In the previous post about chess, I gave some insights on what do you need to start playing chess (besides a chessboard, a chess set, and an opponent). It was a fairly abstract post where I narrated my personal experience, and what I found most fascinating about the game. Here I am going to describe several practical tools to learn chess. How much you want to study and the type of tool that may fit you better depends on your aim and what you like about chess. I will start with digital tools, as most of them are free.
Chess24 (https://chess24.com/en) is a platform to meet players from all over the world, but you can also use it for practicing tactical skills, and watching tournament games. This last resource is particularly useful, as commentaries by strong GMs are often provided during top tournaments and you can learn a lot from them. However, passive learning is only beneficial when you combine it with active learning. Tactical exercises are particularly important for beginners (99% of beginner games ends because of tactics). Playing online is rarely a useful activity if you don’t analyse your games afterward, which is rarely done. Try to limit yourself to 2-3 games (10-15 min per player) per day + analysis, instead of playing 20 games without looking at them once they are over.
Chess.com (https://www.chess.com/member/ferrante89) is another chess platform where it’s possible to play live and correspondence games, doing tactical exercises, watching video lessons and more, but most features are only after subscribing to the annual fee, which I don’t recommend. There is too much free material to start with that you don’t need to pay anything to get the basics of the game. Yet, the website is nicely done and pretty much works also as a chess newspaper, if you want to know what’s going around in the chess world. It is also a way to feel part of the chess community, although it does not replace the local chess club in social and chess improvement terms.
Lichess (https://lichess.org/) is another chess platform. I prefer it to chess.com because it’s free (except watching video lessons), it has a friendly interface, and it allows to create studies and save your games (which is very useful if you don’t have the ChessBase, which is a program specifically developed for this function). You can practice several tactical motifs/basic checkmates with a well-done tutorial. Highly recommended.
Chesstempo (https://chesstempo.com/) is another chess platform, similar to chess.com and lichess.org. It gives the possibility to play against other people and to do tactical exercises, as usual. The website also offers positional, endgame and opening exercises. You don’t need 10 chess platforms to become a good chess player. Just look at each of them, and use the one you like the most.
ChessBase (CB) is a software for saving games and searching chess positions and it used to be a must for every chess player active in competitions. In the past, CB was the way to find your opponent’s games, which was necessary to prepare for a match in advance. This is no longer true, as chess games are stored online (e.g. https://chess-db.com/public/index.jsp) nowadays. CB it’s also a useful program if you want to create handouts with diagrams (in case you are a chess teacher, or if you are writing a chess book). CB is surely well organised and has several functions to comment on your games, but it’s not for free. There exists a free-license, lighter version called CB Light that it does not allow you to store millions of games, but you are still in the order of thousands. Unfortunately, CB is only available for Windows. ScidvsMac is a similar program that works on Mac, but it’s less developed than CB. Beginners don’t need the CB, but it’s the next step when you start to take chess more seriously.
Finally, there are several publishers of chess books, such as Quality Chess, New In Chess, Everyman Chess, Gambit, Thinker Publishing, Dover Publications, Batsford Chess Books.
How much do you intend to practice every day is up to you. Your chess understanding can improve only if you are highly motivated and ready to devote a bit of your time to studying.
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