How to Play Chess (The Complete Beginner's Guide)

You want to learn how to play chess, but you have no idea where to start? This guide walks you through it step by step, from the very first move. If you have never touched a chessboard, it is written for you, and it covers how to play chess for beginners without assuming you already know anything. You will discover the rules of chess, how the pieces move, your first checks and checkmates, the principles of the opening and the best methods to keep improving. By the end, you will be ready to play your first games on solid foundations. Everything here is chess for beginners, so nothing is skipped and nothing is rushed.

We have organized the first stage of your learning around five themes.

• Learning the rules of the game.
• Solving your first chess exercises.
• Playing your first games online.
• Starting a chess game the right way.
• Frequently asked questions.

Let's get started!

How Do You Learn Chess as a Complete Beginner?

When you learn chess, the very first job is to master the rules of the game. Give yourself one focused session of about twenty minutes with our guide, and you will be able to say it out loud, I know how to play chess!

In those twenty minutes you pick up the right vocabulary for the board and you learn the starting position of a chess game. You know what a file, a rank and a diagonal are. You know how the pawns move, how the pieces move and a few special moves. You are ready to play your first move!

To go with the rules, we have prepared games, puzzles, tips and exercises.

The fundamentals of chess are free on this site. You will also find free lessons on the big opening strategies and the main patterns for delivering checkmate, each of them paired with games, exercises and puzzles so you can start out in the best possible way.

Learn the Rules of Chess

Now it is time to take on the more advanced rules of the game. Don't worry, none of this is hard. You just need to give yourself the time to absorb them, one dedicated article at a time. The complete rulebook detail lives in our guide to the rules of chess, and each topic below has its own page.

Take each of these in turn.

• How to set up the chessboard correctly.
• How the knight moves.
• How to move the bishop and use it strategically.
• How the rook moves.
• How the queen moves.
• Castling.
• Stalemate.
• Pawn promotion.
• The en passant capture.
• The draw.
• Check.
• Perpetual check.

If you would like to be guided step by step through your learning, we're building a free 14-day program for exactly that. It isn't ready yet, but you can join the waitlist to get it first.

The Rule of Check

Among the essential rules, the one you must understand first is how to protect your king. When an enemy piece attacks your king directly, that is a check. You have to react immediately, or a check can turn into checkmate.

In a check position, three solutions are generally available. Move the king, capture the attacking piece, or place another piece in the way. It is therefore important to examine every possible move before you play.

Some check situations are more unusual. A series of checks the king can never escape can lead, for example, to perpetual check, and with it a drawn game.

Once the rules are second nature, you are ready to start understanding the game and improving at your own pace.

Your First Chess Exercises

Let's keep unrolling our plan for discovering the world of chess. Once you know the rules of the game, you can solve your first exercises right away.

In the following position you have the white pieces (we say it is White to move). You must deliver checkmate. That means you must attack the black king in a way it cannot escape.

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Take your time. Look closely at the black king and its escape squares.

Here is the solution.

If you have understood how the bishop moves, only the dark-squared bishop can attack the black king.

There are two ways to try it. The first is to place the bishop on the dark square c3.

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The bishop attacks the black king, but the king slips away through the b6 square.

The right move is the other option, placing the bishop on c7.

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The black king is well and truly caught. The squares a6 and b5 are controlled by the light-squared bishop. The b6 square is covered by the bishop on c7, and finally the b4 square is covered by the pawn.

That is checkmate!

You will find more than 50 exercises of this kind in our free beginner program.

Playing Your First Games of Chess

Playing chess has never been easier! Thousands of players of every age, background and level are waiting for you at any hour of the day for a game.

So where do you play? The two big platforms are Chess.com and Lichess. Lichess is free, open source and very fast, which matters a great deal when you play live on the internet. We warmly recommend it!

A few small traps are worth avoiding. First, choose relatively slow time controls, so you actually have the time to put your strategies on the board. Second, know that fast chess can be quite addictive. Our advice is to play online only when you are fresh. If the blunders start piling up, switch to studying the game rather than playing it!

Should You Play Against the Computer or Against Humans?

Here is the most wonderful part of the story. You too can play chess, even as a very, very new beginner. Maybe you are nervous about facing another human. Maybe you tell yourself you do not have the level yet, that you would be "bothering" a real opponent, and that playing against a computer is your only option. We will say this plainly, because it matters.

You have every right to play a game against another human being.

