Ten Useful Chess Tips

1. Every move you play should have a purpose. Someone once said that a bad plan is better than no plan at all, and this holds more than a grain of truth. Playing randomly will almost always leave you worse off than playing moves which fit into a plan. Obviously the plan has to have a good objective; if you follow the plan "play moves which will cause me to lose as quickly as possible" then you'd be better off playing random moves. But so long as the plan you are following is aimed at achieving some desirable goal such as a material or positional advantage then it is better to follow that plan than just to drift. Plans can sometimes be very simple, for example "I want to gain a material advantage so I shall capture the queen he has just left unguarded". Equally they can have purely psychologic foundations, for example "I know that my opponent dislikes complex positions so I shall play moves which make the position as complex as possible". Just make sure you have a plan!

2. Centralise your pieces. If you are ever stuck for an idea or plan and have no idea what you should be doing it is usually a good idea to try to move your pieces towards the centre of the board. Pieces placed in the centre of the board are generally more effective than those placed near the edges. Find your worst placed piece and centralise it!

3. Never, ever, get into time trouble. This has nothing to do with chess, but it's a good tip for getting good results in tournaments and matches. If you want to win, give yourself enough time to find winning moves!

4. Make sure there are no big gaps in your openings repertoire. If you haven't got a full repertoire then you will constantly find yourself struggling against people who have! It's not as difficult or time consuming as it sounds. For example, if you play 1.e4 you might play the exchange variations of the French and the Caro Kann, the closed Sicilian, a kingside fianchetto line of the Vienna against 1. e5, and 2. Nc3 against Alekine's Defence. If you play 1. ... c6 as black then you could meet 1. d4 and 1. c4 with the Slav defence and 1. e4 with the Caro Kann. You could probably knock together a complete repertoire with these lines in just a few hours and the amount of material you would need to memorise would be limited, so long as you picked safe lines.

5. There are about five king and pawn endgame positions which you absolutely must know. Memorise them. Also, know how to mate with king and queen against king, and king and rook against king. Practice until you can do them without (conscious) calculation.

6. Take your time. This is not time management advice! What it means is that generally it's best not to try to rush things on the chess board. Take time to build up before you launch an attack, if possible 'shuffle' your pieces around a bit in an endgame before committing yourself to one plan. If you play through the games of masters and grandmasters you'll often see them building up and even 'shuffling' before embarking on the winning plan. Do the same!

7. King safety! The object of game of chess is to deliver checkmate. Remember this and act accordingly. Specifically, keep your king safe. Often the best way of doing this is to castle, so, if your kingside pawns are intact, castle there as soon as it is safe to do so.

8. Pick your battlefield carefully. In a battle between two unequally matched armies the stronger side will prefer to fight on uneven terrain while the weaker side will try to find somewhere flat. This is because the differences between armies show up most in difficult conditions. Anyone can march quickly over flat ground and hold a spear straight when charging over smooth hard ground. Only a skilled army can effectively charge over uneven terrain. Analogously, if you are stronger than your opponent, complicate matters. If you are weaker, seek to simplify. It's only when the going gets tough that the tough get going and the weak fall by the wayside.

9. If you are losing a game, try to complicate matters. If you are winning try to simplify things. This often means that if you are losing you should avoid exchanging pieces while if you are winning you should try to exchange as much as possible. More specifically, the losing side should generally only allow the exchange of pawns, the winning side should try to exchange pieces. King and pawn endings a pawn up are often winning. King and bishop vs. King is a draw.

10. Graft! Your opponent is trying to defeat your finest ideas, don't let him, you have to want to win more than your opponent if you are going to play better moves than he does. Work hard at the board and don't allow yourself to be distracted by anything (unless it's life threatening [specifically, your life threatening!]). This applies whether or not you are concerned about your results. To get the best out of yourself you have to want to play better moves than your opponent. Psychologically this is terrifically important. Focus, fight, never surrender!

 
Ten Mildly Amusing Chess Tips

(Note that the following 'tips' are not intended to be taken seriously. As such you should not take them seriously. You could get into trouble if you adopt any of these ploys! Don't! Just laugh at them and then forget about them!)

1. Set up the board so that the sun is in your opponent's eyes.

2. Find out what kind of food your opponent dislikes most in all the world and then bring a plate of it to the table with you, but don't eat it, just leave it lying next to the board. If possible arrange it so that your opponent is downwind of the plate of food.

3. Find out what kind of food your opponent likes most in all the world and then bring a plate of it to the table with you, but don't offer any of it to your opponent!

4. Wear very warm clothes and keep the room very very cold, or wear very light clothes and keep the room very very hot. Ensure that your opponent has not got access to a change of clothes.

5. Knock a glass of very sticky drink over the board while it's your opponent's move.

6. Develop a nervous twitch which causes you to kick your opponent under the table during his moves. Apologise profusely each time this happens suggesting ridiculous solutions like shin pads and a stack of books under the table between you and your opponent. If he goes for the stack of books plan makes sure you knock it over during your opponent's move and dive under the table to stack them up again knocking the pieces off their squares in the process.

7. Observe which way your opponent likes to have his knights and makes sure you "adjust" all the knights so that they are all pointing at right angles to the way he likes them.

8. Wear a t-shirt with text on the front just too small to be readable from the other side of the board.

9. Hire 'spectators' to nod appreciatively at all your moves and to shake their heads and tut at all your opponent's moves.

10. Arrange the board so that your opponent hasn't enough room for his scoresheet and refuse to move it 'a bit that way' when he asks you to.