led to even worse decisions after I’d start seeing phantom threats and miss obvious ideas due to tunnel vision1.
I only resolved this problem many years after I quit serious competitive chess. Other life circumstances forced me to become comfortable with ambiguity and realizing that:
a) human beings are well designed to adapt to new circumstances and solve new problems and;
b) there’s actually a fun and joy in the unpredictability of the tree of decisions.
Since I can’t avoid the unknown, I’ll instead choose to relish the excitement of what’s out there — it could be bad, it could be good, but either way it’ll be different and an opportunity to solve new problems2.
I’ve also worked on letting go of past states. For example, if I was winning a game and then made a terrible move that brought the position back to equal, I’d get tilted and inevitably make more bad moves and lose. But if I had just been dropped into that position with no prior context of previously being in a winning position, I would’ve been fine; it’s an even game. Nowadays I’ve cultivated an indifference to abrupt changes in game state. If the flow of the game changes, I don’t get upset or thrown off balance. I reorient myself to the current situation: it doesn’t matter where we were, we’re here now and our job is to find the best move.
If you make a decision and commit, don’t you risk the sunk cost fallacy of charging ahead even when the facts and environment change? One subtle and underappreciated characteristic of strong chess players is their ability to adapt. They’ll make moves that improve their positions and proceed with their plans, while maintaining maximal flexibility to pivot to another plan if circumstances on the board suddenly shift.
Similarly, you can optimize for flexibility by creating the maximum number of offramps for each decision. At each offramp, assess the situation as if you were just dropped off at that point with no prior effort or context on what it took to get there; you want to avoid the inertia of automatically continuing down your path.
Right here, right now, does it make sense to take the offramp or stay on the road?
You won’t be able to foresee the consequences of every decision, so enjoy the fun of the unknown instead of haranguing yourself with what-ifs. Whatever you choose will inevitably pose challenges (and good surprises too!), so roll up your sleeves and make the best moves you can instead of mentally teleporting to the counterfactual universe of another choice you could’ve made. Don’t deceive yourself into thinking you can just stand there and endlessly ponder the options. Indecision is still a decision, and all it leads to is time trouble misery.
Footnotes
Chess players have an aphorism for this: Thing long, think wrong.
I just returned to serious competitive chess after over a decade away. And while I’m not (yet) as good a player as I used to be, this appreciation for the unknown has already drastically changed the nature of my play — my games are far more creative, dynamic, and exciting than my old games.
The Queen’s Gambit has given rise to a new generation of chess enthusiasts. How to Get Good at Chess, Fast’s traffic quadrupled between October and November 2020, and Lichess traffic jumped 10% in that same span. To all the new and reengaged chess players, welcome!
As part of this surge of interest, many new players have sent me questions and comments on openings. What opening do I choose? Is the reason I lose because I don’t want to memorize as many openings as my opponents? What do you think about [insert opening here]?
Here’s my thesis:
The best opening for rapid chess improvement is the one that gets you to a comfortable middlegame position with as little work as possible1.
With that in mind, this article lays out specific, concrete openings that I’ve selected for you. They require minimal study, work against a variety of responses from your opponent, and naturally flow to comfortable middlegame positions. These are well-established, sound openings that my students have seen success with, and there are multiple openings you can choose from to suit your own chess preferences and tastes.
The only prerequisite is that you understand the basic opening principles of developing your pieces, controlling the center, getting your king safe (usually via castling), and connecting the rooks. Chess.com’s interactive primer looks good if you’re not familiar with them or need a refresher. It’s also helpful to be familiar with algebraic chess notation.
While this post is designed to help you improve without a coach, I’m taking on a few students to coach within this structure to help accelerate their improvement. If that’s something you’re interested in, feel free to reach out to me at gautam[at]gautamnarula.com
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, meaning I’ll get a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click the link and end up buying something. Thanks for supporting my work!
Openings for White
In How to Get Good at Chess, Fast, I quickly recommended The London System and moved on without elaborating much further. I’m going to go a little more in-depth about the London here, as well as offer other options (including a 1.e4 option!) for players who don’t enjoy the types of positions that emerge from the London.
