How to win at chess

Chess has a reputation for grandmasters calculating twenty moves ahead. At the level most people play, that is not what decides games. What decides them is who leaves a piece undefended first, or misses the one threat on the board.

Fix that, and you will beat most of the people you play. Everything else on this page — openings, tactics, plans, endgames — builds on top of it.

Before every move: checks, captures, threats

Make this a habit before you touch anything. When your opponent moves, ask what that move does. What does it attack now? What has it stopped defending?

Then, before you play the move you like, look at the position through your opponent's eyes and list their checks, captures and threats. Do the same for the position after your move. It takes a few seconds, and it catches most blunders before they happen.

Also look for loose pieces — yours and theirs. A piece that nothing defends is the one that gets forked, skewered or simply taken. Keep yours protected, and aim your attacks at theirs.

Opening principles

You do not need to memorise openings. A handful of principles gets you to a good middlegame almost every time:

• Take the centre. Put a pawn on e4 or d4 (e5 or d5 with black). Pieces in the centre reach more squares, and pieces aimed at the centre get in your opponent's way.
• Develop your knights and bishops. Bring them off the back rank towards the centre, and knights usually before bishops. A knight on the edge of the board covers half the squares it would in the middle.
• Castle early, usually on the king's side, within the first ten moves or so. It tucks the king away and brings a rook towards the centre.
• Don't bring the queen out too early. She is easy to chase, and every move she spends running from a knight or bishop is a move your opponent spends developing.
• Don't move the same piece twice in the opening without a good reason. Each move should bring something new into play.
• Don't grab pawns at the cost of falling behind in development.

One trap to know: a queen and bishop aimed together at f7 (f2 for white). At the start that pawn is defended only by the king. If both pieces point at it, deal with it at once — block the queen's line or defend the square — or it is checkmate in four moves.

Tactics

Most games are decided by a short tactical blow. These patterns come up again and again:

• Fork. One piece attacks two at once, and only one can be saved. Knights are the classic forkers, because their L-shaped attack is easy to miss; a knight checking the king and hitting the queen wins her outright. Pawns fork too.
• Pin. A piece cannot move without exposing a more valuable one behind it. If the piece behind is the king, the pinned piece cannot legally move at all. Pile up on a pinned piece: it cannot run away.
• Skewer. The reverse of a pin: the valuable piece is in front. It has to move, and the piece behind it falls.
• Discovered attack. Move one piece out of the way and uncover an attack by another behind it. The piece that moved is free to make a threat of its own, so your opponent faces two at once. A discovered check is the deadliest version, since the check must be answered first.
• Double attack. Any move that makes two threats at once — a queen hitting a loose piece and threatening mate, for example. A fork is one kind.
• Back-rank mate. A king sits behind its own unmoved pawns, a rook or queen lands on its back rank, and it has nowhere to go. The cure is cheap: at a quiet moment, push one of those pawns a square to give the king an escape hatch.

Piece values and trades

Count pieces as roughly pawn 1, knight 3, bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9. Before any capture, count how many of your pieces attack the square and how many of your opponent's defend it. A capture is only good if you come out ahead after all the recaptures.

• When you are ahead, trade pieces. Every even exchange makes your advantage bigger in proportion, and simpler to convert.
• When you are behind, avoid trades and keep the position complicated.
• Winning a rook for a knight or bishop is called winning the exchange.
• Two bishops together are often worth a little more than a bishop and a knight, especially in open positions.

Middlegame plans

When there is no tactic on the board, you need a plan. Some reliable ones:

• Put rooks on open files — files with no pawns on them. A rook that reaches the seventh rank, attacking pawns from behind, is often decisive.
• Attack weak pawns. An isolated pawn (no friendly pawns on the files next to it), doubled pawns, or a pawn left behind its neighbours cannot be guarded by other pawns. Pile up on them, and try not to create your own.
• Keep your king safe. Don't push the pawns in front of your castled king without a reason. If your opponent's king is still in the centre and the position opens, attack it.
• Improve your worst piece. If nothing else is happening, find the piece doing the least and give it a better square.

Endgames

With the queens gone, the rules change.

• Activate your king. It stops being a liability and becomes a fighting piece. March it towards the centre and the pawns.
• Passed pawns must be pushed. A pawn with no enemy pawns in front of it or on the files beside it is a future queen. Support it with your king, and put rooks behind it.
• King and queen against king. Use the queen to shrink the box the enemy king can move in, driving it towards an edge. Then bring your own king up and deliver mate on the edge.
• King and rook against king. The same idea, more slowly. The rook cuts the enemy king off along a rank or file. Bring your king up opposite it, and when the two kings face each other, check with the rook to push it back a line. Repeat until it reaches the edge.
• Don't stalemate. When you are winning, check after every move that your opponent still has a legal one. A queen a knight's move away from a cornered king leaves it no squares — and if it is not in check, that is a draw.

Both mates take well under fifty moves when you know the method, so the fifty-move rule is no threat to a player who is making progress.

Time management

Every game has a time bank and a per-move timer, and the timer runs first. Use that. Play routine moves — obvious recaptures, simple development — inside the per-move timer, where they cost your bank nothing.

Save the bank for positions that matter: when tactics appear, when your opponent's last move changes things, or before committing to a plan you cannot undo. Don't spend half of it in the opening. Once the bank is gone you have only the per-move timer, and that is when blunders happen.

Beating the computer

The computer has three levels. Start on the lowest and move up when you win comfortably.

• Easy is meant to be beatable by someone who has only just learned the moves. It leaves pieces hanging now and then, so check every move for something free — but make sure it isn't bait.
• Medium gives away much less. Win by doing the basics well: develop, castle, keep your pieces defended, and punish the mistakes it does make.
• Hard searches deeper and punishes loose pieces. Play solid chess: keep everything protected, skip speculative sacrifices and early adventures, and aim for quieter positions and endgames, where long-term planning counts for more than calculation.

Play chess against the computer, or check the full chess rules if anything is unclear.