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  Chess Tips and Strategies

·          Always study each of your opponent's moves before you respond. Is he attacking any of your pieces? Can you capture his piece? While you're learning Chess, you'll find you can win games simply by making fewer mistakes than your opponent.

·          Until you're beyond the beginner phase, it's best to open your game with one of the pawns in front of the king or the queen. Later on, you'll learn to match your opening strategy to the style of your opponent. At some point you'll want to become familiar with tried-and-true opening procedures, called "book" openings. Most introductory books on Chess have a chapter on book openings.

·          During the first 10 or so moves of the game, concentrate on getting your pieces out in the middle of the board where they control squares and inhibit the movements of your opponent. The more squares you control, the better your chances of making your opponent move where you want her to move. Be careful, though, because it's easy to find yourself out in the open and subject to attack.

·          When you move a piece, make sure you aren't moving to a square where your opponent can capture it on the next move. If the square is safe, think about how you will react if your opponent attacks the piece on the next move. Ideally, you would always move to a square that is protected by another of your pieces; but if you can't, be sure to have a retreat plan.

·          Don't be afraid of even trades (a capture followed by a retaliatory capture) if they improve your position on the board or advance your strategy. The queen is the most valuable piece you have, so generally you don't want to trade it for anything less than your opponent's queen. The rook is the next most valuable, followed by the bishop and the knight, which are roughly equal depending on what stage the game is in (knights are more valuable than bishops during the early portion of a game when the board is cluttered). The pawn is the least valuable piece, but that value goes up as it reaches the sixth or seventh rank and threatens promotion to a queen.

·          Look for opportunities to attack two of your opponent's pieces at the same time. Such attacks are called "forks." They're hard to get out of, and your opponent must try to decide which of the two pieces he can afford to lose.

·          Castle as soon as you can.

·          Form an overall strategy as soon as you can. You hear a lot about Chess players who can think ahead twenty moves or more, but that's really rare. What happens more often in actual games is that a player will imagine an advantageous board position, and then will work toward making that position a reality; it may take three moves, it may take twenty.