Opening for 1. d4 players: The London System or the Colle-Zukertort
The London System features the moves 1. d4, 2. Nf3, 3. Bf4, 4. e3, followed by c3, Bd3, Nbd2 and O-O in the appropriate order depending on the opponent’s moves (Diagram 1). It has been deployed by none other than World Champion Magnus Carlsen! It’s so difficult for Black to stop you from achieving this basic setup that it’s not necessary to write out sample lines like I do for the e4 opening below.
Diagram 1: The ideal London System setup.
A cousin of the London system is the Colle, where the pawn is pushed to e3 before the c1 bishop has moved, blocking it in. The Colle-Zukertort is an improvement on the Colle where that bishop is fianchettoed on the queenside, and can lead to some more interesting positions than the London in my experience (Diagram 2).
Diagram 2: The ideal Colle-Zukertort setup. Notice that compared to the London System, the f4 bishop is now on b2 and the c3 pawn push has been replaced with the b3 pawn push.
One example Colle-Zukertort line:
Some ideas for White here: placing a rook on c1 and pushing for central expansion with c2-c4, or placing a knight on e5 followed by a f2-f4 push and a potential kingside attack.
Opening for 1. e4 players: The King’s Indian Attack
1. e4 openings are inherently more difficult to play than d4 openings3, so we’ll have to spend a little more time learning my pick, the King’s Indian Attack (KIA). The KIA has a storied history, with many stunning victories coming from a young Bobby Fischer in the mid-20th century. It’s basically the King’s Indian Defense (which is, more or less, my recommendation as Black) with colors reversed, and the extra tempo from playing as White gives you the flexibility to play it against just about anything.
The KIA setup involves the moves e4, d3, Nd2, Ngf3, g3, Bg2, and 0-0, typically resulting in the structure in Diagram 3.
Diagram 3: Standard KIA setup.
White’s king is castled and safe, and White exerts control of the center with the two pawns and knights. White’s main plan is a well-timed e4-e5 pawn push, accompanied with gaining space and potentially aiming for a kingside attack (those acquainted with the Closed Sicilian will find these kinds of positions familiar). The main challenge is to figure out how to develop the c1 bishop efficiently.
Below are a few sample lines of what you might face:
1…e5 (King’s Pawn Game)
1…c5 (Sicilian Defense)
1…e6 (French Defense)
1…c6 (Caro-Kann Defense)
1…d5 (Scandinavian Defense)
The Scandinavian used to be a great surprise opening and rare enough that in years past I wouldn’t have included it here, but thanks to the valiant efforts of IM John Bartholomew and #teamscandi it’s become pretty popular at the amateur level (and I’ve been recommending a Scandi variant to my students for over a decade as well, so naturally my massive influence has popularized it and shifted the frontiers of chess at both the amateur and professional levels). Unfortunately, you can’t go into a standard KIA structure (1. e4 d5 2. d3 dxe4 3.dxe4 Qxe1+ 4. Kxe1 and clearly this is a very different kind of game).
So instead, my suggestion is to exchange the pawns and bring the knight to c3 followed by the KIA style fianchetto.
You can do the same against 3…Qd6, which I recommend for Black below. White has a flexible and comfortable position and aim to exert more central control with Rf1-e1 and potentially maneuvering one of the knights to e4.
Opening for 1. c4 Players: Read a Book
I said it in How to Get Good at Chess, Fast and I’ll say it again: you’re on your own. Being a hipster has its costs. Truth hurts! I’ve heard good things about Starting Out: The English.
Openings for Black
In How to Get Good at Chess, Fast, for Black I originally recommended a kingside fianchetto setup involving the moves Nf6, g6, d6, Bg7, and O-O (Diagram 4). I have since recanted that recommendation after finding students and friends struggling not to get overrun in the center — conceptually it may be a bit too difficult to play for lower rated players. I offer an alternative option, the Qd6/Qd8 Scandinavian against e4 + the …g6 Slav, for those who prefer to contest for central control right away rather than let White immediately build up a center.
The g6 Slav + Qd6/Qd8 Scandinavian
Some of my student’s have seen great results with kingside fianchetto structures, but I’ll admit these structures can result in games that are a bit intense. This is a quieter alternative that’s still easy to learn and leads to interesting positions.
Against d4, my recommendation is the g6 Slav (my engine tells me this is called the Schlechter Variation), which almost always will go 1…d5 2…c6 3….Nf7 4…g6, typically with …Bg7 and …O-O to follow (Diagram 5)
Diagram 5: Black’s standard …g6 Slav setup.
