• Play on lichess.org, it's generally a nicer place than chess[.]com

• (Maybe controversial but it's my opinion) De-prioritize learning openings at first. Maybe learn them later in more detail when you want to optimize details. As White, just learn your favorite opening and play that - you'll always be first anyway, so your opponent has to react to your opening. As Black, just learn how to counter the most popular White openings (which is also why most Black openings are called "xyz Defense", because they're reacting to what White does). There are also a few Black openings that can be played against anything White does, so maybe prioritize these so you have to think less about the opening (e.g. King's Indian Defense, Modern Defense). That's about it for starting out. Mid-game and end-game, positioning, tactics, converting winning positions into victories matters FAR more and you will make the most mistakes during mid- and end-game anyway. There is a lot of openings content on Youtube for example, which might suggest that openings are super important. But really, they're just easy-to-produce low-effort content for chess masters.

• Watch videos of master-level games with good commentaries, explaining each move. Try to understand the reasoning behind the moves. Why a move is good or bad.

• Play a lot of Rapid. I'd recommend Rapid because it's not as slow as Classical, so you can play tons of games (playing a lot is important for experience), but still not as ludicrously fast as Bullet or Blitz. I don't like the too fast time controls because this really just causes players of any skill level to make blunders they otherwise wouldn't have done.

• After each game, do a computer analysis and see where your mistakes were (also if you've won!). This is also very important because otherwise you sometimes can't know where you made a mistake or where you played sub-optimally.

I think it's good because of the large difference in material and space imbalance. White isn't just up a minor piece, this is a Q vs R position where white already holds much more space than black. When white is up material and black effectively has no pawns off the starting line, there's not much white can improve other than it's own king activity/placement. Kh2 is the natural attacking progression that is also the best 'waiting for black to make a wrong move' move if that makes sense. Hope this helped clarify. (FTR I probably wouldn't have found Kh2 despite now seeing why it's certainly best)

Stockfish and RubiChess agree that Qb3 is the best move. RubiChess (blue arrows) is only considering attacking while Stockfish (green arrows) has Kh2 and Kh1 in its top moves (+6.25 and +6.99 versus +6.57 for Qb3).

I think the general idea is that the black rook on e8 implies the strategy to get that rook to e1. The move Kh2 avoids that check.

I don't really find that argument convincing myself. White is clearly ahead so just increase the pressure and black will probably have no time for a counterattack anyways.

why what, the last move or move arrow

You might want to get an app.

You seem like a natural.

I don't play chess. Me dumb. Me just guessed why computer suggest smart move.

Hairy Harry is a better player than me.

You am smart.

Me am dumb.

You move am a masterpiece of defense.

Thanks

That's what I played. Computer suggested that. A3 was better.

Thank you.

The computer suggest a6 because it restricts the white bishop. After a6 the best move for white is to fianchetto the bishop because there's no other place to put the bishop. It's also why after e6 the best move for white is to trade the bishop because the bishop is so bad.

But honestly if your opponent starts with Qf3 you're playing at a level where you most likely can't capitalize a6 vs e6 so what played is perfectly fine.

To protect your king from the opponent's bishop (F1 > B5)

Now you can develop the dark square bishop and the queen.

I recommend daily games. I don't think lichess supports it, but available on chess.com for free.

Each player has 24 hours for every move. Practically this means, you just look at the app once a day to make a move. You can have multiple games running in parallel. This takes away the time pressure and allows to think of really cool lines, and you can make notes for the various lines your opponent might take you to.

Feels a lot more like an adventure like this for me and more relaxed than having to deal with time-management on top of it all.

Other notes:

• Revisit videos or other material on one or two openings for black and white. As it's not so fun, when you can't get into an even mid-game because your opponent got an early edge just by using memorization. E.g. there's videos titled "9 ideas every queens gambit player should know".

• learn endgame scenarios like checkmating with two rooks, checkmating with two bishops, pawn endgame, etc. Gotta know what you're playing towards and how to close out a game.

• depending how serious you are, reviewing your matches is a great way to learn. chess.com allows for a few free-of-charge computer-assisted reviews of your games per day, which is helpful to quickly see obvious mistakes. This could also be done with a locally run engine, and other ways.

Thanks :)

Not sure how I didn't notice this but I did a "best move" and the Queen just disappeared and it seemed to break things and immediately went to the next puzzle so I'm guessing bug.

You seem to be missing the 8th rank.

Other than missing the 8th rank? Lol Lichess can have some tricky puzzles, and especially starting out they can seem like bullshit, but they're really just very computer-y since the positions come from real games and the solutions are worked out by stockfish as opposed to being composed by a human to be solved by humans.

No that's cool, thanks for the advice! A couple I've seen recommended online are Chernev: "Logical Chess Move by Move" and Sierawan: "Winning Chess Brilliances", so I'll keep my eyes out for a used copy of one of those.

I don't, sadly... I actually looked to try to find the book I used for it, but it's been so long that I couldn't properly remember what it was. Maybe go to the bookstore and pick up a few and see if they have the right structure (a series of games and then annotations of what's going on in them, and also if the author's text seems like something you vibe with).

Sorry if this is unhelpful lol... I looked over some books online but I'm not sure what is good and I don't want to give you some recommendation and then it not be worthwhile.

Do you have any particular books you would recommend?

It's possible to correct someone without being an ass and insulting the person.

You should try it sometime.

I would highly recommend to get a book of chess games that's annotated by someone who knows what they're doing, and play through the games from it on a separate chessboard, reading the notes and how the person is describing the strategies and values at play during the game. That's what I did and it taught me a whole lot that I never would have really absorbed or come to on my own.

I have replaced loose with take, okay with you?