And it is such a joy that once you have tried it, there is a good chance you will love it, deeply and intensely.

If you would still rather not jump in against a person right away, an alternative (or a complement) is chess software. The advantage is far from negligible, since you can play whenever you want. The computer never grumbles about one more quick game!

How to Start a Chess Game Well

From the very start of the game, a few principles of strategy will guide you toward a good position.

• Occupy the center of the board with your pawns.
• Develop your minor pieces toward the center, on active squares.
• Do not move the same piece twice without a good reason.
• Castle as early as possible, because king safety wins games.
• Do not expose your queen without a good reason.

That is our checklist for making sure you start a chess game well! Call it the first strategy lesson for beginners, or rather the essential ingredients of a good opening phase. Learning chess strategy will open door after door into your understanding of the game. Notice that your king does not stay in the middle of the board. It moves toward one wing thanks to the special move called castling.

Itching to attack your opponent? Put every chance on your side by following the big principles of the opening, so you reach positions that are favorable, or at the very least fully playable. You will have clear landmarks for the first moves, and with them the best possible odds of attacking your opponent and winning the game!

You will find all our advice in our dedicated guide to chess opening principles.

What Are the 3 Basic Principles of Chess?

In the middlegame, developing your pieces is no longer enough. You need to build a plan and improve your position. For that, keep three essential principles in mind.

• Improve the activity of your pieces. Always look to place your pieces on squares where they control more space and take part in the attack or the defense. Start by identifying your least active piece and try to improve its position.
• Spot the weaknesses. Watch for isolated pawns, weak squares, poorly defended pieces and an exposed king. You can then build your strategy around one of those targets, while avoiding new weaknesses in your own camp.
• Check the threats and tactics. Before every move, examine the possible checks, captures and threats for both players. A good strategic idea is worthless if it lets your opponent win material on the spot.

Common Beginner Questions

Does the chessboard have a right way around?

Yes, the chessboard has a right way around! Both players must have a light square in the bottom right corner in front of them.

If that is not the case, the board is upside down!

Can you move two pawns on the first move of a chess game?

That is illegal! The only move in chess where two pieces move at the same time is castling.

Can the bishop bounce off the edge of the board?

No! The bishop moves along a single diagonal. It cannot ricochet off the edge of the board to continue its journey, however entertaining that would be!

Which is stronger, the knight or the bishop?

The knight and the bishop are both worth about three pawns. Depending on the position, however, it can be better to have a bishop rather than a knight, and the other way around.

The bishop moves only along diagonals and spends the entire game on squares of the same color. It particularly enjoys open positions, where its diagonals are clear. The knight is often the more agile piece in closed positions, because it can jump over the other pieces.

Can you put your own king in check on purpose?

That is illegal! A king can never stay in check or walk into check. You have to play a different move.

How do you draw a chess game?

There are many ways to make a draw. Among them are threefold repetition, the 50-move rule and the draw by mutual agreement. When the game is drawn, each player scores half a point in a tournament.

Is there one best first move?

Not really. Your choice of opening depends on your level, your style and what is at stake in the game. For beginners, we recommend moving the king's pawn two squares, which lets the kingside pieces come out quickly. You can then bring your king to safety very fast by castling kingside.

Can You Learn Chess for Free?

Yes, you can absolutely learn chess for free, provided you follow a progressive method and practice regularly. To begin, you do not need to buy books, software or a complete course right away. Plenty of resources already exist to learn the rules, understand the essential principles and make your first progress.

This site puts a wealth of free content at your disposal to support every stage of your learning. Among other things, you get all of this for free.

• Detailed articles on the rules of the game and how each piece moves.
• Advice for starting a game well.
• Tactical exercises and positions to solve.
• Explanations of the fundamental checkmates.
• Lessons for understanding openings, strategy and endgames.
• Resources designed for players who are completely new to chess.

We're also building a free 14-day program following Grandmaster Tigran Gharamyan's method, with simple advice, exercises and ideas you can apply directly in your games. Join the waitlist to get it first.

Read on and this long guide will take you through the rest.

• The benefits of chess for logic and concentration.
• Advice to keep the learning easy and fun.
• The best openings for beginners.
• How to deliver checkmate.
• Tips to keep improving once your first steps are behind you.

The Benefits of Playing Chess

Scientists have been interested in chess for a very long time.