One typical variation could go:
Another is to exchange the pawns on d5:
A variant of this plan is for White is to pressure d5 with Qb3 and Bg5 to force Black to play e6 and lock in the c8 bishop:
Black gets a flexible position and, by not committing a pawn to e6 early like in other similar openings (the Semi-Slav, or the French), leaves the possibility open in non-Qb3 variations for developing the c8 bishop to a good square and only then playing e6 to support the d5 focal point in the center.
Against e4, my recommendation is the Qd6 Scandinavian, which begins with 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd6 (Diagram 6).
Diagram 6: The starting position of the Qd6 Scandinavian
The Qd6 Scandinavian can look a bit… odd if you’ve never seen it before. Black explicitly violates the common opening adage of not developing the queen too early, and the Queen is now perched on this peculiar d6 square. Practice has shown it a flexible and sound opening, and I personally have achieved some pretty incredible results with it, scoring draws or even wins against players rated a few hundred points higher than me in tournament games. It’s easy for White to get too ambitious and overextend themselves trying to push too hard for an attack against this very solid structure.
The plan is simple – if possible, fianchetto on the queenside, develop the pieces, and castle. If left to their own devices, Black’s aims to set up the ideal position in Diagram 7.
Diagram 7: Black’s ideal Qd6 Scandinavian position
Black’s plan is to push for central control with …c5
Here’s an example line:
and Black is ready to castle kingside after …Be7 and prepare the …c5 push.
White’s most effective idea against this opening is using a kingside fianchetto to neutralize the b7 bishop. In that case, Black aims for this kind of setup, possibly castling queenside to maximize pressure on White’s d4 pawn (Diagram 8).
Diagram 8: Black’s Qd6 Scandinavian setup if White fianchettoes kingside
Here’s a typical line:
With 6…Bg4, 7…Nc6, and 8… O-O-O, Black is increasing the pressure on d4. A good bet for Black is to trade pieces where possible and aim to play e7-e5.
That’s pretty much all you need to know – those two structures and following the opening principles should serve you well in the Qd6 Scandinavian.
One other option is the Qd8 Scandinavian, which at first glance looks even more bizarre: 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd8!? (Diagram 9).
Diagram 9: The starting position of the Qd8 Scandinavian
At first glance this violates multiple opening principles: we allow our queen to come out, get attacked with tempo, and then immediately return to the starting position. The logic here is that the Queen can be vulnerable to attack on d6 or a5 (the two more common Scandi queen squares) and thus, in a way this is tempo neutral compared to those other lines since white won’t develop with further tempo on the queen. White will get a lead in development, but black challenges that with solid play white won’t be able to take advantage of that in time for black to catch up.
Once again, it’s easy for White to get too ambitious and overextend themselves trying to push too hard for an attack against this very solid structure and I find this personally a bit easier to play than the Qd6 Scandi, although a bit less counterattacking in nature as well.
The main setup we’re going for is pawns on c6 and e6 after developing the light squared bishop to g4 (which we’ll trade for a knight on f3 when provoked, weakening the d4 pawn’s protection), and a bishop on d6 if white castles kingside and b4 if white castles queenside.
Here’s an example of the setup (diagram 10).
Diagram 10: the baseline Qd8 Scandi setup (the dark squared bishop goes to b4 if white castles queenside)
Here’s a typical line:
Notice how we only commit our dark squared bishop after white decides which way to castle. Similar to the Qd6 Scandi, black is increasing the pressure on d4 and aiming to trade pieces when possible and gain queenside space with moves like …a5 and possibly central counterplay with …c5 or …e5.
So now you’ve got a variety of opening options: the London/Colle-Zuckertort or the King’s Indian Attack as White, and the g6 Slav + Qd6/Qd8 Scandinavian as Black.
Once you’ve picked your openings, play a few slower (G/10 or above, which is “slow” by online standards!) online games to get familiar with the middlegame positions that flow from these openings. Once you’ve got a basic comfort with them, you’re done!
From here on, you can use the incremental opening study approach I recommend in How to Get Good at Chess, Fast: when you analyze your games, quickly determine where you deviated from the book move, figure out what that next book move is and why it’s played, and then continue analyzing the rest of the game. Overtime, your incremental knowledge will accumulate into substantial understanding of that opening without a large upfront time investment.
