Points to Remember When Choosing a Chess Mentor for Your Chess Classes

Learning chess takes no more than understanding its basic rules and principles, learning its intricacies requires so much more than your dad telling you what each piece can do or how each piece is supposed to move around the chess board. When you want to get serious about a chess career, you need a chess mentor who can walk with you through your journey and teach you the ropes as you climb up your skill level. Perhaps you are finding no improvement despite hours spent in self-study or maybe you are in need of an experienced advisor who can help you understand more advanced concepts and develop a stronger repertoire of tactics and strategies. Here are some things you should remember when hiring a chess mentor:

• Experience is important. This said, experience doesn’t automatically make a grand master a good teacher. A successful chess master career doesn’t necessarily mean success in teaching. Choose a chess mentor who has an experience and a good track record in coaching other players. This means they are effective in imparting knowledge to their mentees. Teaching skills also improve with experience as they get to meet and work with aspirants of different skill sets and skill levels. 

• Find a chess mentor who brings attention on your needs. A good coach knows how to assess your skills and prescribe programs or trainings you could take to address your weaknesses and further enhance your strong points.

• Know your potential mentor’s expertise. Some coaches specialize in specific areas of the game. If you need to improve on a specific thing, such as openings or the middle game, you may also choose a mentor who has a good repertoire of strategies and tactics that you can learn to address your needs. 

• Is your potential coach an active chess player? Active chess players are also a great choice for a mentor as they are people who haven’t lost contact with their competitive side and is up-to-date with trends, novelties, tournaments, and other things of interest in the realm of chess.

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A Brief Introduction to Learn Chess Strategy and Movements

Chess is known for its various strategies and movements. From opening moves to ones for checkmate, there are countless game plays that you can use to outwit the opponent and win the game. Most of these plays have been perfected by the grandmasters and the experts, and there are innumerable arguments in favor of each.

These strategies and movements are important as:

• They give you a better command of the game, and you have control of the board
• You can dictate how the game develops and how it ends
• Keeping to the strategy and refining it as the game progresses help counter attacks
• You can end the game sooner than what would have been otherwise possible
• You significantly increase your wins-to-losses ratio if you know your strategies and moves well

Here are a few chess strategy and movements that have helped players win across the years

Opening strategy:

There are quite a few famous opening strategies and deal with the first few moves that you make. The end goal of these opening moves are:

• Control of the center
• Safeguarding the King
• Development of the opening moves
• Avoiding any pawn weaknesses

There are a number of opening strategies. These include the Sicilian defense, the Alekhine defense, Kings Indian attack and the Dutch defense, among others.

Middle game strategy:

As the name suggests, these strategies and movements are for the middle game when some pieces are gone, and players are moving on to consolidate their position. The idea is to maximize the opportunities offered by one’s own pieces and whittle down the opponent’s strategies by attacking their weak pieces. Some of the common mistakes to avoid are isolated pawns (that will definably come under attack) and a playing a passive game with moves determined by the opponent.

End game strategy:

Here the goal is to simply win. There are now very few pieces on the board and the idea is to give a checkmate with the least number of moves. Some of the more common end games involve the kings and 1-2 pawns through there are those that involve other pieces such as the rook and / or the bishop. However, having an unequal number of pieces is rare unless one party has outmatched the other completely.

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How to Improve Evaluation Skills by Learning Chess Openings Online

Chess openings are a set of first few standard moves that are termed as the ’book of moves.’ These moves generally signify geometric notations, tree structures, etc. The Oxford companion to chess lists about a thousand openings that characterize positional play and gradually build up to tactical moves. A player who starts the game without a set pattern or deviates from the stated theories is said to move ’out of book.’

A good opening ensures control over a wider area of the board for mobility of the pieces and provides better protection to the king and other important pieces. Moreover, a strategically planned game gives you the opportunities to capture the opponent’s pieces and ruin their defenses. These are all categorized under the theory of plans. To start with, you need to give a direction to your game that is determined by the first few moves – the opening. In the mid-game, the efforts are focused on gaining control over the board and knocking down defenses. Towards the end of the game, strategize the way to checkmate the opponent. But, it is always important to follow patterns and then figure out what the next move should be. Observing and analyzing moves at every stage of a game is a form of evaluation. This skill also helps in the real world with the ability to plan and execute strategies for the important things in your life like saving money, preparing for a final, or buying a new home.

People always learn better when taught by an experienced teacher. For chess, a good tutor is trained professional who has in-depth knowledge of the game. They not only know what the best moves are but also how to teach them to new players. Experienced professionals know how fast students pick up the skills and find areas that need work. It is more than learning tricks and strategies with ease. To truly master something, there is no easy path. But a tutor or coach can ensure that what you learn lasts a lifetime. Online chess coaches are a viable source to improve your skill set and have a better control over the game.

More than learning what to move, it is important to learn why to do so. Once you start evaluating your moves, you will start predicting the opponents’ moves too. With rigorous practice games and continuous evaluation of every move, you will learn to detect the direction in which the game is headed. Then you can plan a counter offense or alter your defensive strategy. It is an all-around exercise for development of the brain and the skills acquired are equally useful in life’s other areas.

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Challenge Your Brain Efficiency by Learning Chess Openings Online

The game of Chess used to be known as the ’Game of Kings’ and not without good reason. It was regarded as a test of intellectual gifts and a person’s ability to outsmart their opponents using them. But modern studies show that chess develops and enhances intellectual capacity, and is not a prerequisite as is commonly believed. In a recent study, it was found that playing chess is an ‘exercise’ for every part of the brain. It develops mental abilities used throughout one’s life – concentration, analytical thinking, and abstract reasoning, puzzle solving, pattern recognition, strategic planning and foresight, creativity, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

The first few moves in the game of chess lay the foundation for the rest of it. Practicing for the opening moves helps the player strategize even before a game actually starts. If the opening gambit pays off, they can go on to dictate how the game unfolds. The game can move in various directions immediately after, and innumerable permutations and combinations can arise. To stick to a game plan and follow a strategy is an acquired skill and a test of the brain’s efficiency in organizing thoughts. This is more than just a metaphor as the brain cells do, in fact, create stronger bonds with adjoining neurons, raising the efficiency of the neural pathways.

It is important for the beginners to understand the important moves and theories behind the opening of a game of chess. One not only needs to memorize the strategies but also know the logical reason behind the same. It is important for any chess player to figure out what type of strategy they like to play as each opening has a different style. Once they are familiar with what they like, it is time to move ahead and master other strategies as well.

Every opening gives a different direction to the game. For the beginners, it becomes challenging to understand how to head the game. So, it is advised to learn the game and related theories from an expert. Online chess coaching centers are one of the best places to find such a tutor. The importance of understanding the concepts and their application is more important than just memorizing moves. Even one careless move nullifies a winning streak.

Learning chess online also includes a range of activities like interactive games, brainstorming exercises, and feedback sessions that encourage logical thinking. Moreover, you learn how to start the game, anticipate what opponent tends to move and strategize the game accordingly.

Blog Source URL: http://www.chesscoachonline.com/challenge-your-brain-efficiency-by-learning-chess-openings-online

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.

Blog Source URL: http://www.chesscoachonline.com/chess-strategies-for-beginners-develop-problem-solving-skills

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.

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