chess basics – Chess 1000

What I Learned From Teaching Last Week

Jan. 16, 2022

There are 100s of chess concepts. Mastering each requires multiple games and reflections.

What transpires is often we learn one pattern, and then a previous pattern took a back seat.

Unintended Discovery: I set up the following position as a mini-game practice tournament in a class.

The goal was to help students practice noticing the knight under attack from the queen or the rook.

What happened instead was all of them took care of the knight defense safely. But many of them missed back rank mate after castling.

The cycle of improvement continues. Experiences will pick up all of the patterns and connect the dots between them.

I talked to an adult improver just picking up chess recently.

He asked: besides “checkmate opponent’s king” as the end goal, what are the intermediate goals to go after during a game?

Here’s my answer.

Capture opponent’s pieces (similar goal as checkers) with tactics or taking advantage of opponent’s blunders.
Learn checkmate patterns to go after opponent’s king when opportunity strikes
Improve our pieces and limit opponent’s piece activity.
Combine all of the above to win pieces and eventually checkmate.

For Chess 1000 Students, 1) and 2) are enough. Board vision (long range captures) and pattern recognitions (tactics and checkmate patterns).

Make these as the smaller goals before each move and we’re making progress in each game.