How to Play Solitaire Chess with SCID

Introduction

One of the best ways to improve at chess is Solitaire Chess. Solitaire Chess is a training method where you play through a master game as the winner and try to guess the move. This training method has been around for a long time and is an incredible tool for improvement.

I wrote an extensive guide to Solitaire Chess on GM Nigel Davies' Chess Improver site, so I won't go into detail about Solitaire Chess here. Instead, I'd like to show you how you can use SCID's "Review game" feature to make Solitaire Chess more effective and fun.

SCID is a free and very powerful database, and I've been experimenting with it a lot lately. For more information, I wrote an introduction to SCID.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step #1: Prepare your source material.

To play Solitaire Chess on SCID, you need to have a game in a database to play. If you are using a physical book, you can look up the game in your database or an online database such as Chess Tempo or chessgames.com. Then just open up the game by double clicking in your game list window.

SCID's Game List Window

Step #2: Move to the Starting Position

Trying not to look at the game notation (so your peripheral vision doesn't catch too many of the moves), use the right arrow key to move the game to the position where you want to start playing Solitaire Chess. Here are some ideas for where you may wish to start.

• If the game is within your opening repertoire, you can start at move 1 if you wish, but may wish to move it forward several moves if the game uses a different move order than the one you use within your repertoire.
• For most games, you may want to play through the first 10-15 moves so that you start in the early middlegame.
• If you want to focus on the endgame, move foreward until it looks like you are transitioning from the middlegame to endgame. This could be anywhere between moves 30-40 depending on the specific game.

Also you need to orient the board to the side you want to play. For example, if you will be playing the Black side during the game, you need to rotate the board by clicking on the board option button on the lower right of the board module - see the screenshot below.

Rotate the Board to play Black

Step #3: Select the Game Review Option in the Play Menu

Click on the Play menu. Hover on the Training option and it will reveal another menu. Click on the Review Game option. 

Once you select this, the Game Review module will pop up.

Game Review Window

You do not need to worry about the settings very much. Because you will often be using a chess book to consult after your Solitaire Chess game, you do not need to (nor should you) rely on the chess engine analysis. However, at some points the engine analysis will be useful and you can further analyze it once you have completed playing through your game.

Step #4: Play Through the Game

The computer will take several seconds (depending on the "time" setting) to calculate its response. After that you will see "Enter your move." There is no time limit other than what you may determine for yourself, so play through the game as if you were playing in a tournament or online game. 

Once you make your move on the board, it will let you know whether or not you played the move in the game score. If not, you may have matched the engine's top score, and it will let you know as well. Also, any moves that are within a certain range (that you can adjust) of the game move or the engine move will be indicated with "You did not choose the engine move, but it was a good move."

If you do not select one of these moves or a blunder you will also be notified. This information, including the engine analysis when you blunder, will be added to the game score. This will be essential for post-mortem analysis.

Step #5: Analyze Your Results

After you are finished playing, you will see how many of the moves you picked correctly. If you wish, you can record this in a spreadsheet to see your improvement over time. More importantly, you should go to the moves where you did not select the best moves and using your chess book and the engine analysis, try to understand your mistakes. Check out my Solitaire Chess guide for more details on this. 

Analyze Your Performance

As mentioned before, I recommend that you not rely on the chess engine variations, but they may be a good place to start to show you what you have missed in your own analysis during the game. Often, well annotated games in chess books will show you interesting or critical variations. When you are finished analyzing, your game score might look something like the one above.

Step #6: Adjust Your Training and Study

This step is ongoing. As you continue to play Solitaire Chess along with your other training, you may notice some patterns of common errors that you make. If you can find these, perhaps with the help of a chess coach or stronger player, you can adjust your training and study to strengthen these areas of weakness.