It started with Alfred Binet, the French psychologist who would go on to build the first practical intelligence test. Studying chess players in 1894, he expected to find photographic recall and found something else, that strong players hold on to the meaning of a position rather than a picture of it.

It continued with researchers like Michel Noir, whose 2002 doctoral thesis at the University of Lyon taught chess to classes of ten-year-olds over seven months, then tested them on tasks that had nothing to do with chess. The advantage that came through most clearly was in attention and concentration.

Schools have taken notice of everything the game brings to young minds. Chess programs and school clubs keep spreading across the country, scholastic tournaments are booming, and chess for kids has become a field of its own, with dedicated methods and competitions.

Solving exercises also forces you to hold several pieces of information in mind, compare different variations and anticipate your opponent's replies. That workout engages your working memory in particular, the faculty that lets you juggle several ideas at once during a single reflection.

Adults get their share of the benefits too! Concentrating on chess exercises is an excellent way to maintain your cognitive abilities and to help guard against certain neurodegenerative diseases. Chess is a perfect game for seniors!

Chess for Beginners: Learning the Rules Step by Step

By following our advice for absorbing the rules of the game easily, you should soon be comfortable with the piece movements and the advanced rules.

The trick is to introduce the pieces little by little.

For example, once you have learned how the pawn moves, you can play the pawn battle. You place the pawns on their starting squares.

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White starts, and the two opponents move in turn. The first one to march a pawn to the far end of the board, onto the last rank, wins!

Once the pawn moves are mastered, you introduce another piece.

We offer many playful little exercises to master the piece movements gently. For children especially, we recommend not playing with all the pieces right away. We have collected all of these chess games for kids in one place.

Learning to Deliver Checkmate

You are still missing the key element of a chess game, the ability to deliver checkmate.

It is the very goal of the game.

A quick reminder. When you attack the enemy king, it is in check. When the king cannot parry the attack, it is checkmate!

Checkmates are sorted by theme. In the next exercise, you will discover a pattern often nicknamed the kiss of death.

White to play and mate in one.

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In plain words, you have the white pieces and you must find the one move that checkmates the black king.

The Solution

The queen and the bishop are long-range pieces, which lets them close in on the enemy king very quickly.

Here, by planting the queen right in front of the king, protected by the bishop, we deliver checkmate.

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When you are starting out, checkmating can feel like climbing a mountain.

Happily, to make life easier, you can organize the mates, and the way you learn them, by pattern.

We have written a special page showing the best-known checkmate patterns. It will help you spot far more easily how to corner the enemy king in your own games!

Delivering checkmate and winning material belong to the tactical side of the game. Tactics are essential for beginners. The pin, the double attack, the fork, the skewer and the X-ray are all techniques to work on!

Which Opening Should You Choose at Your Level?

Your choice of opening should evolve with your level. When you are starting out, favor simple systems that respect the essential principles. Control the center, develop your pieces quickly and bring your king to safety. We suggest openings suited to beginners in the sections that follow.

At intermediate level, it becomes important to choose openings that match the positions you enjoy playing. Players drawn to attacks and tactics can turn to the Scotch Game, the Sicilian Defense or certain aggressive lines of the Italian Game. Those who prefer strategic plans can choose the Queen's Gambit, the French Defense, the Slav Defense or the London System. The goal is no longer just to know the first moves, but to understand the pawn structures, the piece placement and the typical plans.

At advanced level, the choice also depends on theoretical preparation, the opponent's style and the result you are playing for. An experienced player may pick a solid variation, an aggressive line or an opening surprise depending on the situation. Such a player usually builds a fuller repertoire, while studying grandmaster games to understand the positions that arise once the memorized moves run out.

Whatever your level, it is better to master a few openings and understand their ideas than to memorize a large number of moves superficially. Careful, though, there are a few traps to know. Learning to avoid the Scholar's Mate, the famous four-move checkmate, will spare you some painful early defeats, and it helps to see what the fastest checkmate in chess actually looks like, so nobody catches you off guard.

The Perfect Chess Openings for Beginners

Italian, Ruy Lopez, Sicilian, Dragon, Orangutan. Chess openings have fantastic names!

Those names let specialists find their way around and discuss one particular manner of opening a chess game. And there are openings we recommend when you are starting out. They are healthy openings that give your pieces active play.

Starting Out Well with the White Pieces

When you have the white pieces and you are new to chess, we recommend the Italian Game.

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We start with a pawn move, then bring out the knight toward the center, followed by the bishop.

