As promised in my introduceyourself post, my main content on Steemit is going to be chess related. My first goal is to make a massive guide to hopefully teach everything a player would need to know to slowly go from a beginner to an expert rated chess player (this will take a very long time and will still require you to play a lot of games and work at it).
So, before we can start, we have to make sure everyone knows all the rules of chess! If you don't know how the pieces move, what check and checkmate are, how to castle, and: important! - en passant - please learn all of that here: https://www.chess.com/learn-how-to-play-chess
En passant is probably the least known rule of chess and is very important.
It Begins
This will be a short article, but if you can work on applying today's knowledge in your games, your game will immediately become much stronger!
#1 Develop your pieces as fast as possible
If you are in a battle, you want to get ALL your troops to the frontline at the same time so that they can effectively fight the enemy. The same is true in chess. You don't want to move the same piece over and over again while the rest of your army is just sitting around at home doing nothing. You also don't want to spend your first 20 moves pushing pawns forward! Your pieces (queen, rook, knight, and bishop) are your most powerful weapons and you want to get them working together and into the game as soon as possible.
The general rule for beginners is: Move each piece off the back-row onto what you think is the most active square in one move, and then move onto the next piece. So get both of your knights developed, then your bishops, and your queen. Rooks can be effective from the back row, but they still need to be on open files. An "open" or "half open" file is one in which you don't have your own pawn blocking the rook, because you've traded pawns on that file.
#2 Gain space in the center of the board with your pawns.
Pawns are useful to gain space, aka territory. The most valuable space is in the center of the board. If your opponent does not hold back your center pawns with his own, or through some kind of piece control, you will continue to expand in the center and drive his pieces back.
#3 Castle to get your king to safety and connect your rooks.
The king is usually not safe in the center of the board where it starts. The center pawns have a tendency to be exchanged, and then files will open up that lead to your king. Castling brings your king to safety, and connects your rooks. When I said develop your pieces, castling is an important part of that. The longer you delay castling, the more danger you are in as a beginner. A good plan would be to first move a pawn to the center, then move your kingside knight and bishop out of the way, then castle kingside.
The general plan for a beginner
Start with one or two pawn moves in the center of the board. These are the pawns in front of the king and queen. Ideally move the pawn up 2 spaces, but of course it depends on circumstance.
Develop your pieces (one move each), and castle.
Continue to improve your pieces by moving them to better, more active squares, worst first.
aaaaaaaaaaand that concludes the first article. I apologize for the lack of chess diagrams, but I just wanted to get the first post out as quickly as possible. The next post will elaborate on these topics, and will include lots of neat diagrams and show you the common squares to develop pieces to during the beginning of the game.
Now get out there and beat your dad at chess!