Here are some examples of errors you might want to look for:

• Specific tactical themes - Do you make moves that lead to common tactics such as a pin or fork? Do you miss the opportunity to win material?
• Specific positional themes - Do you miss opportunities to grab the two bishops when appropriate?
• Mistakes in the endgame - Are there basic endgame positions you don't know how to play (e.g. Lucena and Philidor positions)?
• Mistakes in specific opening structures - Do you know what to do in Sicilian pawn structures or which pawn breaks to use in the French or King's Indian Defense?

Chess improvement is an ongoing project, so finding a way to categorize and eventually reduce these frequently occuring mistakes will be very helpful over time.

Final Thoughts

Solitaire Chess is a great way to practice your chess skills as well as study great master games. SCID's Review Game mode is a fun and effective way to play Solitaire Chess. With these steps, you will be able to maximize your learning and results with this training method. This way of training is not easy, but regular Solitaire Chess including follow-up analysis will pay great dividends for your future chess development.

Resources

Measure and Improve Your Chess: Here are some ideas you may want to use to record your progress in Solitaire Chess.

4-Steps to Analyzing Your Games for Improvement: Analyzing your Solitaire Chess game is similar to analyzing your other chess games, and this guide can help you get the most out of the post-mortem analysis.

Think Like a Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov: This classic book explores a lot of chess topics, but goes into a bit of detail about types of analysis. Kotov describes exercises that are actually a variation of Solitaire Chess and attributes much of his development to employing these training methods.

Measure and Improve Your Chess

Optimize Your Chess Training

What gets measured, gets managed. - Peter Drucker

Several years ago, I was teaching a novice chess player the basics of chess. Although he loved chess and enjoyed our lessons, he never played a rated game. He played a lot of casual blitz and nonrated chess on the Internet Chess Club, but he never played a rated game. 

He often asked me how strong I felt he was. I basically told him that the only real way to know was to play some rated games and see where he stood. I encouraged him to do so partly because he kept asking me my opinion about his strength, but also because I believed that the competition would help him to get better. (You can read about why I believe that playing competitively helps your chess).

Well, after a few months, we amicably decided to part ways. He sent me a message about the lessons he was taking with a grandmaster who said he was probably a "Class B" player. Of course, I checked his profile and there were no rated games played.

Now I really didn't care whether he played a rated game either on the internet or over-the-board (although I think he really would have enjoyed the competition). The point behind this story is that you really don't know how you're doing on almost anything unless you measure it.

There's a reason why top performers in many high-stakes arenas such as business and professional sports measure everything - because it works! In this article, I will discuss how we can use measurement to improve our chess. 

How Measurement Can Improve Your Chess

There are two main ways that measurement helps you. First, when you measure what you want to accomplish, it motivates you (when done properly). Second, measurements can be prescriptive and help guide you in what you need to work on.

What You Measure, Gets Done

I first started measuring my activities when I started my career in business. I measured my calls, number of appointments, and results. I also applied this to physical fitness, measuring my minutes ran, sets and reps of my weightlifting exercises, and things like how many servings of vegetables I consumed daily. 

I think people in general like to see a numerical representation of their accomplishments. Think about your last over-the-board tournament when you played someone you didn't know. Either you or your opponent probably asked what each other's rating was (unless you copied it from the crosstables). 

I remember when I first started playing tournament chess. I couldn't wait until my rating was updated on the cover of my Chess Life magazine. When I started playing, the ratings weren't updated very often, so it also taught me patience.

Once you start using measurement for more than seeing your rating, you will find yourself accomplishing more than you could have imagined. We'll discuss what to measure in a little bit.

How Do You Know if You're Getting Better?

Besides the motivational benefits of measuring your activities (which would be worth measuring in itself), you can also use measurement to track your improvement in specific areas of chess, as well as tracking specific activities. 

Once you measure your activities and results in chess, you can start to make comparisons over time and adjust your training program. Accurate measurements can help you make very specific and effective changes to your regimen. Without measurement, you're just guessing.

What Should You Measure?