FAQ
1. Does using opening “systems” hurt chess development in the long run?
This is a criticism I sometimes see online: opening systems, such as the London System, narrow the range of possible middlegames so much that they stunt chess players’ development by not exposing them to a richer set of positional and tactical themes. I think this fear is overblown; I personally know a player who became a master (2200+ USCF) by playing the …g6 Scandinavian as Black and the London System as White by focusing almost exclusively on tactics and very fast calculation. I think the bigger worry is instead the potential boredom that comes from playing a system.
2. Do you play these openings?
I do sometimes play the King’s Indian Attack and the Qd6 Scandinavian, and a somewhat more complicated “system” version of the Slav. When I was rated around 1300 USCF I started studying repertoire books and ended up investing enough time in learning those openings over the years that now it doesn’t really make sense to switch. In hindsight though, yes, I would’ve instead played these and focused more on other parts of the game.
3. How do I pick an opening when I’m ready to “graduate” from these systems?
These openings can carry you a long way – as I mention above, I know people who’ve reached 2000+ USCF playing these openings or similar ones. Nonetheless, if you feel you’re ready for a bit more sophisticated opening study (which I really don’t recommend below 1600 USCF at the very earliest), you’ve got two options:
Study a repertoire book (the easy way)
Repertoire books blend a set of related openings together so that the knowledge you learn from middlegames of one opening transfers to the middlegames of other openings in the repertoire. The openings aren’t necessarily bleeding edge theory, but what you exchange in theoretical optimality you get back many times over in ease of learning.
Check the table of contents of a repertoire book before buying to make sure you like the openings it suggests. If you don’t like playing the Sicilian Accelerated Dragon against e4 (which is what one of the books above suggests), then you won’t get much value from the book.
Individually pick and choose openings (the hard, but maybe more fun, way)
So you love openings and are willing to spend lots of time learning them for their own sake, even if it doesn’t increase your rating. What do you do now?
First, you’ll need to research which openings you want to play. When I was a kid, I found Winning Chess Openings to be a good survey of all the opening options out there so I could figure out what I wanted to learn more about.
Then, you need to figure out the best books or courses on that opening to study (if you’re new to the opening entirely, the Starting Out series is a great primer). There are also many good courses on platforms like Chessable, though you’ll need to be a bit discerning here: some are marketed with a lot of hype (the “dynamic” 1. Nc3, really?), while others are at a ridiculously high level (e.g, created by current or former top 10 players and explained at a level that only very strong players can grasp).
Finally, you’ll need to learn how to use a chess database to analyze openings when you inevitably run into a line not covered by your book, or want to learn how games have continued after the line ends in your book. Learning how to use a chess database is far beyond the scope of this article, but to summarize it briefly: you input a position from the opening, filter by games above a certain rating threshold (I recommend 2400), and play through the games (sometimes with an engine) and study the outcomes. You could also filter by game length to find quick wins and losses in the opening to know what traps and mistakes to look out for.
Chessbase 16 is the latest iteration of the database software professional chess players use. You can also use SCID, the open source chess database, if you’re more technically inclined and are willing to invest the time to figure it out (you’ll need to import the actual corpus of games separately). An intermediate option in both price and complexity is to use the database that comes along with chess training software/engines like Fritz 17, which should consist of millions of games. Back in the day, I found the database included with Fritz 10 to be sufficient for my needs.
Footnotes
At higher levels this changes to, “The best opening is the one that suits your playing style and fights for an advantage as White and fights for equality as Black.” But for anyone under at least 2000 USCF (if not higher), this definition isn’t the right one.
This is the main difference between the KID and KIA – Black can’t really build up a massive center against the KIA because White has the extra tempo.
I started out as a 1. e4 player, switched to 1. d4 around the time I hit 1300 USCF, and then experimented with 1. e4 when I reached 1900 USCF while still remaining primarily a 1. d4 player. In my experience, 1. d4 openings are much easier to play because the positions tend to be closed and slower moving, meaning an individual slip up in an opening line doesn’t carry the same consequences as it does in the more tactical and open 1. e4 openings.
