Everyone that plays chess wants to improve. Winning is better than losing, especially if you are playing against a remorseless computer opponent! Learning chess as a beginner brings rapid progress, but once we understand how chess pieces move and some of the unusual chess moves what next? This article offers a few pointers in order to keep learning to play better chess after the initial rapid development phase enjoyed by chess novices.

If I Play Chess Online, Will I Improve?

This is a common question that people ask me when they learn I have an online chess site. The answer is both simple and complex. Generally, the people asking this question are new to the game and so the answer is definitely that yes, they will improve. However, what about those who have learned the basic chess moves, elementary tactics and strategy, and are looking for more? Players learn chess in a variety of ways. Each player will have their own strengths and weaknesses. This diversity makes giving generalized advice complicated.

Most chess novices try to learn the openings, but this rarely does much good. At low skill levels your opponent rarely plays the predicted move anyway. Far better is to acquire chess pattern recognition skill that relate to chess and learn basic checkmates. While elementary chess tactics can be trained online, or by computer chess software, doing so quickly become dull due to repetition. What is needed is a way to learn and play chess online, in order to maximize growth and still keep things fun. What follows are my personal top five chess tips for new-ish players.

5 Tips for Better Chess

1. Play more games

Yes, seriously. Pattern recognition is a significant factor in a chess players overall strength. The experience of playing more games means that it becomes more likely that you will experience moments where position looks familiar and you will know what to do, or at least which moves did not work last time!

One word of caution though, play little and often. Marathon sessions will almost guarantee mental fatigue. Tiredness will destroy enjoyment, give fewer victories and hamper learning. 

2. Mix it up

• play black
• try different openings
• change the tempo

Playing more games is important, but little will be learned if we always play similar moves. If you normally play white, play black. If you normally open with a kings pawn opening looking for an exciting, open position, try playing a defensive queens pawn opening and grind out a win that way. Or, if you normally play blitz chess, play slowly and consider each move fully. You get the idea?

Mixing things up can really help to keep your chess game fresh. If you experiment more, you may not win as often, but you will surely learn more.

3. Opponent Difficulty

This is an important factor to get right. We learn more when we play stronger opponent’s, but playing against a computer chess program like Stockfish on its strongest settings and losing every game will get dull very quickly. Equally, stomping your opponent might be fun once in a while, but you will learn very little.

Broadly speaking a good compromise is to play chess against the computer at a level that will allow you to win about one game in three. This level of difficulty ensures learning. Any victory will be well earned and not feel hollow. 

4. Play like your life depends on the outcome! 

Losing feels bad. The human mind is very good at providing excuses to soften the sting of losing. Banish excuses like “I wasn’t really trying” or “I would have won, but my TV/iPhone/pet distracted me”. There are distractions even at over the board chess tournaments.

Discipline yourself to concentrate no matter the distractions. Apart from improving your chess, better powers of concentration will improve your life in a large number of ways. 

Even if chess strategy is not your thing, at least look a few ply ahead. Try to guess your opponents move, then your best reply and then his and so on.

5. Record games for later analysis 

Most computer chess software records your moves as you play. Even if you are not playing chess online, recording your moves in a face to face game will really help you improve, but only if you analyse those moves! Storing the games and never looking at them again is obviously of little use.

The analysis should ideally be conducted by a stronger player or chess engine, but this is not absolutely necessary. Playing through your own games and applying a few minutes thought toward finding better alternative moves will often be fruitful. Your discovery of these hidden gems will be also more easily remembered.

Any Other Suggestions to Improve When You Play Chess Online?

I hope that these five chess tips will help you on your journey to becoming a better chess player. Although I have listed five ways learning to play chess online can work, I am sure there are many more. Feel free to drop me a line in the comments below if you have any constructive suggestions to help others improve their play.

Computer Chess Online - If I Play Chess Online Will I Improve?

IS STOCKFISH THE BEST FREE CHESS ENGINE?

According to the CCRL 40/40 list Stockfish is the second best chess engine of any type. It is the best open source, free chess engine by five places in this list.