There are a ton of things you can measure, but where should you start? Before we can answer that, let me discuss two different types of measurements:

• Performance measures
• Outcome measures

Performance (or frequency) measures track the frequency or amount of an activity. This type of measurement is called a leading indicator as an increase in these typically happen before the desired change - in this case, improvement in a specific area. Here are some examples of chess related performance measures:

• Number of tactical problems solved
• Number of annotated master games studied
• Amount of time spent analyzing
• Number of blitz games played (for me this is a "negative" indicator as I am trying to decrease my volume of blitz play)
• Amount of time spent studying

Outcome measures track the results of an activity. These are lagging indicators as they often follow from activity performed before. Here are a few examples:

• Chess Tempo tactical ratings
• Number of blunders made during a game
• Bullet, Blitz, and Standard Ratings
• Self-rating of levels of focus or attention during a game
• Magnitude of errors made during a game (e.g. measured using a chess engine)

These are just a few examples that I am currently using or have used in the past. In general, you will want to use a mix of performance and outcome measures. 

Use performance measures when you want to increase (or decrease) the frequency of an activity. For example, Here are a couple examples of ways I've used these:

• I felt that I was playing too much and not studying enough, so I started tracking how many minutes I either played, trained, or studied chess. I found after about a month that 25% of my chess time was spent playing, which was much lower than I expected (and perhaps as a result of measuring it in the first place). Below is an excerpt of the spreadsheet I used - created on Microsoft Excel. 

I found out I don't play enough!

• I felt I wasn't sleeping enough and this was effecting my chess. I've started tracking when I go to bed and when I get up, and the spreadsheet calculates how much sleep I got that night. Ever since I started tracking this, the amount and quality of my sleep has increased, and so has my chess!

Use outcome measures to calibrate your chess activities as well as motivation to see your progress. Improvement in chess is a long term project (at least for most of you who are reading this article), and sometimes it is hard to stay patient. Using periodic measurement of outcomes can show you that you are progress, even though it seems slower than you would like.

Below is an excerpt of my current ratings tracking sheet. I've highlighted a calculation I do to show how much I've improved on a weekly basis and on a rolling 6-week basis. Doing this helps me stay consistent and motivated on the long journey.

Slow but gradual improvement

Once I've attained statistics for several months, I can start to make certain comparisons to see how my activities are affecting the results.

You can get really creative with measurement, but remember that these are only tools to our greater objective - to improve at chess.

Getting Started with Measuring Your Chess

Now that you understand the difference between performance and outcome measures, here are a few steps to follow when getting started.

Step #1: Assess Your Needs

Before you incorporate measurement into your chess improvement program, assess what you need to improve. This should start with an objective review of your games - perhaps with a coach if you have one. 

Where do you need to improve - tactics, positional play, endgame, openings? 

Are there certain chess improvement activities you know you should do but don't? 

The answers to these questions are great places to start measuring.

Step #2: Start Simple

Maybe it's just me, but measuring my chess activities has become fairly enjoyable. However, I encourage you to start simply with just a few measures. After you've assessed your needs, you can start with your most pressing need.

For example, after you've made a comprehensive review of your game, you decide that you want to improve your chess tactics. We all know that solving tactical problems is an effective way to improve our ability in this area. We can create a simple spreadsheet with the following measures:

• Number of tactical problems (or amount of time spent on tactics)
• Number solved correctly
• Rating (if using a program that gives a rating such as Chess Tempo)

Step #3: Use Performance Measures First and Often

Typically, we want to measure what we want to improve or increase. This often involves adding to our current program. Use performance measures to track these. Track these daily. Don't worry if you miss a day. Over time, you'll develop consistency and your progress will follow.

Step #4: Measure Outcomes Regularly but not too Often

As you develop the habits you want within your chess activities, use the appropriate outcome measures to track your progress. For example, the various tactics servers on the internet often give ratings. You can enter your rating on regular intervals (e.g. once a week or once a month) and see your steady progress.