For more on chess improvement
How to Get Good at Chess, Fast, Using Data to Improve Your Chess, and The Best Openings for Rapid Chess Improvement are the first in a forthcoming series of articles with a hyperfocus on extracting maximal chess improvement from minimal training effort. In order to keep this personal website from being overrun by chess content (I write about other things too), I’m creating a new website: rapidchessimprovement.com!
Head over there or enter your email below to join the rapid chess improvement email list if you’d like to be notified whenever the next post in this series is available.
Thanks to William Horton and Aditya Rao for reviewing drafts of this article.
I was rummaging through old files on my computer and came across my primary college application essay, “Play like Picasso.” I remember staying up late one night in what must have been November 2010 and writing it in about an hour. Surprisingly, almost nothing was changed in the editing process. The essays were to be roughly 500 words–this clocks in at 547.
Play like Picasso
I can’t draw. I really can’t draw. My drawing abilities haven’t changed since I was five years old; they consist of crudely constructed androgynous stick figures with smiling or frowning faces. My painting and sculpting abilities are equally uninspiring, and early childhood summers spent in weeklong art camps failed to improve my aptitude. Perhaps this early realization of my lack of artistic talent directed me to nontraditional avenues of creative expression, and it just so happened that one of these avenues was chess. I immediately took to the game, playing almost daily with my father when I was five years old, losing every time but entranced with its possibilities. I became more and more involved, joining my school chess club, playing on the internet and in tournaments, and excitedly bringing my chess set to sleepovers at my neighbor’s house.
What was it about pushing those pieces of plastic that excited me so much? Maybe it was the feeling that every game I played was unique, the knowledge that every game I play has never been played before and will never be played again. Maybe it was going to a chess tournament and being able to see both a homeless man intently analyzing the chess board, unrestricted by the limitations life had placed on him, and a Mercedes-driving Cuban doctor wrestle with the fact that the very hands and mind that had saved hundreds of lives in decades past could not prevent an imminent defeat by his nine-year-old opponent.
Perhaps it was because, like an author with his characters or an artist with his subjects, I could empathize with my pieces. Maybe I was that lone piece, bravely yet recklessly straying into enemy territory on an all-or-nothing gamble to prove what I’m capable of to my opponent and to myself. Maybe I was one of the two Bishops working side-by-side, perfectly complementing my counterpart on the other color complex, realizing that in our differences lay our strength. Maybe I was a Knight, indecisive, hopping between dark and light squares and awkward in my irregular and idiosyncratic movements, yet capable of great beauty if given an opportunity to flourish. Maybe I was a lowly Pawn, jeered at by the other pieces for my limited powers yet containing the hidden potential to transform into a Queen, the most powerful and majestic piece on the board, and prove my worth.
Maybe it was because I knew what it was like to be in zugzwang, a chess term that describes a situation where a player wishes he could freeze time, since every move he makes worsens his position. Maybe I wished life were like chess, because even though it would still be confusing, I could find beauty in every move. Maybe it was all of these things.
I see a chess position the way I see myself: an imperfect work of art, full of flaws and failures but also of hope and potential, viewed differently by each and every person yet unambiguous in its defining characteristics. It, like me, is a peculiar work of art I will never fully understand but will always strive to improve. Every time I sit down at the chess board, I’m creating art. And one day, maybe not too long from now, I will play like Picasso.
Edit: This article on chess improvement was unexpectedly popular, reaching #2 on Hacker News and being linked to on LifeHacker. Thanks for your patience as I work through all the comments and emails I receive.
Last updated: February 17, 2021
There are many misconceptions about rapid chess improvement. In this post I’m going to lay out a simple but effective way to get good at chess, fast.
This system is based on lessons learned from my own chess improvement and from coaching others. The good news is that you can become better than the vast majority of other players with minimal but targeted effort.
While this system is designed to help you improve without a coach, I’m taking on a few students to coach within this structure to help accelerate their improvement. If that’s something you’re interested in, feel free to reach out to me at gautam[at]gautamnarula.com
What does it mean to be “good” at chess?
Magnus Carlsen’s meteoric rise to the top ranked player in the world (at age 19), the highest chess rating in history (age 22), and as of a few days ago, the title of World Chess Champion (age 22) has brought with it a renewed interest in chess. This is exciting, because Carlsen represents the first real hope of renewing chess’s mass appeal since the days of Bobby Fischer1.