In the future, I hope to play Fire 5, Andscacs 0.88, Fizbo 1.9 and Equinox 3.2 in chess tournaments of their own soon, but for now, this chess match is restricted to free and open source chess engines only. Open source is good for the development of these engines overall as it allows newcomers to learn from the best. I want to support this.

CHOICE OF CHESS GUI

For the “match” tournament interface I chose to use the excellent Aquarium 2017 chess software. I could also have used the free Arena Chess GUI, but as I have just bought the update of Aquarium 2015 to Aquarium 2017 it seemed like a good excuse to use it. The update, which is cheaper than the full version, was only £22 (about $25)  – bargain! Aquarium also has a native setting which makes starting a chess engine match at FIDE Classic time controls really, really, easy. Anyway, we have a “venue” and two competitors, so what about the rules?

WHY CHOOSE LONG TIME CONTROLS?

A good reason for using long time controls is that absolutely everyone runs blitz chess tests. There seems little point in posting a blitz chess match that almost anyone can recreate in ten minutes. Be honest, if you have previously bought a computer chess program like Fritz, running an engine competition was one of the first things you did, wasn’t it?

Be honest!

Another issue is that the difference in playing strength between these two chess titans virtually guarantees the result. For this reason, a chess engine competition like this cannot truly be called a “test” as the result seems certain. Rather, it is a free chess engine match, between two world class chess opponents. If this was a F.I.D.E. rated world championship competition then, of course, it would take place at long time controls – e.g. 2 hours for 40 moves (FIDE Classic).

Playing chess at long time controls takes a lot of computer time. Fortunately, I have just bought a new MacBook Pro which means my old i7 PC is largely free these days. The old Windows PC is four core and so is compatible with normal computer chess ranking standards. These chess games took nearly a week of 24 hours/day computer time! Something that was not possible for me until recently as my PC was also my work computer.

Long time controls allow Stockfish to regularly evaluate 30-35 ply ahead. Gull manages roughly 25-30 ply with the same time available. I thought it might be interesting to see if the difference in ply depth analysis would be more telling, or whether a shallower depth and perhaps better overall analysis would win the day?

CHOICE OF CHESS OPENINGS AND OPENING BOOK

The chosen opening book was “NarrowBook” which is optimised for chess computers. Perhaps I will update it at some point as it is at least three years old and theory may have moved on, but for now it should be fine. Opening book knowledge was restricted to 12 moves, although the computers were regularly out of book before that point.

The match was configured to make the engines play the same opening as black and white. Although restricting the choice of opening moves is somewhat artificial, I thought it was a worthy sacrifice as it enables us to see if the victory in a given game was due to playing strength, or opening advantage. Any free chess engine will have a question over its quality of analysis for some. As both programs use open source code we know their evaluations will differ, but I hoped for some insight into the quality of evaluation given the extra time.

The chess openings chosen by ECO code and English description were:

• B43 – Sicilian, Kan, 5.Nc3
• B92 – Sicilian, Najdorf, 6.f4
• B97 – Sicilian, Najdorf, 7…Qb6 (poisoned pawn variation)
• D48 – Queens Gambit Declined (QGD); Meran, 8…a6
• B33 – Sicilian, Sveshnikov (Lasker–Pelikan) Variation, 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 (without 5.Nc3 e6 (B45) 5…g6 (B34) 5…d6 (B56))

I am in two minds about the wisdom of letting the chess software randomly choose from a limited opening book. While Sicilians are a commonly played chess opening, my intention was not to have four of five games include them. Four semi-closed games and only one semi-open is hardly a wide variety. Chess computers excel at chess tactics, a few open games would have been interesting. At some point in the future I will repeat this match and in future, all chess engine matches will utilise these different settings.

Lesson learned!

STOCKFISH 8 vs GULL 3 – THE RESULTS

Stockfish managed to win 3 out of ten games, with seven draws.

First of all, let me say that Gull is a very good chess program. Unfortunately, here it is simply outclassed. This result is not a surprise.