I would set a specific day of the week or month to record outcome metrics. I caution you against doing it too often. If you record these measures too often, you might find yourself getting discouraged as your improvement may be too gradual to notice in shorter time periods. Similarly, when it comes to ratings, there are often peaks and valleys, but a longer interval (such as monthly or quarterly for OTB ratings) will show a more useful trend line.

Step #5: Assess and Adjust

Once you've started measuring your activities and results for several months, you can start to evaluate the effectiveness of your training.

For example, suppose you are tracking your tactical rating on a server and your OTB chess rating (or say a standard rating on ICC or chess.com). If you notice that your tactical rating is improving dramatically while your chess rating stagnates, it would be reasonable to conclude that tactics are not your biggest weakness.

For another example, I found that I was "testing" myself too much - doing tactical problems are analytical exercises - but not "studying" - reading chess books and looking up games - enough.

The positive side of this was that my ability to assess and come up with plans at the board was improving. However, I was often finding myself in situations - particularly between the opening and middlegame - where I knew I had played similar positions, but felt like I had to figure it out again. It was like I had to reinvent the wheel over and over again.

So I shifted some of my training time toward looking master games in the lines I was playing. Here I could see what much stronger players did in similar situations and adjusted my thinking and my approach for future games.

I wouldn't have realized this in my training had I not meticulously measured how much time I was spending on each part of my training and study program.

Long Term Project

Improving at chess is a long term project - unless you happen to be one of those teenage grandmasters. If you want to systematically and accurately improve your play, start by measuring aspects of your training and play.

Metrics and statistics are tools. Some people I know (and myself at times) get too caught up in the how and why of statistics. When I first got into this, I felt like I spent almost as much time measuring as I did studying and playing chess. 

I recommend starting with one simple rule: Measure what you want to improve. 

Use the steps above to pick just one or two areas that you want to see a dramatic improvement. Measurement can be very powerful, so be careful of what you measure. One of my friends started tracking various aspects of his tactical training. Unfortunately, now he only does tactics and barely plays! You have been warned.

Your Turn

If you decide to try out some of this advice, I'd love to hear what measures you are using and how it's helping you. If you enjoyed this article and want more elaboration on how to go about this, let me know what you need help with and I'll write more articles detailing this process. 

Good luck and good chess!

Resources

Here are a couple articles you might find helpful:

4 Steps to Analyzing Your Game for Improvement: This is an article I wrote on how to analyze your games and if you don't already do this, it will be hard to know where to start measuring.

Pat Riley on the Remarkable Power of Getting 1% Better: James Clear wrote an interesting article on Pat Riley's philosophy that shows the power of gradual but consistent improvement and the importance of measurement.

4-Steps to Analyzing Your Game for Improvement

I often hear and give the advice to analyze your games to improve your chess. This makes a lot of sense and many of the world champions including Alekhine, Botvinnik, and Kasparov have all been great proponents of this particular method of chess improvement. But how do we go about this work?

There are many people who have written about this as well. I heartily recommend GM Alex Yermolinsky's book The Road to Chess Improvement for a very full and personal account of Yermo's game analysis and methods (my copy is falling apart, because of his interesting and insightful instruction). Until you get that book, today I will give you a 4-step framework for analyzing your games.

I also developed a seven-question checklist to streamline the process if you are pressed for time. For your most important games, I recommend this process, but sometimes it is better to analyze your game a little than not at all.

Step 1: Self-Annotation

It is important to try to capture your thoughts that you had during the game. This information is very important because not only do you want to find out which moves you could have improved upon, but you also want to know why you made the suboptimal moves in the first place.

You would want to include the following information:

• Your assessment of the position during the game
• Any variations you calculated
• Other candidate moves you considered
• You general mood and energy levels
• The time you took on each move (this is made somewhat easier in online play where the time is recorded such as on the Internet Chess Club).

This information will be very useful in the following steps.

