Best Chess Set for Studying Chess

Study is vital to chess improvement. Chess study involves solving tactics puzzles, going over your games, studying books and looking at the games of great chess players. In order to study chess books you need to be able to read a chess score sheet and follow along with the moves. You can try to do this in your head, but that can be a frustrating experience, and if you are a beginner you probably should just get a board and follow along with the book by moving the pieces and looking at the board.

If you are in your home and have a regulation chess set you can set the chess set out on a table, get a cup of coffee and follow along with the moves. But if you are in an airplane or waiting at the dentist's office, it is much harder to do. So at that point you must either follow along with the moves the best you can in your head, or for the really serious chess students, you can get yourself a tiny magnetic set, either one that folds or the flat metal chess sets with the three hole punch and follow along with the board that way. It can be a bit cumbersome, so probably this much effort is best kept for long airplane rides rather than short dentist office visits. For the dentist just bring the tactics drills (pun intended).

Tactics puzzle books really don't require that you have a board to set out the pieces. You just look at the puzzle and try to solve it in your head. If you are finding that the puzzles are too difficult to solve with out moving the pieces then get a beginner's tactics book, and work your way up. It is a difficult skill to learn how to visualize moving the pieces in your head. It takes time. Like lifting weights, you don't start with the heaviest first. You start with smaller weights, maybe five pounds or so, and then the important thing is to do it everyday. Over time your muscle will grow so that you can lift heavier weights. But it takes time and discipline to learn to visualize the moves on the board. As you increase your ability to do this, you will find yourself becoming a stronger and stronger chess player, as much of what chess is, is a test of who can calculate and visualize the piece moves more accurately in their head.

Going over the chess moves in a game, or using a book to study and following along with a board is best done with the time and space to do it. If you're a real chess nut like me, bring around the magnetic folding sets where ever you go, and then you can study chess anywhere. I recommend a three ring binder, a flat metal chess board with the three hole punch and the flat magnetic cut out pieces so that you can open it up like a book, and set the chess book inside it and that way you only have one thing to hold, with the chess board on one side, and the book open to the page you are studying on the other. The little magnetic fold out sets are a bit harder to manage as I always found the pieces would fall off more easily, and the board itself was harder to hold while looking at the book in places like the park, the cafe or the dentist or doctor's office waiting room. You can also bring along paper to take notes and write down questions to stuff those inside the pockets of the three ring binder if you really want to be a chess nut!