Indeed, if Gull had managed to take a point off Stockfish then that would have been very interesting. Does this near unbeatable free chess engine have a weakness after all? If it does, these games did not find it.

Let us not be too picky though. One thing to remember is that either free chess engine is far better than any human chess player, even chess grandmasters. They would both be an excellent tool for your own chess improvement.

RESULTS TABLE

FREE PGN DOWNLOAD OF STOCKFISH VS GULL

For anyone that keeps a chess database I have made the PGN download available. The file is zipped down to 30k. Any unzip program should be able to open it. While both the machine this file was created on and this server are both regularly virus checked, do please run a virus checker on any file you download.

Stockfish 8 vs Gull 3 – free pgn download (zip)

All ten games. More free chess engine tests coming soon!

Computer Chess Online - Stockfish 8 vs Gull 3 Free Chess Engine Match

Castling is a special move in chess, involving the player’s king and one of their two rooks (aka castles). It can be considered a special move because it is the only time in the game of chess when a player may move two of their own pieces at the same time. There are a number of special rules relating to when castling can be performed which we will look at next, but first we need to make sure that we understand some chess terminology.

A chess board may be considered to be divided into two halves, queen side and king side (see diagram). The king side is on the right hand side of the chess board and is shown in blue, the queen side is the left hand side and is shown in red.

Castling may be performed both king side and queen side providing that all necessary chess rules and restrictions are observed (see here).

How to castle

The player moves their king two squares towards their chosen rook. Then the same rook moves to the opposite side of the king. This means the rook moves two squares if castling king side and three squares if carried out on the queen side. Example diagrams are shown below.

Possible castling moves

In this diagram the white king can castle king or queen side. First the king would move their king to either the chosen squares marked in green (c1 or g1). the rook would then move to the opposite side of the king shown by a red circle (d1 or f1 respectively). The moves of these two pieces are considered to be only one move and so are carried out together, although by convention the king is moved first.

Castling king side – before and after

Castling queen side – before and after

Rules and requirements relating to castling

• Both king and rook must not have previously moved
• No pieces are between king and rook
• The king is not in check
• The king does not move through or end up on a square that is attacked by an enemy piece
• Finally, the king and rook must be on the first rank

These rules can sometimes lead to confusion. Although the king may not be under attack, the rook may. Similarly, the rook may move to a square that is under attack by an enemy piece. A rook may move through a square that is under attack, but the only time this can happen is when castling queen side (‘long castling’) when the relevant square will be the one next to the rook (marked in red in the following diagram).

Relevance of the move

Many players consider castling to be a defensive move, as it moves the king away from the centre of the board where it may often be under attack. However, this move also enables a rook to enter the game quickly and can be a particularly powerful move if it links up with the players other rook, or the move brings the rook onto an open file.

Chess notation

The standard chess notation for this move is 0-0 for kingside and 0-0-0 for queenside. This applies to both descriptive and algebraic forms.

Further information

Follow this link for F.I.D.E. chess rules relating to this move.

Note: Under F.I.D.E. chess tournament rules, once the king is touched only a king move may be performed, which includes this one assuming the move is still possible. Also, it is further required that both pieces be moved with the same hand.

However, when you play chess against the computer opponents on this website touching the king does not require it to be moved, instead, the computer merely shows you the moves you have available with a green glow over each square on the chessboard.

I hope this article has answered all your questions about this particular special chess move. If there is anything more you would like to see or any unanswered questions please let me know via the comments section below.

Computer Chess Online - Castling, king and queen side with examples

En passant is a special pawn capture move in chess (En passant meaning “in passing”, in French).

The en passant rule dates from the 15th century. Originally pawns could only move one square forward at a time. An improvement was suggested to change the rules of chess so that a pawn may move two squares on its initial move. Unfortunately, this sometimes meant that a pawn could move past an opposing pawn without being taken. The en passant chess move was an additional modification to stop this happening.

If a pawn moves two ranks forward on its initial move and an enemy pawn could have captured it, had it moved only one, then the enemy pawn may capture the pawn “in passing”. This capture must be made on the turn in which the opportunity occurs, otherwise, the chance is lost.