Step 2: Identify Critical Positions

After you have done your self-annotations, you should go through the game and identify several key moments for deeper study. The general reasoning here is that you don't have the time to pick apart every single move you made. Instead you should focus on the 3-4 positions (or more if you have time) that will give you the most benefit in your chess improvement.

Here are examples of critical positions:

• Positions where you were surprised by your opponent's move
• Positions where you were confused or couldn't determine a plan
• Transitions from one phase of the game to another (opening to middlegame, etc.)
• Turing points in the game (where the game went from equal to winning or losing)
• Complex positions where a lot of calculation is required or there are many forcing options
• The position where you left your opening "knowledge"

Another way to find critical positions that I use sometimes is by turning on the chess engine. I don't look at the moves the computer generates, but I check out the evaluation. I look for positions where the change in evaluation is greatest (I'll have to make a video about this). These are turning points in the game usually (or blunders) and it is important to evaluate your thinking and performance in these positions.

Step 3: Research and Corrections

During this step, you will be analyzing and trying to find the "truth" to the critical positions you identified in the last step. There are many ways to do this, but the general idea is that you try to improve upon what you did during the game.

Here are some of the ways you can do this:

• Analyzing on your own - I recommend you do this first as often your experience with the position during the game will help you find better answers than if you looked to an external resource first. Also, working on the problem on your own will give you insight into your own thought processes.
• Working with friends/coaches - this is often helpful, but I would recommend you do some work on your own first.
• Opening references/books - you should definitely do this for every game you play to improve your opening knowledge. Don't just look for particular moves, but what plans and ideas do the masters have in the types of position you are playing. Having a good endgame encyclopedia is good too to look up endgame types.
• Chess engines - This should be a last step (except in the case of finding critical positions, as mentioned above). However, the chess engine can be particularly insightful in double-checking your analysis and pointing out tactics in a position. 

Step 4: Conclusions

In this step, you take all of the work that you did in the previous steps and come up with conclusions for your future chess study and review. This is an important step, because it can be prescriptive of what you need to do to improve, particularly after comparing conclusions from a group of games you played. Similarly, over time you need to refresh your memory with what you learned (check out my article on the 4-dimensions of learning to understand the importance of time in learning).

For example, you may come to certain conclusions such as:

• Specific types of positions you need to study more (e.g. isolated queen's pawn positions, specific endgames, specific opening structures)
• There may be certain aspects of your thought process that you want to improve.
• You may realize you need to spend more time studying tactics.

To help you organize and collect these conclusions, you can use the following:

• Chess database software (I use and recommend Chessbase)
• Physical notebooks and binders (a little more work, but sometimes a tangible system is preferred by some)
• Spreadsheets (to organize specific work you may want to do)
• Journal - I write down my thoughts after my games and what I could have improved and look over this regularly.

Summary

I hope you found this post helpful. I will be breaking down specific steps within this with future tutorials. You can customize this process to make it more enjoyable for your preferences and learning style. Overall, any work you do to look at your games and learn from them will be beneficial.

As I mentioned earlier in the article, I sometimes also use this seven-question checklist when I don't have a few hours to analyze a game.

For those of you who enjoy watching videos or listening to the spoken word, here is a video I made on this topic:

Your Turn

Are there specific ways that you analyze your games for improvement? Share them with me and we can discuss them. I'm always trying to learn more and it may be helpful to others who read this article.

Top 3 Chess Channels on Youtube

Chess videos are a great way to increase your knowledge in chess. Because video is a visual medium, you can see the pieces being moved. Also, the commentators usually are a little more conversational in their explanations of the moves, making it easier to understand than the terse comments sometimes found in books. The videos are often very well indexed, so you can search for specific openings or players. Of course, the videos can also be fun.

There are commercially produced videos for sale, but there are also many chess channels on YouTube with free videos. In today's post, I will be highlighting my favorite YouTube channels that I feel have the most instructive content.

