Common Questions by Beginning Players

1. What is a good age to start teaching my child to play chess? I believe its good to start teaching the children as soon as possible, my son started showing interest at 2 years young so he's improving daily.

2. What are some tips on learning to play chess? for children? for teenagers? for adults? The most useful tip I could give is simply to ask lots of question because its a very complex game.

3. Can you recommend some helpful books for a beginner? The only book for beginners I can think of is Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. I found it to be usefully entertaining when I was a beginner.

4. Which phase of the game should I study the most? I believe beginners should study the opening the most to get a basic understanding of chess strategy. As their game evolve they should spend more time on the middlegame followed by the endgame.

5. What are some sound opening principles to follow?  Get your king castled and develop your pieces beginners have a habit of attacking their opponents only to realize later that they have a king too!

6. Do you recommend computer chess programs for learning chess? Yes computers a proving to be very helpful because they are always ready for a game and will punish our mistakes! My son has a program called cheesy chess that i got off the internet, it gives him a song and a dance while it teaches him the moves! I cant do that!!

7. What are the benefits of playing in tournaments? In tournaments you have a chance to play rated players and get an established rating.  Much is made of this in the chess world, however it seems the greatest benefit a tourney offers is a chance to record your games and bring them home for analysis so one can improve on their play for the next game.

8. Is there a particular etiquette for tournaments? Yeah be quiet and turn off those cell phones! Aside from that just be good natured.

9. I'm tired of losing. What can I do to get better? Well the only way to get better is to lose so just don't get tired! KEEP THE BEAT GOIN! :)

10. How many moves should I think ahead? I read an article in the newspaper that stated "their are more possibilities in a single game of chess than their are stars in the universe". How they came to that conclusion is beyond me but it helped to formulate an idea that it is more prudent to understand the position that your in and find a good move and, "leave the rest to the stars"! There is a book called Vishy Anand: My Best Games of Chess, If you go to page 121 he states "I prefer to wait to see what my opponent plays, and that immediately removes a large percentage of possible branches".


Common Questions by Intermediate Players

1. How do I choose an opening repertoire? I suggest staying with the main lines of your major openings and avoid dubious concepts even if they look attractive, lets say the Bird's Defence to the Lopez... it's easy to get shot down after 3…Nd4 4.Nxd4 exd4, black struggles for equality the rest of the game. When it comes to my repertoire i let my emotions run free and choose what's interesting. Ultimately, like a beautiful girl,  "all openings are pretty!!"

2. Is it a good practice to memorize openings? Sure memorize as much as you can but don't take it as the gospel truth, just remember every game is a remembered!

3. How do I know which pieces to trade? When hiszen is better than yourzen - trade; when yourzen is better than hiszen - don't trade, it makes good chess karma. Also i've learned something from computers on this subject, I was playing Fritz 8 in some 5-minute blitz after it chopped me up a few games I decide to throw the KID at it, when we got in a time scramble it began to chop wood one piece after another, giving up exchanges sacking pieces and the like, I didn't know why! Come to find out it calculated a mate by force that I didn't even see! Moral of the story: If your feel you're about to get mated... chop! chop! Bruce Lee!

4. Which phase of the game should I study the most? (opening, middlegame, endgame) When it comes to candidate moves one needs to analyze the position to determine which move is best, generally playing a good centralizing move will be strongest though there is a tendency to be cast adrift by a tactical resolution to the position.

5. What can I do to improve my tactical vision? I believe most of it is natural but a lot can be learned by studying combination books and working on chess problems or maybe you can get a chess program with a Mikhail Tal feature in it !! My uncle James use to say "experience is the best teacher!"

6. Why study endgames if my games don't last that long? As a chess coach i often found some of my students games were basically over before they reached the endgame. either they were way ahead or behind in material so its difficult to learn much this way. so i had them play training games with early exchanges which reduces the likelihood of a middlegame krunch... so that was a bit of a help, also as you get stronger, the margin of error decreases so it maybe necessary to push for a full point in the endgame.

7. Can you recommend some helpful books for an intermediate player?

Yes.

Ideas Behind Opening - Reuben Fine
Bobby Fischer's Collected Games
Capablanca's Best Chess Endings
Botvinnik's 100 Selected Games
Alehkine's Best Games
Test of Time - Garry Kasparov

Also Nimzovich's books are interesting reading… Chess Praxis and My System but basically they are just plain wrong although there is great reviews in our chess community about theses books but many of his ideas just lose outright!

8. Should I play blitz chess? Internet chess? Sure. Chess is Chess... some guy turning the back of a clock don't mean much u can get more games in and learn fast! The Internet is perfect for chess you can meet other players from around the world and compete there. I play on ICC as ULTRAMODERNIST and got a chance to meet the legendary Bobby Fischer there back in 1998. To me, this meeting meant that Ultramodern Theory had come full circle! After that meeting I unveiled the "UltraPirc" to challenge their theory 1.e4 d6 2.d4 f5! If it weren't for the Internet I probably wouldn't have met him.

9. Is it a good idea to use computer programs to analyze my games? I'm not sure I've never used them to analyze before don't trust their analysis. I'm working with Fritz 8 now 9-6-04 with some opening theory and its database of Grandmaster games.

10. How can I avoid time pressure? Botvinnik had a nice idea where he would use training games where the main focus was on avoiding time pressure. Good preparation and a few good practical moves should do it. Don't try to see everything!


Common Question by non-Master Players

What methods did you use to become a chess master? How long did it take? It took me 4 years to reach the master level ,i studied the great masters of the past and did a lot of analysis, also had two very good master level teachers which I believe is best. Brother Shabazz thanks for this most glorious opportunity to share some information with our chess brothers, Truly the sound of our drums is gettin louder and louder. Peace.

Submitted: 6 September 2004