Chess Strategy Tips for Beginners – The Definitive Guide

Are you a chess beginner? Do you want to improve your chances of victory in your training games? Or even in tournaments? You are in the right place! Here we have the best chess strategy tips for beginners. We’ll help you get to know and understand basic chess tactics.

Here Are Our Best Chess Strategy Tips for Beginners:

Try to control the center from the opening to the end.

This is one of the most important chess strategy tips for beginners to learn. The center is the most important section of the board since your pieces can pretty much have access to the whole board when they are correctly located in the center.

That’s the reason why this strategic principle is so important, and it has been proven over and over by the best players in the world. These players always try to keep their pieces adding pressure to the center.

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Always develop all your pieces as quickly as possible.

Developing your pieces quickly is also a very important chess strategy since your pieces are like your army, they are the ones that will help you dominate the board, and eventually help you win the games.

Not developing your pieces quickly can be a very serious mistake. By not developing your pieces quickly you might be allowing your opponents to take more space on the board. They could quickly swap you off of the board.

Try not to move the same piece multiple times in the opening.

Not moving the same piece multiple times in the opening goes along with the concept of developing your pieces quickly. This is because by moving the same piece multiple times, you allow your opponent to develop several pieces much faster.

There are occasions on which you’ll need to move the same piece multiple times in order to avoid losing the piece or something else. But this principle still needs to be kept in mind at all times.

• Interested in chess strategy? Check out these 8 useful examples!

Protect your king by castling as soon as possible.

One of the main chess tactics is to always keep your king in a safe position, while you try to create weaknesses around your opponent’s king if it’s possible.

That’s the reason why you should always castle your king as soon as possible. That way, it moves away from the center, which is the area of the board where most of the action usually takes place. It also helps you bring your rooks to the center more quickly.

Don’t move your queen too soon.

Not moving the queen too early in the game is one of the most important chess strategy tips for beginners. Most beginners try to move the queen too early in order to create mating threats on f7 or f2.

These threats are usually not real and the player who moved the queen usually loses several tempos on trying to get the queen back to a safe square.

You’ve probably heard this many times before. But “don’t move your queen too early in the game” is a rule that can be omitted sometimes. For example, if your opponent makes a huge mistake that you can punish immediately by starting an attack with your queen.

Connect your rooks and place them on the columns that will be open.

The rooks are usually the most difficult pieces to activate. This is because they can only move horizontally and vertically. It’s not easy to move these heavy pieces when there are not open columns.

That’s one the reasons why castling your king early is very important. It helps you bring one of the rooks closer to the center.

You should also always try to anticipate which columns are the ones that are most likely to be opened during the game, so that you are the first one to take advantage of the open columns with your own rooks.

Think twice before moving your pawns. They can’t go back.

As you already know, pawns can only move forward. That’s the reason why this is a fundamental chess strategy for players of all levels, not only for beginners.

Another very important chess strategy tip is that pawns are the pieces with more limitations when it comes to mobility. So pawns are always very important for determining the nature of the position and the plans that each player should follow.

If you have a bad piece, try to exchange it very quickly.

Being able to identify when any particular piece doesn’t have a bright future is a very important aspect of chess strategy at all levels. This actually makes a difference between novice players and masters.

When a bishop is blocked by its own pawns because they are located on squares of the bishop’s same color, usually the bishop is considered to be a bad piece. It’s a wise decision to exchange it with another piece of the same value whenever it’s possible.

Bishops tend to be better pieces than knights when the position is wide open. Knights tend to be better pieces in closed positions because they are the only ones that can jump over other pieces.

Check out the following video in which GM Damian Lemos provides some valuable chess strategy tips for beginners:

Also check out: Positional Chess Strategy – The Grandmaster’s Positional Understanding

Why Is It Important to Learn These Basic Chess Tactics?

Many beginner chess players suffer frustrating experiences during their first chess games. They get mated quickly. Or lose control of their positions without even recognizing what happened. Or stalemate their opponents with many extra pieces, throwing away a win for only a draw.

Every chess player remembers the days when he or she tried to capture as many pieces as possible without any significant clue about how to checkmate the opponent with all the extra pieces.