#3: kingcrusher

This channel is run by Tryfon Gavriel, aka kingcrusher, a British FIDE Candidate Master who is also a top 50 Rapid player on the ECF Rating list in 2013. His channel has over 5000 videos, making it perhaps the largest on YouTube. He is also the webmaster of www.chessworld.net.

Kingcrusher has many types of instructional videos available, including analysis of master games, analysis of his own games, as well as live commentary of his blitz games and other instructional videos. Tryfon Gavriel has a very engaging style of speaking, and he uses the chess engine well to assist him in his analysis of positions. When I say he uses the chess engine well, I mean that he doesn't just say "Stockfish gives this line a +0.51 evaluation." Instead he explores the lines and explains in plain language the reasoning behind the move, which is very helpful.

I think his videos are helpful to players of all experience levels, perhaps leaning toward intermediate and above.

#2: Chess Explained

Chess Explained is run by German International Master Christof Sielecki. He is also very active, many times uploading multiple videos on one day, particularly of his blitz commentary. A majority of his videos are live commentary of his blitz games, but he also has commentary on current chess tournament games - often highlighting one or two of the best games each round. Also, he has a couple playlists with opening repertoires, where he outlines the theory and strategy for specific repertoires.

I think the strength of this channel is his live commentary. He tries to give you his thoughts while he plays (which is amazing when many of his games are 5-minute blitz games). By doing this, you get a feel that you are in the game with him, and can understand why he makes certain decisions. In my opinion, IM Sielecki also explains positional ideas such as pawn structure or piece value very well in his videos. He is also quite humorous at times, and self-deprecating when he blunders. I think it's good to see that masters can be human also!

I think Chess Explained is good for players of all experience levels, although some of his commentary videos again lean more towards intermediate players who may have more exposure to some of the basics of strategy and tactics.

#1: Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis

This Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis Channel provides a rotating cast of titled players that give lectures at the chess club. They classify their videos by level: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Some of their presenters include Grandmasters Yasser Seirawan, Ben Finegold, and Irina Krush among others.

This channel has a variety of content. They have the Beginner Breakdown, which is very accessible to the less experienced player. As you know from my book recommendations, I am a fan of GM Yasser Seirawan, and his lectures are not to be missed! The videos cover current games, openings, strategy, endgames, and other aspects of chess.

The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis Channel is my favorite on YouTube because of the variety of lecturers as well as the quality of instruction and production value of the videos. In my opinion, they are currently the gold standard for instructional videos on YouTube.

Conclusion

There are many different ways to acquire knowledge in chess. Books have been around for a long time, but the internet and videos are are great source of material to help you improve in chess. There are many channels on YouTube that provide great material by excellent instructors. The three I listed are my favorite. Be sure to check them out as well as the Better Chess Training channel. In future posts, I will be showing you different ways to maximize the benefit you receive from them. Until then, best of luck and of course Better Chess!

Your Turn 

What Chess Channels on YouTube do you enjoy that I haven't mentioned? Post them in the comments!

3 Key Ways to Improve Your Chess

Help! I want to get better in chess! Where do I start?

This is a question I found in a forum post recently and some of the things I find routine may not be so routine to others - particularly those who have recently decided that want to get more serious about learning chess. So in this short article I list the 3 key ways that you can improve your chess whether you are a beginner or a master!

Study Your Games

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” ― Lao Tzu

One of the simplest ways that you can improve is by studying your own games - especially your losses. If you don't know what you're doing wrong, it is very difficult to correct it. This advice is not original, Alekhine and Botvinnik became world champions by deep analysis of their own games.

Check out this detailed article on how to get the most out of studying your games, but here are a few points you want to look for:

• The opening: Did you follow theoretical or repertoire lines? Who deviated first? Were you ahead, even, or behind after the opening phase? How could you have improved your opening. This is where you can look up your opening in your reference books or in an online database like that found on Chess Tempo.
• Shifts in advantage: At what point in the game did the evaluation in the position change (e.g. winning or drawn to losing or vice versa)? Why did this happen?
• Tactical errors: Why did you miss specific tactics (e.g. was it an oversight due to distraction or lack of thought process, etc.)? Was there a new tactical motif that you didn't know before the game?
• Any points of confusion: It is important to note any positions during the game where you were confused or didn't understand what was going on.

