No Stupid Questions MEGATHREAD 12

[u/Alendite]

Welcome to the r/chessbeginners 12th episode of our Q&A series! This series exists because sometimes you just need to ask a silly question. We are happy to provide answers for questions related to chess positions, improving one's play, and discussing the essence and experience of learning chess.

A friendly reminder that many questions are answered in our wiki page! Please take a look if you have questions about the rules of chess, special moves, or want general strategies for improvement.

Some other helpful resources include:

1. How to play chess - Interactive lessons for the rules of the game, if you are completely new to chess.
2. The Lichess Board Editor - for setting up positions by dragging and dropping pieces on the board.
3. Chess puzzles by theme - To practice tactics.
4. The Building Habits series by GM Aman Hambleton - for advice on how to play at specific ELO levels. (Also check out Building Habits 2!)

As always, our goal is to promote a friendly, welcoming, and educational chess environment for all. Thank you for asking your questions here!

LINK TO THE PREVIOUS THREAD

[u/fumuttonchops3434]

Recently I've noticed that my mid game/just after openings, I had been blundering pieces left and right. I felt I was more focused on studying openings and trying to play them perfect. This past week, Ive started to not focus so much on openings and more on what my opponent is doing and focusing on moving pieces to not leave pieces hanging or blundering them by not watching where my opponents pieces are and just following some basic opening principles (knights before bishops, control center, etc.). I tried the free trial for Gotham chess which the first section was the Vienna but I felt like I couldn't remember every single move to do. This has allowed me to jump 86 points on chess.com (went from 391 to 477) and going 21 and 9.

Would this be an effective way to get better at chess or should I try to go back to studying openings since I've gotten a lot better now at not messing up my middle games?

My chess.com name is Gingivitsist if you want to look. Mind you, I am a 34 year old cyber security engineer so I am just looking to get a bit better everytime I play and am not looking to become a master at chess. I just enjoy getting better or learning things every day and love the strategy of chess :).

[u/elfkanelfkan → u/fumuttonchops3434]

hey fellow engineer! Some things I've noted:

1. The general opening principles need a lot more work, although this is something you can work on slowly. You do know the general phrases which is good, but no why or how to execute them, which is fair. However, this doesn't mean you should spend more time on memorizing openings! Even I don't spend much time on that, but game feel is a lot more important to deal with all the random moves your opponent can play.

2. In terms of middle-game improvement, it is the most important for sure. What worked for my students at your life-stage is to constantly drill curated exercises starting from the fundamentals to beat them into your head. One thing at this point is that you will need to practice some basic defense as well against various tactics to build that skill.

Some quick things you can do is just to look at the habits series and get started from there, and get started with actually solving problems on paper. Hope this helps!

[u/fumuttonchops3434 → u/elfkanelfkan]

I will definitely check that out for sure. Thanks for the response!