Look closely at the position of the white bishop on c4. It defines the Italian Game. Placed there, the bishop controls the center of the board and attacks the black f7 pawn, which can be considered a weak point. It is defended only by the black king, and no black pawn can easily come to cover the a2-g8 diagonal.

The Italian has an excellent reputation. Even the strongest grandmasters play it, including Magnus Carlsen, the five-time World Champion!

There are also system openings that let you reach roughly the same type of position in every game. That can be very reassuring, especially when you are new to chess. The system we recommend in particular is the London System.

Starting Out Well with the Black Pieces

Playing with the black pieces as a beginner can feel rather uncomfortable. You can quickly find yourself smothered by your opponent. So here are two dynamic openings that make playing Black a genuine pleasure.

First of all, if White pushes the king's pawn two squares, we recommend the French Defense with Black.

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Our full guide gives you ten good reasons to play the French!

Note that we are also very fond of the Caro-Kann Defense. It is a healthy opening in which your pieces find active squares to develop on.

Finally, against 1.d4 (the queen's pawn moving two squares), we recommend the Queen's Gambit Accepted. Popularized by the Netflix series named after the Queen's Gambit, this line belongs to one of the most storied openings in chess, played by the greatest champions. If Black would rather not take the pawn, the same opening becomes the Queen's Gambit Declined after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6.

Opening Comparison Table

Not every opening leads to the same kind of game. Some favor quick attacks and tactical positions, while others let you build a strategic advantage gradually. This table will help you choose an opening suited to your level and your style of play.

Common Opening Mistakes for Beginners

In the opening, the goal is to control the center, develop your pieces and bring your king to safety. Most of the mistakes beginners make come from a lack of development or from trying to attack too early.

Enough about openings. Let's take a little tour of the chess world!

The World of Chess

Time now for some background to help you get your bearings in the world of chess.

Who Are the Best Chess Players?

Magnus Carlsen is a five-time World Champion and has topped the world Elo list since 2011. Through the quality of his positional understanding, he has entered the legend of the game alongside Paul Morphy, Jose Raul Capablanca, Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov.

He holds a string of records. The highest rating in history, the record unbeaten streak (125 classical games in a row without a loss), and he was the first player to hold all three world crowns at the same time, in classical, rapid and blitz chess.

Carlsen won five world championships organized by FIDE, the international chess federation, before choosing not to defend his title. The current World Champion is Gukesh Dommaraju, who won the crown in December 2024.

The professional chess world brings together grandmasters, coaches, commentators and tournament organizers. Following top-level competitions is a great way to discover new ideas and observe how the best players build their games.

What About the American Players?

Chess in the United States is in great shape. Fabiano Caruana challenged Carlsen for the world title in 2018 and pushed him all the way to the tiebreaks. Hikaru Nakamura, a five-time US champion, is one of the finest fast chess players alive and has become one of the most watched chess streamers on the planet. And Wesley So won the first official Fischer Random world championship. Between elite events and the online boom, there has never been a better time to be an American chess fan!

Chess Ratings and the Elo System

We have already mentioned it several times. Chess players carry a rating based on probabilities, the Elo rating. The same system is used in checkers and in table tennis. You start out with a rating of about 1000 points (sometimes less on certain online chess platforms), and a typical adult club player sits somewhere between 1400 and 1600.

At 2000 Elo, you are a very good club player. 2400 is master level, 2500 is grandmaster level, and Carlsen has topped the list, with a peak rating of 2882, the highest ever recorded. His declared dream has long been the mythical bar of 2900 points!

The Chess Clock

For a very long time, chess games lasted several days, and a player could spend hours on a single move. That era thankfully ended with the arrival of the chess clock, which limits the time. The principle is simple. A set amount of thinking time is fixed for both opponents. If your opponent runs out of time, you win the game!

Of course, your clock only runs when it is your turn to move. Running short of time is called being in time trouble, or zeitnot, and you then have to speed up to reach the end of the game! Note that a rapid game is a chess game played with less than 20 minutes per player. We recommend playing slow games at first. Beginner mistakes multiply in fast chess, and in fairness, so do the mistakes of experienced players!

In recent years, playing with an increment, an idea introduced by Bobby Fischer, has become the norm. On the online platforms you will often see odd-looking numbers such as "10+5". That means you have 10 minutes of thinking time for the whole game, with 5 seconds added after every move.