In the context of discussions about Magnus Carlsen, many people mentioned that they enjoyed playing chess but quit because of the sheer time commitment it took to get “good.”
I define “good” as the 90th percentile among the player pool you’re competing against. In competitive chess in the United States, that means a United States Chess Federation (USCF) Elo rating of about 18002. If you’re a casual player playing against your friends, my guess is that 90th percentile is around 900. Even though I was only rated 1100 when I first began playing competitively, I was already able to beat the vast majority of non-competitive players.
The goal here is to help you get good, fast, with minimal effort.
Results with this system
I actively trained for a period of about 3.5 years using a (much, much less disciplined) version of this system, during which my rating increased from 1100 to 1950, a 135 fold increase in strength3. In one 12 month period I improved from 1198 to 1639. I improved even faster with my quick rating (games with less than 30 minutes per side), where I went from 1001 to 1740 in 15 months (75 fold increase in playing strength).
My first experience using these ideas with other players was in high school, when I began coaching the lowest ranked player in our chess club. Within a few months he had improved so rapidly that he represented the school in the state championships and won every single game in the tournament.
Given that I managed to do this despite my own inexperience and mistakes with studying chess and my own laziness, I’m convinced others can improve much more quickly if they follow this system strictly4.
The system
Since this article is meant for both casual and competitive players, I specify minimum rating requirements when appropriate. If you’re a casual player and this is overkill for your goals, skip to the footnotes for a much simpler system5.
Playing
To improve quickly you need to play often. If you are (or aspire to be) a competitive player, play as many over-the-board (OTB) tournaments as possible. In my heyday I played 3-4 tournaments per month. Online is not enough! Use online games (15 minutes per side or slower) to practice openings or for practice if there is no tournament for a while. If you’re a casual player, play OTB chess with your friends as much as you can, and play online if nobody wants to play with you.
Since I first wrote this post, I’ve received a fair number of questions asking why OTB chess is so important and why online-only is insufficient. IM Andras Toth has an excellent discussion of this topic that explains it better than I could (his channel is also chronically underrated–I highly recommend checking his other videos out!).
Tactics
I did two types of tactics training. The first was “Chess Vision” and “Knight Sight” exercises, as described in this article. They may sound stupid, but they work. I did these exercises every day for two weeks initially, and then would do them the day of a tournament and once in a while as a refresher.
My primary method of tactics training was using Chess Tactics for Beginners, which is absolutely fantastic. Since it may have compatibility issues with modern OSes, a good alternative is CT Art 4.0 available for both Android and iOS. If you only buy one thing to help your chess game, this should be it. I did 50 puzzles per day, every day, and once I finished the entire CD I repeated the process six more times. Online tactics sites usually don’t cut it, because they aren’t structured so that you learn based off previous ideas and many don’t incorporate the pedagogical features of Chess Tactics for Beginners/CT Art 4.0. Trust me, paying for the software is worth it. If I had to recommend a book to accompany such study (which is helpful, since the above software doesn’t actually have any explanatory text), I’d recommend Chess Tactics for the Tournament Player for intermediate players, and Winning Chess Tactics for less experienced players. I’ll admit, there is a bit of a leap between solving tactics puzzles and applying it to real games–obviously nobody’s going to tell you when a tactic is available, and you won’t be “primed” to find tactics the way you would be when solving a bunch of puzzles. To counteract this I created a binder of puzzles taken from tactics I missed in my games, and reviewed them from time to time.
Analysis
Analysis is by far the most undervalued part of chess training. As a kid I barely analyzed my games after tournaments, because I was lazy. This was a huge mistake—your games are worth their weight in gold! Learn algebraic chess notation so you can write down your moves, and analyze your games using the method outlined in this article. Use the analysis phase to brush up on your openings and endgames and practice your strategic play. If possible, have a stronger player go over your games with you after you’ve done your own analysis. One big mistake is to rely heavily on computers for chess analysis. Too often, players use computers as a crutch to replace their own study of the game. Working through games on your own and trying to find the best moves and ideas is highly instructive. Computer analysis should be done only after you analyze the game on your own, so you can compare your analysis to the computer’s and unearth any mistakes you made in assessing critical positions in the game.
