How to Get Better at Chess: Seven Things That Actually Work

Almost all chess improvement advice is a reading list, and reading is the slowest way to get better at anything you do with your hands. These are seven things to do, roughly in the order that moves a rating fastest for someone under about 1500.

1. Do tactics puzzles, fifteen minutes a day

Below club level, games are not decided by strategy. They are decided by somebody leaving a piece where it can be taken, or missing a fork that was on the board for two moves. Puzzles train the pattern recognition that catches both.

Fifteen minutes daily beats two hours on Sunday, because this is memory work and memory responds to repetition rather than to duration. Do them without a timer at first: the goal is calculating correctly, not quickly.

2. Play longer games

Blitz is enjoyable and it is not practice. Three minute games reward the habits you already have, because there is no time to build new ones. If every game you play is fast, you get better at playing fast and no better at chess.

Play something with at least fifteen minutes on the clock, ideally with an increment. One long game a day teaches more than twenty blitz games, and it is less tiring than it sounds.

3. Review your own losses, before you touch an engine

This is the habit almost nobody has and the one that separates people who improve from people who plateau.

After a loss, go back through the game yourself and find the move where it went wrong. Write down what you thought at the time. Only then turn on the engine, and use it to check your answer rather than to supply one. An engine that tells you move 23 was a blunder teaches nothing. Working out that you stopped checking your opponent's threats around move 20 teaches you something you can use tomorrow.

4. Learn endgames before openings

This feels backwards and it is the most reliable advice in the game. Openings are enormous, and most of what you memorise will never appear on your board. Endgames are small, finite and come up constantly.

Learn, in this order: king and pawn against king, and the opposition. Then how to force mate with king and rook. Then the Lucena and Philidor rook endgame positions. That is a few evenings of work and it converts a lot of drawn positions into wins.

5. Pick one opening per color and stop collecting

Playing the same opening a hundred times teaches you its typical middlegames, its pawn breaks and where the pieces want to go. Playing ten different openings ten times each teaches you ten sets of first eight moves and nothing else.

Pick anything reasonable, play it until you are tired of it, and then play it some more. The opening you know is better than the opening that is theoretically best.

6. Ask two questions before every move

What did my opponent's last move change, and what of mine is undefended. Almost every blunder under 1500 is one of those two questions going unasked.

It is slow at first and it becomes automatic in a few weeks. It is also the single cheapest rating gain available to anyone, because it costs no study at all.

7. Play over the board

Playing on a screen and playing on a board are different skills. On a physical board you see the whole position at once, you cannot take a move back, and you have to hold your calculation in your head rather than dragging a piece to see what it looks like.

Club players who only play online often find their first over the board tournament humbling for exactly this reason. Playing on a real set a couple of times a week fixes it, and it is more enjoyable anyway.

What feels productive and is not

Watching chess videos without a board in front of you. Reading opening theory you will never reach. Playing endless blitz. Buying a fourth book before finishing the first. All of them feel like work and none of them puts a pattern into your memory.

Where to start if you are new

Both of our sets come with a 32 page illustrated strategy guide that runs from how the pieces move through openings, tactics and endgames, which covers points four and five above without buying anything else.

If you are choosing a first set, what a beginner actually needs is the short version: notation on the board, weighted pieces, standard shapes.

See the 3X Tournament and the 4X Tournament Modern, or browse our chess sets for beginners.

Common questions

How long does it take to get good at chess?

Reaching a steady 1200 to 1400 online takes most people a few months of regular play with daily tactics. Past 1800 the work changes shape and the time involved goes up sharply.

Do chess books still help?

Yes, with a board in front of you and the moves played out by hand. Read one at a time and finish it. The classics on tactics and endgames have not been improved on.

Is playing the computer good practice?

A weak engine plays unnatural moves and teaches bad habits. Play people at roughly your own level, and use the engine to check your analysis afterwards rather than as an opponent.

How many tactics puzzles a day?

Fifteen minutes is the useful unit, however many that turns out to be. Accuracy matters more than volume, so slow down until you are getting most of them right.