How Games Are Drawn

One particularity of chess is that a game can be declared a draw! Most often, a player simply offers a draw out loud right after making a move, and the opponent has until their own next move to accept or decline. That is the draw by mutual agreement.

At the world championship and in some major international tournaments, players are not allowed to arrange a draw before move 30 of the game. Otherwise, nothing stops you from offering a draw whenever you wish. A rule of etiquette does say you should not offer one too often.

Other rules of chess also end in a draw.

• Stalemate. If a player must move, is not checkmated, but has no legal move available, the game is a draw! Beginners confuse it with mate so often that we wrote a full page on stalemate vs checkmate.
• The 50-move rule. If 50 consecutive moves go by without any capture or pawn move, the game is also a draw.
• Threefold repetition. If the same position occurs three times during a game, the players have the right to claim a draw.
• Perpetual check. If a king can be checked endlessly by an enemy piece, the game is a draw as well.

Those are the main rules that lead to a drawn game!

Chess Notation Explained

To read the solutions of chess exercises, write down a game or play chess online, you need a few notions of chess notation. Rest assured, there is nothing complicated about it. Chess simply has its own language!

First of all, the board itself is coded.

The eight vertical files are labeled with the first eight letters of the alphabet, while numbers code the ranks. To get the coordinates of a square, you simply take the intersection of its file and its rank. The light square e4 sits at the intersection of the e-file and the fourth rank.

Next, the pieces are represented by an initial. K for the King, Q for the Queen, B for the Bishop, N for the kNight (K was already taken) and R for the Rook. Only the pawns are not written with a capital letter.

So Ne4 means the knight has arrived on the e4 square. And d5 means a pawn has moved to the d5 square.

A capture is coded with an x. Nxd6 means the knight captures the piece sitting on d6.

Finally, here is the coding of a few special moves. Kingside castling is written O-O, queenside castling is written O-O-O, check is + and checkmate is #.

Those are the foundations of chess notation. To go deeper, our full article on notation covers everything, including the FEN notation used by chess software.

Tips for Winning at Chess

You love the game and you are hunting for advice to improve? Learning the five strategies that matter most is an excellent place to start, and a little further down this page you will find a complete roadmap for your progress.

Deciding Where and How to Play Chess

There you are. You have understood the fundamental rules of chess and the advanced ones, and you know, at least in theory, how to checkmate and how to start the game. Now you want to put it all into practice by playing your first games?

If you have a playing partner, all you need is a physical set. Any decent board with a light square in the bottom right corner will serve you for years.

Chess Clubs

If the game has truly won you over, we warmly recommend pushing open the door of a chess club. Here is what you gain by playing in one.

• You receive advice from seasoned chess players. Your job is to listen carefully and then manage to apply it!
• You talk with your playing partners. Hearing how your opponent experienced the game you just played is extremely instructive. Fast progress guaranteed!
• Chess coaches are often on hand to give your improvement a real boost.
• You spend delightful moments with people who share the same passion for the game. And that is priceless!
• An afternoon at the club is a genuine escape. Time devoted to chess is time when everyday worries fade away.
• Finally, playing in a club opens the door to team competitions. You need a competitive spirit to enter an individual tournament, but team events are pure pleasure. Much as in other sports, clubs are grouped by strength into divisions. Players from each club face each other, every win scores a point, and the team with the most points takes the match.

Chess Tournaments

Here is an essential part of playing chess. How do you explain hundreds of people gathering in the same place for a whole week to play chess? Quite simply because it is an extraordinary experience!

The intensity climbs a notch, the games are thrilling, and the atmosphere is excellent, since every player in the room shares the same passion for the game. We warmly recommend playing in a chess tournament one day.

That completes our little tour of the chess world. Now it is time to train!

Chess Exercises to Boost Your Progress

As in any sport, good training does not consist only of playing games. You also need to exercise your skills in a more targeted way.

That is why you should bring chess exercises into your learning as early as possible.

They will send your level of play climbing, and on top of that, these exercises will improve your concentration, your logic and your memory.

Learning to analyze a position to find the moves that lead to checkmate is simple and fun, and it develops your creativity!

We're putting together an exercise book so you can practice a little every day. Join the waitlist to get it first.

How to Learn Chess Efficiently

Your first goal has been reached. If you have followed all of these steps, you know how to play chess!

Yet this is not the end of the road at all. On the contrary, the adventure is just beginning!

The fabulous thing about chess, and every player will tell you the same, is that the more you discover the game and its subtleties, the more you realize how infinitely deep it is.