Openings
One of the biggest mistakes players make is to devote massive amounts of time to openings. This is because openings tend to be very concrete, and beginners think that simply memorizing an opening will give them an unassailable advantage over their opponents6.
Don’t bother spending any time studying openings outside of analyzing your games. Just make sure you know the basic opening principles. I teach my beginning students simple openings like the London System as white, and simple lines of the Scandinavian and Slav as black7. These openings are simple, solid, can be played against virtually anything.
Once you hit 1600, get a good opening book that gives you both specific moves and the ideas behind the opening. Don’t mindlessly memorize!
I give some specific book recommendations below, but if you want an entire opening repertoire set up for you that focuses on ease of play with minimal effort, check out my article The Best Openings for Rapid Chess Improvement.
If you’re an e4 player it gets a bit trickier. The truth is, e4 is simply harder to play than d4 because it’s a lot easier to get in trouble if you don’t play precisely. This makes finding a single volume repertoire book a bit more challening, but here are some options:
Alburt’s Chess Openings for White, Explained. I haven’t personally used it, and I’ve heard some reasonable criticism around some of the lines chosen, but I think for most players it’ll probably be a good starting point.
Emms’s Attacking with 1. e4 is a book I have used and enjoyed during my forays as an e4 player.
If you’re a c4 player, you’ll have to do some research on your own to find a good repertoire book. Being a hipster has its downsides. Openings for Black
Obviously this depends on your opening preferences. Even here openings should not be your main focus. I only consult these books when analyzing my games to see where I deviated from established opening theory, occasionally supplemented by a chess database if there’s a line not covered in the book or I’d like to go more in-depth.
And if your first thought is, “Gautam, one of those books was published in 2006! I’ll be using outdated opening theory!” then I’m afraid you’re missing the point. If you’re below master or even International Master level, playing what world champions played in 2006 rather than what they played in 2020 will never be the reason you lose a game. Ever. That simply is not your bottleneck, and the time invested to try to constantly keep up with the latest won’t result in any rating gains.
After learning the basic checkmates (King and Queen vs. King, King and Rook vs. King, etc.), Silman’s Complete Endgame Course is the only book you need. Study the appropriate section based on your rating, and only come back to it if it’s clear that you keep messing up endgames.
Annotated Games
Go over at least one annotated game a week (and more frequently if you’re a serious competitive player). A good annotated game book is Winning Chess Brilliancies by Seirawan. I hear the Mammoth Book of the World’s Greatest Chess Games is pretty good too, but I can’t personally vouch for it. Psychology Magnus Carlsen is my favorite chess player. In equal positions where many grandmasters would agree to a draw, Carlsen patiently pushes and probes, waiting until his opponent cracks and then grinding out a win. Magnus Carlsen is the world’s best player because he doesn’t give up. When I was younger, I had an unfortunate habit of withdrawing from tournaments where I was doing badly. I made various excuses, but usually I withdrew because I had mentally given up after a few demoralizing losses. I did the same thing in chess games—after making a major mistake, I mentally gave up. If chess is anything, it is a game of second chances. Chess, like life, rewards perseverance. I’ve turned countless losses into draws and wins because my opponents got overconfident while I dug in. I’ve also turned wins into losses because I was too intimidated by my opponent’s rating or reputation. Chess psychology can be distilled to two simple rules:
Don’t ever be afraid of your opponent
Fight as hard as you can until the game is over9
Simply following these rules will add hundreds of points to your rating. General Advice Study broader topics, like strategy or endgame, only when you feel like that topic is causing you to lose. For instance, only open a strategy book if you keep getting outplayed positionally. Otherwise, your default state should be studying tactics and analyzing your games. The tl;dr of this training plan is: play a lot, analyze your games, and primarily study tactics. Your knowledge of openings, endgame, middlegame, etc. will come from analyzing your games and going over grandmaster games. Only study one of those specific topics if it is clear you are specifically losing because of that topic.
Recommended Materials
This is just a compiled list of all the stuff I recommended in this article, and rating recommendations for each item.
The books will vary depending on your individual opening preferences. It is significantly more difficult to find a single repertoire book for 1 e4 openings that provides adequate depth and breadth, given that e4 is–objectively–a more difficult opening to play.
