Monday 6 June 2016

Chess Strategies for Beginners: Develop Problem-Solving Skills

Chess is a game where the continuously evolving strategy helps players to develop their problem solving skills. These skills develop over the course of learning how to play the game. The natural progression in improvement of these abilities can be witnessed in the way a player learns to adapt and change as he or she moves on from being a beginner to an expert. 

Here’s how chess helps enhance a player’s problem-solving skills.

Learn the basic moves

As a new learner starts to understand the basic moves of the game, he or she slowly realizes the potential of each piece. From the lowly Pawn to the might Queen, each piece has its own role to play in the game. They learn to negotiate through the various problems that surface when they encounter the opponent’s plays and make use of the pieces to learn to win the game. This helps the player to understand the importance of small steps and how they can help them achieve success in life.

Understand the strategies

There are numerous strategies in chess that a beginner has to learn to become a great player. These can range from simple ones like castling and how to avoid a stalemate to more complex ones like how to control the center and how to successfully execute a game play. In addition, there are many innumerable moves for opening, closing, controlling the center and so on, that help a player to win a game.

Understanding these strategies and moves help the beginner to understand how to get out of any problem through focused plans and putting them into action. They also understand how the same strategy can be applied to life and ensure the person can avoid any of life’s problems with careful planning.

Focusing on the goal

Learning the various opening moves such as Flank openings, playing open, semi-open or closed games, the Indian defense, etc. help the beginner to understand how a series of simple moves can help achieve a win. They understand that whatever move they make, the focus on the final goal can help them get to the finish line. This learning also translates to lessons in life as the learners plough through the various challenges life throws their way without losing sight of the final goal.

Chess Lessons for Beginners: Improving Your Execution Ability



One of the fundamental things chess teaches is the ability to plan and execute a course of action. Being a strategy game, it makes players think of different options before they make a move and the implications each move has on the opponent. They also learn to think of the possible actions that the other player may make to counter their line of attack. Such logical thinking enhances the ability of the player to think, plan and strategize.

Let’s look at the ways how this thinking helps beginners to improve their execution ability.

Chess is a game with an objective: The simple objective of chess is to get a win, or a checkmate in the game’s parlance, against the opponent. All plans, strategies and moves are made to this end. Since players have this objective in mind, they use every game plan and trick in the book to get to the goal. All this is done over a board of 64 squares. Since winning is possible only if the players make the moves, they learn about well-planned execution that helps them get to the final objective.

Innumerable options: Chess provides a player with innumerable moves and options. They can choose between any of the pieces they have and devise plans that take shape over the next few moves. This, in turn, being part of a larger strategy to win and helps the beginner to think and choose between the different moves they have. Such an approach helps people to differentiate between various choices and opt for the one that makes sense to them in terms of the end objective. This helps in the development of the ability to take action based on logical reasoning and enhances the player’s overall execution ability.

Strategies that evolve: In chess, one can go with a certain plan of action in mind and see that go to pieces within a few minutes. This means that each strategy has to evolve innumerable times over the course of a game. This requirement to plan, evolve and re-plan helps people to take action based on changing circumstances. This consequently helps them to move ahead despite the setbacks and makes them learn how to execute strategies based on newer alternatives.

Blog Source URL: http://www.chesscoachonline.com/chess-lessons-for-beginners-improving-your-execution-ability