Amir Bagheri

MOST ASKED QUESTION: How do I become a GM?

Please do not be offended but I will make some quick points. You sound like the type of person who thinks that being good can be quick, painless, and easy. This is NOT the case. If you wish to be a good chess player and think with a few games under your belt you can be called a good chess player, you are seriously mistaken and need to reconsider.

Chess is one of the worse areas for people to think that they can become good at with a few quick days, let alone be a grandmaster. If you look in my chess learning time, it took me 3 years of weekly games to play rudimentary chess. But then in the 4th year I all of a sudden "got" chess and became a lot better. Since, then I have gotten better only gradually. Most people that I talk to follows a similar pattern.

To achieve grandmaster status ,intensive practice is required. Memorization of various openings, middle game, and endgame can be crucial. The first for starting out, the middle for deciding the game and the last for games with not much time left on the clock. It is said that the world's greatest chess player, Gary Kasparov, knows some 300,000 opening variations. Thus you can see that to be a good chess player and other players, it requires a great deal of commitment, determination, and a certain affinity for the subject, not to mention enmormous amounts of practice and thus experience. Not to be arrogant or anything, I do have above-average strategical, analytical, and spatial skills, which helped in my more rapid acquirement of my chess skills. For some, it may take 5 or even 10 years to even begin to truly "understand" the game.

The best help I can give you is not much. Skill only comes with great amounts of practice. I suggest that you first ignore memorizing positions and get experience instead. Get beat by better players, not only will you understand that you still have a long way to go, you can also see what strategies they employ to beat you. However, if you are a real beginner, you may want to watch a game between two good players, otherwise you will see the many methods in which the more-experienced players will play sloppy moves that usually work on beginners and end in a quick win. Also, if you're a beginner, do not fall into the wonders of bringing the queen out too early. By playing those that cannot defend against the queen, it may be tempting. Perhaps the best way to get off the habit to play a better player. They will defeat your strategy so soundly that you will realize it is not the route to take.

Sorry if I may not seem helpful, but there is no better way to learn chess than to play it. The miracle tutors and methods DO NOT work. The real way is to learn it, the earlier the better. Also, remember that there are exceptions to every "rule". I will try to give you some pointers to help guide your way:


1.A knight on the rim is grim. Don't get your knights on the edge, it severely hampers their abilities.
2.Control of the center is critical to winning the game.
3.If ahead in development, attempt to open up the game (trade pawns, unblock diagonals/columns/rows, etc.). If behind then close the game(meet pawn to pawn with the opponent is the most effective technique, says if opponents pawn is on e5 then yours should be on e4, and they have a chain, try to follow it. This allows you time to catch up in development, only to be used if you are more than 2 moves behind in development)
4.Do not bring the queen out too early
5.Do not expose the king too much
6.Weaknesses that cannot be exploited are not weaknesses, just blemishes in your position.
7.Castle early against beginners(castled positions are hard to attack and frustrate beginners causing stupid moves) and delay it against better players(only as long as realistically possible. This is because some advanced players will try to set up too much, as in point pieces to one specific part of the board too much. If you castle at the last second, then they must spend time to regroup, gaining you some precious time.)
8.Do not fianchetto bishops because you heard it is a good move, have a reason to. (Finachettoing a bishop is when you move a knight's pawn (king or queen) up one then place a bishop into that opening to control the long diagonal)
9.Moving pawns in front of the king without a good reason to is usually a bad idea.
10.Castling drops considerably in priority once the opponent's queen is removed.
11.The less pieces on the board, the more you use your king. (unless the opponent's queen and some other piece sides a pawn is on the board.)
12.Play each move with a specific purpose in mind, do not move for the sake of moving
13.NEVER GIVE UP!!! Opponents often make mistakes at critical periods, even grandmasters do
14.NEVER reject a move if it seems good because it violates a principle, specific circumstances ALWAYS outweight vague ideas 15.Rationalize the opponent's last move, never understimate how important this step is
16.Do not let your emotions show on your face, games are often lost because an opponents notice a dejected look and search for the mistake
17.WATCH THE CLOCK!!!, unless it isn't timed... lol
18.Keep concentrated, forget everything but the game you're playing
19.Do not get stressed, mistakes occur because of this
20.Use the opponent's move-making time to decide your own move. Try to use your time primarily to analyze your opponent's move.
21.DO NOT RUSH in making a move. Rushing = Mistakes = You Lose
22.Do NOT overanalyze, doing so quickly tires the brain and by the 10th move you won't really be checking anything.


Well, hope I've helped a bit. If you want any more help, I can always be available. A good strategy for getting better is learning to play combos well. Combos can change the tide of the game, or close it for good. They are the single most important difference betweeen newbies and experts. Experts know and innately see combos, while newbies stumble into specially prepared traps.

Most famous player I played against are: Topalov and Radjabov

well there is also someone else but thats an other story......
Reading

I remember as a kid (and a serious chess enthusiast) how exciting it was to read the games collections of the great players. Books by Fischer, Larsen, Botvinnik, Geller, and Smyslov come immediately to mind. Fantastic works of chess literature. Is it only me then or have we experienced a significant drop in quality of writing over the past couple of generations? New In Chess bores me to tears - it's all the same! The games of Anand, Kramnik, Leko, Adams, even Shirov ..... they don't excite me in the same way. Maybe the quality of chess is higher but the games seem dry; there is little humanity in them. The computer reveals itself in the moves. Yawn. There are notable exceptions. Kasparov is a giant all on his own - his books are marvelous. And I have to admit more than a sneaking regard for the work of Nigel Short
Favorite Chess Quotes

During a chess competition a chessmaster should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk. Alexander Alekhine

I think I can safely conclude that there is not a lot to be said for playing chess while on Valium. Tony Miles

Chess is not for timid souls. Wilhelm Steinitz