Once you identify these points, you should try to figure out how you should have played instead. To do this, there are several options:

• Your own analysis: This is often very insightful, but sometimes flawed.
• Using computer chess engines: These are very useful particularly in tactical situations, but you must be careful not to develop an dependence on them, so I recommend first doing your own analysis.
• Stronger players or coaches: If you can find stronger players or coaches to help you analyze the games, it can be very helpful, because they can explain why certain moves are better than others.

Once you have analyzed your game and feel like you've picked up some new patterns, ideas, and knowledge, it is important to store these nuggets of wisdom for future review. I find using a computer database program such as Chessbase very helpful - I'll be creating several videos on how I do this as well as writing articles about it. However, you can also use things like notebooks with notes or creating flashcards. However, you do it, reviewing the material is very important - read my article on the 4 Dimensions of Learning for more discussion of the time factor in learning. 

For more detail on analyzing your games, check out my 4-Steps to Analyzing Your Game for Improvement.

Study from the Masters

Before I could engage my creativity, I had to learn enough of the classical theory clearly evident in the great works of art of my heroes. - Greg Allen

Just like in art, music, and sports, we learn from those who are better than we are. Fortunately, there is a rich culture of preserving the games and thoughts of the masters through the vast number of chess books (and now chess videos) available. By studying the games and theory from the masters, we stand of the shoulders of giants and gain ideas and systems that we can use in our own games.

As a little example of what I'm talking about, here is a recent position from one of my games:



The idea of 27...Qh4! is not too difficult to find. However, it is made that much easier by understanding that I had recently studied the following position from a master game (Van Wely-Giri from the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee earlier this year):



This type of example is common once you study many master games and positions from the masters.

There is an enormous amount of literature out there, so here are some starting points for studying the masters of chess:

• Look for annotated books or collections meant for instruction on different aspects of chess such as openings, strategy, tactics, and the endgame (for beginners, check out my foundational books for beginners).
• Look up games or books covering your opening repertoire (although make sure the books is at your level).
• Look up games or books by or about your favorite players. My chess took a great step up after studying Capablanca's Best Chess Endings: 60 Complete Games by Irving Chernev. 

As you study the games, positions, and ideas from the masters, it is again important to store these for future reference. My recommendation is Chessbase, but there are other database programs out there as well as the old-fashioned index card or binder (although that takes a lot of work).

Study Tactics

Chess is 99% tactics.  -  Rudolph Teichmann

This is perhaps the most frequent suggestions for improving your chess, particularly at a beginner level. This makes sense because tactics are the foundation for everything else in chess. Just like fueling and nourishing your body with food, tactical study is the nutrient rich diet for the chess player. I write a more detailed article about how to improve your tactics, but here are a few considerations to get you started:

• Do some type of tactical training daily. It is the same as eating your vegetables and fruit. It's good for you, but better to do a little daily than a lot only once in a while.
• Start out with simple problems. At first, you are just trying to pick up patterns that you will apply to more complex problems and in your games.
• Find a chess tactics server on the internet and sign up. This way, you can track your progress because many of these servers have ratings for you and for the problems you do. My favorite one is Chess Tempo, partly because each of the problems have comments by other users to help you understand the problems.
• When you get a problem wrong, don't go on to the next one, until you understand the solution.

 

Conclusion

Studying chess doesn't have to be a complicated thing. These three ways to improve your chess can be the foundation of your study and training program for the rest of your chess career. As with getting better at anything, although the path may be simple, it doesn't mean it is easy. Come back often to this site as I will give you advice on how to optimally implement each of these training methods. Let me know if this has been helpful to you. Best of luck in your journey and as always I wish you Better Chess!