If you’re playing in tournaments, you’ll need three more items: a chess clock (pretty much mandatory, since tournaments don’t provide them), a tournament chess set (sometimes tournaments provide them, sometimes they don’t, and it’s useful to have a set to analyze between rounds), and a scorebook (optional, but highly recommended).
Chronos Chess Clock: This is the clock most serious players use, because it’s built to last. Mine is ten years old and still running strong, despite lots of drops and falls. Two cheaper clocks I bought before my Chronos eventually broke; in the long run, the Chronos is the cheapest clock to buy. Nonetheless, if $100 is too much, I recommend the DGT North American Clock.
Triple Weighted Tournament Chess Set: A chess set is another long-term investment; you want one that’ll last. Weighted pieces feel so much nicer than hollow, plastic pieces, and are less likely to get knocked over during time scrambles when both sides have little time on the clock. However, here’s a cheaper, unweighted set as well.
Deluxe Chess Tournament Scorebook with Lay Flat Binding: This is the scorebook I use to notate my chess games (required in most chess tournaments). The cheaper, spiral bound scorebooks with paper covers eventually rip and tear, while this holds twice as many games (100, versus 50) and lasts forever.
United States Chess Federation Official Rules of Chess, Fifth Edition: This is strictly optional, but the official USCF rulebook is useful to have in case of disputes (for US players, of course). I’ve used my copy to successfully appeal unfair rulings made by tournament directors.
What about all the chess books I already have?
If you’re like many other chess players, you’ve accumulated many chess books that you simply don’t need for rapid chess improvement. My advice: trade them in for Amazon gift cards.
1 – Fischer’s appeal was that he was a sole American fighting against the Soviet machine that had dominated chess since World War II, and is 1972 World Championship match against Russia’s Boris Spassky was imbued with Cold War symbolism. Carlsen’s appeal is his incredible talent, his youth, his normalcy (compared to Fischer’s infamous egotism and antics) and yes, even his looks.
2 – I couldn’t find recent aggregate percentile data, but the USCF provides percentile data for individual active players, so I determined rating percentiles by looking up individual player ratings. The 50th percentile is around 800.
3 – I stopped playing serious competitive chess about four years ago (when I was 16, rated about 1950) because I got burned out. I still plan on someday making a return to competitive chess, and when I do I’ll pretty much be using this system to train and improve.
4 – I think the only reason I managed to improve reasonably quickly despite being so undisciplined about training was because I was young (my main competitive years were from age 13-16), I played a lot, and I had at least some natural aptitude. How quickly could I have improved if I had followed this system in a disciplined way? Probably about twice as fast.
5 – Here’s a very simplified guide for beginning players who want to improve rapidly in a month or two
Learn the basic opening principles: control the center, develop your pieces, and king safety. Googling this should yield useful articles.
Learn the basic checkmates: King + Queen vs King, King and two Rooks vs King, and King and one Rook vs King
If possible, go over your games with a stronger player
6 – A lot of this is just to impress other players. It’s a common sight at chess tournaments to see players rattling off complicated sounding opening variations. At first these players intimidated me, but as I grew stronger I realized that these players were often the easiest to beat. Just get ’em out of the openings and crush ’em with tactics!
7 – I originally recommended a kingside fianchetto setup involving the moves Nf6, g6, d6, Bg7, and O-O, resulting in a setup as seen below. Experienced players might point out that this could lead to the King’s Indian Defense or the Pirc Defense, which turn out to be rather complicated openings. This is true, but I thought you can play both these openings with little theoretical knowledge up to the 1600 level and still be fine. Turns out they’re still rather difficult for people to play, especially the Pirc, so I no longer recommend it. See my related article, The Best Openings for Rapid Chess Improvement.
Diagram 1: The basic kingside fianchetto setup.
8 – Incidentally, I own but don’t recommend the book’s counterpart, Starting Out: 1.e4!
9 – This doesn’t mean never, ever, resign. If you’re down a queen in an absolutely hopeless position against a strong opponent, it’s good etiquette to resign rather than needlessly drag on the game. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself, “If my opponent were playing Magnus Carlsen in this position, would Carlsen be able to win?” If the answer is yes, keep playing. If it is no, then resign.
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Diagram 5: Black’s standard …g6 Slav setup.
Diagram 6: The starting position of the Qd6 Scandinavian
Diagram 7: Black’s ideal Qd6 Scandinavian position