These situations can be very discouraging, especially for children getting started on a chess career. Following the above-mentioned chess strategy tips for beginners can help you avoid them.

Do you want to put an end to those quick losses, frustrating moments and wasted half points? How can chess beginners avoid such disillusioning situations? What are some easy improvement shortcuts to rapidly advance your skills?

Playing experience, recognizing typical patterns, knowing some simple openings as well as building some basic endgame skills, as well as many more basic chess principles are the key to efficient progress. Let’s explore some other chess strategy tips for beginners which will increase your success rate and motivate you to improve your skills!

5 Chess Tactics for Choosing the Best Openings

Your opening choice is essential for the progression of the game. Openings are often very complex and for beginners. It can be extremely difficult to learn them properly by heart.

So it would be wise to choose to play simple chess as a newcomer instead of cramming in certain theoretical lines.

Not all openings are as suitable for beginners as they are for experts.

Many openings require intimate knowledge of deep, strategic ideas and move-order subtleties. First of all, it is key to always remember these 5 opening principles:

1. Control the center. (Specifically the e4, d4, e5, d5 squares)
2. Develop your pieces to actively create threats.
3. Try not to move a piece twice.
4. A knight on the rim is dim. (Developing towards the center greatly increases the mobility and scope of your pieces)
5. Get your king safe. (Leaving your king in the center can dangerously expose you to tactics)

Once we’ve familiarized these essential chess opening principles, we can look for suitable beginner chess openings.

The best chess openings for beginners should meet the following criteria:

1. Easy to learn so you can start playing it straight away.
2. Based on key ideas, not endless memorization of theory.
3. Leads to a comfortable middlegame.

Taking into account these beginner chess tactics, the Italian game for White with 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 and the Sicilian Defense for Black with 1. e4 c5 are pretty easy openings that follow very logical patterns. They are easy to understand for beginners.

Chess Tactics Training

Chess tactics often decide the chess games of players of all levels. For that reason, one of our main chess strategy tips for beginners is to start getting to know tactical themes like pins, forks, double attacks and discovered checks right from the beginning of your chess career.

Join a Chess Club

When choosing a hobby most people join a club to get to know others who share their interests or to profit from a membership. Becoming a member of a chess club does not only mean finding new opponents or a chess trainer but also finding friends and connecting socially with people who share their interests with you.

A membership in a chess club is one of the best chess strategy tips for beginners and has plenty of advantages. You can have fun together with new friends, share your ideas and thoughts, get tips from your fellows, gain playing experience, profit from weekly training and so much more.

Social contacts are essential, especially for beginners who are motivated to get to know more, to improve and to find people who share ideas with them.

So, if you want to meet new friends with the same interests, step away from the computer with its boring chess engine and find a suitable chess club for you. There are so many of them in search of new and motivated members!

Conclusion:

In this article, we talked about some basic chess strategy tips for beginners that we considered important.

So we hope that you’ve learned a lot about the most common beginner chess mistakes and the best chess strategy tips for beginners from our article and will profit from our advice in your future chess career!

If you’re looking for a comprehensive chess course for beginners to deepen all the chess strategy tips for beginners from this article, we’ve got a fantastic offer for you.

All chess players were beginners at some point, including Grandmaster Damian Lemos.

With hard work, persistence and the right training, Damian was able to obtain the FIDE Master title at 14 years old, then went on to become an International Master at 15, and a Grandmaster at 18. It was a journey of pain, sacrifices, determination, and triumph.

Now, GM Lemos is ready to share his chess tactics and experience in this exclusive Lemos Absolute Beginner Chess Course — a unique, comprehensive chess foundational program for beginners around 800-1400 Elo rating. Get instant access with 70% off.

Don’t forget to Sign Up for our FREE Master Class here!

Other interesting chess tactics articles to check out:

• Chess Strategy for Beginners: 8 Useful Examples
• Best Chess Openings for Beginners: Queen’s Gambit Declined
• Chess Pieces Set Up: The Definitive Guide for Chess Beginners
• How to Set Up a Chess Board: Full Guide Step-by-Step
• Best Chess Openings for Beginners: The Definitive Guide [Video]