Perhaps you and I are alike.
Maybe you're brand new to chess, or maybe you're learning chess from the beginning after years of only knowing the basics. You certainly haven't performed well at any tournaments (or even attended one, for that matter), but you'd like to. Or at the very least, you'd like to delve into the majestic beauty that is the "game of kings."
Or maybe you just wanna hold your own on chess.com when you are using the toilet at work.
And perhaps, like me, you've gone around and around on youtube and google looking for a way to learn. You've searched everything, but what you find is disappointing. Lots of masters, but no teachers. Lots of notation, but not much explanation from first principles.
Ever try to read Bobby Fischer's commentary on his games? In his chess-playing years, he was a man of few words - which certainly shined through in his very brief notes. You're lucky to get two full sentences before a string of algebraic notation for alternative lines that were (most of the time) worse and therefore avoided by him.
That's all well and good if the person reading the book is Garry Kasparov. Much less than helpful if the fundamental reasoning behind the chosen move is not already clear to you. And worst of all, it seems everyone who wants to teach chess went to the Bobby Fischer school of education, where the motto is "if it's clear to me, it must be clear to everyone else."
Here's where this blog comes in. See, I regularly get beaten by Stockfish level 1. I have no idea what I'm doing. In fact, sometimes I learn something new about chess and for the next month I will be playing worse than I did before I learned that thing. I'm not sure how or why that happens, but it definitely feels that way.
But suffice it to say, I am not going to write anything down that a complete beginner couldn't understand. Because if I did, that would mean I couldn't understand it either.
The plan for this blog is to work from square one (pun intended). Head on over to the Terms & Rules page to get acquainted with the lingo if you aren't familiar with chess talk yet, and after you give that a read or two, you'll be ready to move through my posts and learn along with me.
How hard could it be, right?
- Thanks for reading
Maybe you're brand new to chess, or maybe you're learning chess from the beginning after years of only knowing the basics. You certainly haven't performed well at any tournaments (or even attended one, for that matter), but you'd like to. Or at the very least, you'd like to delve into the majestic beauty that is the "game of kings."
Or maybe you just wanna hold your own on chess.com when you are using the toilet at work.
And perhaps, like me, you've gone around and around on youtube and google looking for a way to learn. You've searched everything, but what you find is disappointing. Lots of masters, but no teachers. Lots of notation, but not much explanation from first principles.
Ever try to read Bobby Fischer's commentary on his games? In his chess-playing years, he was a man of few words - which certainly shined through in his very brief notes. You're lucky to get two full sentences before a string of algebraic notation for alternative lines that were (most of the time) worse and therefore avoided by him.
That's all well and good if the person reading the book is Garry Kasparov. Much less than helpful if the fundamental reasoning behind the chosen move is not already clear to you. And worst of all, it seems everyone who wants to teach chess went to the Bobby Fischer school of education, where the motto is "if it's clear to me, it must be clear to everyone else."
Here's where this blog comes in. See, I regularly get beaten by Stockfish level 1. I have no idea what I'm doing. In fact, sometimes I learn something new about chess and for the next month I will be playing worse than I did before I learned that thing. I'm not sure how or why that happens, but it definitely feels that way.
But suffice it to say, I am not going to write anything down that a complete beginner couldn't understand. Because if I did, that would mean I couldn't understand it either.
The plan for this blog is to work from square one (pun intended). Head on over to the Terms & Rules page to get acquainted with the lingo if you aren't familiar with chess talk yet, and after you give that a read or two, you'll be ready to move through my posts and learn along with me.
How hard could it be, right?
- Thanks for reading
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