Example of en passant

Here is an example of the rule in action. Black to play. Normally black would move the pawn one square to f6 (marked by the red cross), but this would enable it to be taken by the white pawn on g6.

Instead of the move to g6, black uses his initial pawn move to move the pawn TWO squares to f5, hoping to avoid capture.

White had read this tutorial (!) and was aware of the opportunity to take the black pawn and chooses to do so.

Please note that the white pawn does NOT go on the square when the black pawn was (shown by red cross), but rather moves as though the white pawn had moved one square only. This is the only time in chess where a piece does not replace the piece it captures on the same square.

Further information

Taking en passant in chess is often employed as part of chess puzzles as many new players are unaware of it. Some consider it one of two special chess moves, the other being castling (king and queen side).

More information about this chess rule is available on wiki.

This chess rule is probably the one that catches out the most beginners. It has certainly attracted a lot of comments on the chess game page.

If this article has helped you, or even if it hasn’t (!), please leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Computer Chess Online - En passant

Ever wondered “How does each chess piece move?” In order to play chess online or face to face over a chessboard you need to learn how chess pieces move. Each chess piece has its own rules and you should understand them all if you want to win at chess.

This tutorial explains the basics of all chess piece moves and includes a print-friendly diagram (pdf) to download and use during your games. It is suitable for beginners wanting to learn to play chess.

Chess Pieces and How They Move

Pawns

Pawns can only move forward up the board. They normally move one square at a time. The exception is that on their first move they can move two squares, but only on their first move!

A pawn is weak on its own, but it has a unique strength. When a pawn reaches the other side of the chessboard (called the back rank) the rules allow it to be promoted to any other piece (queen, rook, bishop or knight but not king!). Usually, pawns are promoted to queens, but not always – the player moving the pawn chooses.

King

The king can move one square in any direction, providing the square he is moving to is not under threat from an enemy piece – doing so is called “moving into check”. Moving into check is illegal as the opponent could then take the king on their next turn and the game would be over.

Despite his limited mobility, the king is the most important piece on the board – guard him well. When a player cannot move his king away from threat of capture by the opponent this ends the game and is called checkmate. Capture of the opposing king is a primary objective of the game!

A king can also move two squares by the player performing a special move called castling. This rule will be fully explained in a later article.

Queen

The queen can move any number of squares in any direction, providing she moves in a straight line.

Remember though, she cannot move like a knight!

This extreme mobility makes the queen the most powerful piece on a chess board.

Bishop

The bishops can move any number of squares diagonally, but they must always remain on the same colour squares from which they started the game. Each player has one black and one white squared bishop.

Bishops can be very powerful when placed on the long diagonals (corner to corner) or in open positions where there are few pieces remaining occupying squares of their colour.

Knight

Knights have an unusual move that resembles a letter “L”. Knights move twos squares up or down, left or right and then one square at a 90-degree angle to this. This means that if a knight starts on a white square then its next move will land it one a black square and so on.

The knight is the only piece which can “jump over” other pieces and as such can be very useful in cramped board positions.

Rook or Castle

The rook moves in a straight line up or down, left or right, any number of squares. Rooks can only be used in castling if they have not moved previously.

Rooks can be very powerful on open ranks or files, especially in the end game if two rooks can be linked together (doubled).

Additional Information

These are the rules covering the basic moves of chess pieces. There are other moves such as king and queen side castling and en passant which will be dealt with in later, more advanced article (with even more diagrams!).

Chess Etiquette

Chess etiquette for over the board games means that a piece should only be touched once when moving chess pieces. For casual play this is less important, but it is a good practice to aquire the habit of touching and moving pieces once only if you plan to take part in competitive play. Of course this is unimportant in computer chess, but it is good to be aware of.

Chess Piece Moves Diagram Download

How to move chess pieces diagram – a free PDF download for all chess pieces and moves.

Now you know how to move chess pieces how about trying your new knowledge against our computer online chess game? It’s free!

Computer Chess Online - Beginners Guide to Chess Piece Moves