How to Play Chess Well

Find out what skill level you are at. Then when you get your score you will know what to do next. If you test as a beginner, you should read lots and lots of tactics books. Tactics are the fundementals, like the ABC's of chess. Then if you test as a good player, you still should be studying tactics, just harder ones. You can find tactics puzzles online, or you can buy books. They have beginner books and intermediate tactics books available. Just look through some of the puzzles to see whether the book is too easy or too hard before you purchase it. You can find these books in the games sections of most book stores. Also good is the CT-ART, a chess software program that really helps develop tactics, and you can adjust your level. It shows pattern clusters, and even determines your tactical blind spots so you can begin to learn to see them better.

If you are a club player, it is time to start learning chess strategy. It is also important to develop your calculation skills. Both of these things will require study, and training, and lots of discipline if you want to improve. Plan on spending several hours a day. You might want to consider purchasing a computer program like Fritz or Rybka, which analyses your moves. You will be keeping score in your games, and you will want to go over your games and look for where you made mistakes. If you don't know how to keep score yet, and you've gotten this good, you have natural talent.

If you scored expert or master keep in mind that these are not real chess titles, as expert literally means a USCF rating above 2000, and Master means a USCF rating at or above 2200. But if you did get this score you obviously know how to play chess very well. To improve, it is recommended that you get a coach who is at least 500 rating points higher. It is also recommended that you continue to study several hours a day if you want to improve. The competition gets harder and harder, so it is more and more difficult to move up. Depending on where you live, you may not even have challenging enough players to move up in rating points. You might want to live in a city that has lots of good chess players, like New York or Los Angeles. You may need to travel to tournaments, even tournaments in other countries if you can. It just all depends on how far you want to take your chess carreer. Is it just a hobby, or are you a serious chess player who wants a chess career? Remember, chess players don't make a lot of money unless they can compete at a global level. In other words, only a few players in the world can really make a living at chess. Of course you can always teach chess, and some chess players do manage to make a living doing that.