Top Ways to Improve Your Chess Game Rapidly

Chess is a game of tactics, strategy and psychology. It can be fun and exciting, but at the same time be intellectually stimulating. Improving chess skill often becomes an obsessions for beginner and intermediate players. The following tips and methods are a sure-and-tested way to improve your chess game rapidly and properly.

1 - Play Often

An obvious point, but often undervalued, playing often is the fastest way to improve your chess skill. You can read as many books about the grunfield defense or tactical maneuvers, but without actually playing chess, none of this will do any good. Just as you can't learn Tae Kwon Do from reading about it here on associated content, you can't learn chess by reading about openings and strategies. Playing often will increase your ability, whether you know it or not. You will increase the speed at which you see your opponent's tactical errors and your own. Studies have been done and it is known that chess is primarily pattern recognition. Subconscious pattern recognition is one form of becoming better at chess. By playing often, you do increase this aptitude.

2 - Analyze

Analyzing your chess games can increase your skill rapidly, but is a hard thing to do, especially in casual games with friends. Once in a while, write down the moves of your entire game. Play this game intensely, and the next day, analyze the entire game. Play through each move and look at other possible moves you could have made. Look at your errors and your opponent's errors. Try to mentally visualize different points in your game and remember what you did.

Using chess Software can make analyzing a chess game very easy. I recommend chessMaster. The analyzing program is very user-friendly and a bargain. Every possible move is scored for each side. Alone, sometimes knowing whether or not a move was good is impossible. chessMaster can calculate millions of moves per second and can tactically judge your moves. Strategically, however, chessMaster is weaker than the average master player but better than most amateurs.

3 - Find a Mentor

Playing someone worse than you or even at your level is better than not playing at all. With this said, playing someone BETTER than you can increase your chess skill rapidly. You'll probably lose every time, but losing is a learning experience in chess.

When playing against someone who is your level or worse, you can get away with tactical and strategic mistakes and, sometimes, never know you committed them. When playing against someone better, your mistakes will become more apparent. You'll dismiss your bad habits more rapidly. Be sure to ask your mentor what s/he thinks was your biggest mistake for every chess game you play.

4 - Study the Endgame First, Middlegame Second, and Opening Last

Analyzing your own games is important in chess, but studying the games of Grandmasters and other amateurs is equally as important. Most know this and that's why we run to the bookstore and get a book on the King's Gambit or Tactical Pursuits.

This approach is wrong. You should study the Endgame first, as the famed Grandmaster Capablanca stressed. The endgame is where you can see the power of the individual pieces. Additionally, becoming better at the end game allows you to become better at the Middlegame. And becoming more comfortable at the Middlegame allows you to steer the Opening into a desired position for your Middlegame.

Trust me. Don't memorize openings until you've done all the studying you can do for the endgame and Middlegame. Or at least wait until you're rated about 1500. Memorizing openings may pay off in the short term, but rarely do opening traps work against endgame masters.

Good luck.