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?

Grand Masters Use Computer Chess Programs

Top level players use chess software to assist in their chess analysis. If this is a solution for world-class chess grand masters then surely there is a use for chess software to also improve the games of players of lower ability also? While world class players may use complex and expensive clusters of many computers to enhance the speed of their analysis these resources are unlikely to be available to an ordinary player. What is available though is a multitude of chess engines, many of which are free, that are arguably stronger than any human chess Grandmaster. Such instruction and guidance would cost a lot of money if it was provided by a human instructor, yet a computer program can offer this for free.

Memorising Openings by Rote is Unproductive

Many beginners make the mistake of trying to improve their game by attempting to memorise openings, arguing that they suffer a tactical disadvantage early in the game from which they never recover. Analysis by an unbiased source, such as a chess program, will expose this as a fallacy in the majority of cases. At low levels of chess skill a player will have reasonable results by merely adhering to sound opening development theory, rather than spending time learning a particular opening by rote. After all, if they are playing against opponents of similar level, their opponent is very unlikely to play many of the normal “book moves” anyway. Surely it is far better to develop sharp tactical awareness and good concentration skills that will serve you well in almost any position you may come across.

Over the coming weeks and months, it is my intention to show how computer chess engines, when used appropriately, can contribute to a rapid increase in playing strength for players below the level of an International Master (IM).

In the meantime, please feel free to play chess online against computer opponents right here at computer chess online.

Computer Chess Online - Learning to Play Chess Online Against Computer Opponents

Free Computer Chess Game for Visitors

We live in the computer age yet many people have never played chess against a computer.  I guess there are as many reasons for this as there are people in this situation.  As I enjoy computer chess I thought it was only fair to offer other people the chance to indulge themselves in a game I enjoy.

Although a number of sites like The Spectator offer chess puzzles online they do not offer the chance to play a full game. Here is my small effort toward improving the situation.

Installing Flash CHESS 3

Now don’t laugh, but it took me a few days just to get the page working.  The people from flashchess made a great program. However, my complete ignorance about how to install it on a website stood in my path quite some time.  Eventually, I found a way to install chess program and get it to work within WordPress. Overall I am happy with the results. The sole niggle is page load time. This is unavoidable as the computer engine has to load the game to work (about 2megs total).

It was my original goal to make a variety of chess computers available. Unfortunately, there was little interest from programmers in showcasing their work.  This left me with an unusual chess problem to solve. The only chess engine I could hope to put on the page was one that was freely distributed.  Flash chess 3 is thankfully a pretty advanced program considering its size. It looks good and plays reasonably well. And all this considering that it was written in Flash rather than a more conventional programming language.

If there are any computer chess programmers out there reading this with a non-experimental chess engine that can run within a web page please contact me.  It would be really great to offer people a greater variety of chess software and let them see what is available.

Installing Chess Programs is Fun! (Honest)

Anyone that is familiar with my other websites will know already that I am a big fan of computers and technology, science fiction, chess and online games in general. Writing this website is a labour of love. Yes, even when I can’t get annoying flash chess programs to install and run properly on it!

I hope over the coming months to show people some of the things that are really great about the game of chess in general, and computer chess in particular.  For now, though, I hope you enjoy your time here and this opportunity to play free online chess against a computer.

Computer Chess Online - Play Free Online Chess Against a Computer

I really love the game of chess.  It is simple to understand, yet amazingly complicated in practice. This love of chess is what lead me to create computer chess online.

There are very few similar games that demand such deep thought, strategic thinking, tactical brilliance and perfect concentration in order to win.  Chess offers all this and more, but without the element of luck.  The pieces only move to where you place them on the chessboard.

Unfortunately, unless you live in a locality with a large chess playing community it can be hard to find a human opponent.  There are of course websites and services that offer opportunities to play chess online.  The problem with these sites, at least in my opinion, is that most players want to play blitz chess and I personally enjoy classical time controls and longer games.  Finding a player of similar strength who wishes to play a longer game can at times be challenging.

Advantages of Computer Chess Software

As computer software has come on so much over recent years it is easy to get a computer opponent to play against that will challenge and indeed most likely beat, any player up to and including the World Champion GrandMaster.  Not only is computer chess software powerful in Elo terms, it is also available to play 24 hours a day, will not complain about the selected time controls etc.  I still enjoy playing against human players, but as my time to play is limited, a computer opponent is often a preferred choice.

Computer chess engines do not just make great opponents.  Due to the extreme playing strength of even the freeware chess programs the game analysis these engines provide can be invaluable.  It is a modern irony that the chess world looks down on computer chess as a poor relation to “the real game” when in actuality the games produced by computers are often tactically stronger. Even further down the line are the games between so-called “Centaurs”.  Centaurs or Centaur Chess are terms used to refer to a computer and human playing in tandem.  Centaur games are often of very high quality.

The reason I say that “real chess” looking down on computer chess is ironic is that the top human players will often use a battery of highly specialised multi-core computers to analyse a position or chess opening in order to find a new novelty or a refutation.  How ridiculous it is then to hear people speak in negative terms about computer chess.

The Future of Computer Chess

Ever since Gary Kasparov was beaten by a chess computer people have been claiming that chess will be “solved”.  By this statement they mean that there will be a method of playing in which the outcome of the game can be forced from the opening move, giving victory to white (who moves first) every time.  While this happened for tic-tac-toe, chess is a very different game.

At the time I write this post, a “solution” for chess seems totally absurd.  The combinations of moves even 10 or 20 ply into a game of chess are immense and although chess computers are increasing in power almost daily a “solution” seems unlikely.  Maybe I will be proven wrong on this point, especially if we see artificial intelligence or quantum computing become a reality, but for now, these ideas are science fiction and belong on my other blog!

To be honest, I would like to be proven wrong on this point as it would mean that humanity has taken a large step forward problem-solvinging with the aid of computers.

Whatever the future brings, I intend to be talking about it here at Computer Chess Online.

Computer Chess Online - Computer Chess Online – Coming Soon!