So here is the list of areas to work on if you want to keep improving at chess and winning your games.

Understand the First Big Principles of the Game

Faced with the immensity of the knowledge needed to play chess well, you have to get organized!

Start with the handful of major concepts that govern most positions, piece activity, king safety and the pawn structure, and let every new idea you learn attach itself to that framework.

Learn the Right Method for Calculating

Calculation is the art of visualizing in advance the sequence of your moves and your opponent's replies.

It is a concept you can train. Begin with simple exercises, always examine checks, captures and threats first, and lengthen your calculated lines little by little.

Build Your Opening Repertoire

The watchwords of our teaching are organization and pedagogy.

And organization is exactly what building an opening repertoire demands.

You already know that we recommend the Italian Game and the French Defense for a good start at chess.

But how do you actually study openings? Collect your own games, spot the positions that keep coming back, and review the plans behind the moves rather than memorizing endless variations.

Work on Your Endgames

You now know that pawns turn into queens when they reach the far end of the board.

One of the great techniques of practical play is preparing a favorable king and pawn endgame, in which you can calmly walk a pawn to the eighth rank and win material.

Endgames are the specialty of grandmaster Tigran Gharamyan, the 2018 French champion. The positions of Philidor, Lucena and the other legends of chess will soon hold no secrets for you!

Positional play gets its own section a little further down.

Learn from Your Losses

To improve, solving exercises is not enough. You also need to play games and take the time to review them. Your first encounters may well end in defeats, but those defeats are completely normal when you start out. A bad game is not a failure in your learning. It simply highlights a notion that needs work.

Analyzing your lost games helps you understand why a strategy did not work, why a piece was lost or why the king stayed in the center too long. Other players' losses can be instructive too. By studying their mistakes, you learn to recognize the same dangers in your own games.

Chess Strategy for Beginners

Pawns are the soul of chess.

They are the ones that define where we should place our pieces, where we should attack and where we should defend. The arrangement of all the pawns is what we call the pawn structure. Think of it as the skeleton of your position.

The best gateway into strategy for a beginner is exactly there, the fundamentals of pawn structures. Our complete guide to chess strategy picks up this thread and walks you through plans, weaknesses and piece placement.

Once the fundamentals are in place, the classics of strategy literature are well worth your time as a complement.

Learn from the Best Players to Improve

Watching strong players think is one of the fastest ways to absorb good habits. Follow the games of the world elite, replay the classics, and listen to strong players commenting on games whenever you get the chance.

Our guides follow the method of Grandmaster Tigran Gharamyan, the 2018 French champion, so you can follow a strong player's reasoning as it unfolds. A step-by-step lesson series is in the works too, join the waitlist to get it first.

To close this section, spend some time with the games of the greatest players in history, the champions who left their mark on the game. Knowing them better is both a pleasure and a lesson.

Follow Quality Chess Training

From complete beginner to confirmed player, our team guides you step by step through your discovery of the game. The sooner you start, the sooner you enjoy the many benefits chess has to offer. Treat yourself and dive in!

How to Play Chess FAQ

How long does it take to learn chess?

A few hours are enough to understand the rules and play a first game. On the other hand, it generally takes several weeks of practice to build good reflexes and several months to make real progress. It all depends on your regularity, the quality of your training and the time you devote to analyzing your games.

Do you have to pay to learn chess?

No. Plenty of sites, videos and online platforms give you lessons, exercises and games for free, which is enough to learn the game and practice regularly.

What is the best first move for a beginner?

The moves 1.e4 and 1.d4 are excellent choices for a beginner, because they help you control the center and develop your pieces quickly.

Should you learn openings right from the start?

It is better to first understand the general principles of the opening (develop your pieces, control the center, keep your king safe) before memorizing precise variations.

How do you improve quickly as a beginner?

The key is to combine regular games, tactical exercises and analysis of your own mistakes, so you understand what worked and what did not.

Your Move

• Sharpen your eye with the best-known checkmate patterns.
• Discover the main chess openings.
• Learn how to start a chess game in the best possible way.
• Take your first structured lessons with our chess basics guide.

You now know the main steps to learn chess and start out well. Begin by mastering the rules, train yourself to recognize the checkmates, apply the big principles of the opening, and regularly play games slow enough to let you think. You can then analyze your mistakes and gradually deepen your openings, tactics, strategy and endgames.