How to Play Chess for (ABSOLUTE) Beginners
nd Edition
by Maxen Tarafa
Chess: How to Play Chess for (Absolute) Beginners - Copyright 2015 by Maxen Tarafa - 2 nd Edition
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
www.skillhackr.com
Table of Contents
Bonus: Frequently Asked Questions
part 1: How to play Chess for (Absolute) Beginners
My name is Maxen R. Tarafa, and Im a skill artist.
If youre looking to learn a board game where you can roll some dice and hope youre lucky enough to win, youve come to the wrong place.
But if youre looking for an ancient game of wits, war, and intellect, hop on your saddle. Im going to show you how to play Chess at a beginner level in an alarmingly short amount of time.
Of course, a lot of books promise to teach the basics of Chess, but rarely deliver on results, so what makes this one different?
If youve read other Chess books for beginners, you may find a lot of interesting information
that you couldnt possibly learn from.
Many Chess books for beginners use a lot of complex terminology and strange symbols resembling the periodic table, such as QxB6 and NaH!?.
If the symbols above look like a foreign language, youve come to the right place. You see, the problem with most books is they say theyre for beginners, but theyre actually NOT. Theyre written by Chess masters or internet marketers who dont realize beginners dont know how to read complicated Chess notation or terminology, and in my opinion, dont need to know.
My guess is you want to learn how to play Chess or refresh your knowledge on the basics, and you want to do it quickly and easily. Excellent.
While Ill take you through a more involved approach to learning Chess, I can promise that if you read this book and practice the recommended exercises, you will learn and (more importantly) remember the basics of Chess when you sit down to play, and do it faster than ever before.
Instead of dumping information on you, I want to lead you through a kind of guided meditation. To help you remember and understand, Im going to ask you to stop and visualize, imagine, touch, move, and feel the Chess pieces and the moves at hand.
But, who am I? And why do I want to teach you how to play Chess so bad?
I grew up playing Chess against my brothers, cousins, and friends. In college, I started playing against my roommates, but I didnt win nearly as often as I would have liked. After I graduated from college, I wanted to get better at Chess, and found every bit of information I could find, and more than doubled my online rating from about 600 to 1300 in three months.
It wasnt until a while later when it came time to teach my nine-year-old brother Chess that I realized there were only a few easy principles that if the post-beginner just knew what they were and remembered them while playing, it would improve their game immensely. I taught him those principles and within a week he was beating 16 and 17-year-olds.
Later, after coaching a Chess club and continuing to improve my Chess game, I ended up writing a highly successful book called Chess: Conquer your Friends with 8 Easy Principles where I revealed the high impact principles I had taught to my younger brother and others.
Now, I want to apply the same philosophy to learning Chess for beginners: a focus on remembering and using the information fast , and not just reading it.
Ive coached kids as young as 5 and adults as old as their thirties. Ive taught everything from how to move a Pawn to how to avoid a Zugzwang. It doesnt matter how old you are or how little experience you have, if you promise to read this book carefully and practice the exercises, I promise youll be confident at playing Chess at a beginner level in as little as a few hours.
After reading this book, youll be well on your way to your own Chess empire, but remember with great power comes great responsibility.
I trust that youll use it wisely.
Sincerely,
Maxen R. Tarafa
Preparation
If you own a Chessboard, I highly suggest you take your Chess board out of the closet, dust it off, and take the pieces out.
In the first section, youre going to learn how to set up the board, the name of each piece, and how they move. Although I use copious images to help you along, people tend to learn best when they engage multiple senses. If you have a board, please feel free to touch, taste, smell, envision, hear, and even taste (if you feel so inclined) the piece were covering.
If you dont have a Chessboard and youre serious about learning Chess, you may want to consider buying one. You can often get a decent plastic one for less than $10 at any Wal-Mart, toy store, or online at Amazon. Although $10 or less is the cheapest, I recommend buying a wooden board in the $10 to $20 range because it will last longer, and youll get more bang for your buck.
For a list of chessboards I recommend, visit my store at skillhackr.com/store.
The Beginner Challenge
As a beginner, your greatest challenge is simply to remember these fundamentals. Rather than dump a lot of information on you, Im going to walk you through each step like a guided meditation.
If youre an avid reader, you may be compelled to read the book as fast as you can. I suggest you dont. Im going to instruct you on the best places to stop and visualize or try the exercises. Stop and imagine the piece and how it moves. Play with the pieces on the table and in your mind. You will gain the most from the book this way.
Im going to have you pointing with your finger, counting out loud, and closing your eyes a lot so if you want to move to a place where people wont see you talking to yourself, you may want to move to new place now.
The Board and the Players
In the image below , you see a complete chessboard. Most people have seen one before so I doubt its a surprise. Lets talk about the board itself for a moment.
Every chessboard contains 64 alternating black and White squares. You may recognize that the chessboard looks exactly like a Checkers board (except some checkers boards are red and black).
There are two players and two sets of pieces. There are Black pieces and White pieces. The two players decide among themselves who is going to play White the other plays Black.
There are 16 White pieces and 16 Black Pieces and they are always set up exactly the same. Its important to note, whoever plays White always moves first.
After White makes the first move, Black moves, then White, then Black and so on. Each player alternates making one move at a time until the game ends. A player cannot make two moves on the same turn and cannot give up their move.
Board Orientation
While it may be intuitive for some, its important I mention when I show an image of a board on the screen, such as in the image above , you can assume you are playing the role of pieces on the bottom (this simulates the pieces being closest to you.)
Next, Ill guide you through the names and abilities of each piece.
The Pawn
The eight small pieces on each side are called Pawns. If you have the pieces in front of you, go ahead and pick this piece up now. If you dont, close your eyes and imagine you are picking up a Pawn.
The Pawn moves forward one square at a time. See the image below .
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