How Do You Explain Chess To A Beginner
Gianira Jardin
Is a beginner a player of a certain level or one who has only been playing a certain time, or number of games ? ( experience ) If one has been playing for 3 years but only 2 or 3 games per year are they a beginner ? Would their skill at that point help to define them ? The majority of beginners are weak players , but a few are strong, are they still beginners ? If one has only learned how to play a month ago but has played 30 rated games in that month and has a rating of 1600 are they a beginner ? When does one stop being classified as a beginner ? When you have a certain amount of time, or games, or a certain level ? Perhaps a combination of these things ? What is a beginner to you ? Do you consider yourself a beginner ?
I learned to play chess in 1963 , I was ten. I only played a few games a year with friends and never played organized/rated chess. In 1973 I played my first rated games and I dont think many would have called me a beginner since I was playing for 10 years, I certainly didnt consider myself a beginner at that time. However, after being crushed in all my games in my first rated event/experience I DID feel like a beginner ! I guess that I was a beginner at tournament chess, but not chess. Your thoughts/feelings/definitions ?
What I have in mind is to get an idea of what is a beginner to you ? ( and others ) Is a beginner so simple to define as the dictionary definition ? How much "experience" does one need before they are no longer a beginner ? Would that experience be measured by time, or games ? Would their level of play not matter ? I recognize that anyone just starting out in chess and learning the rules/fundamentals of the game are beginners. I also personally view very weak players as "beginners" and perhaps this is wrong but I do.
I have been playing online now for over 2 years so in that respect I am NOT a beginner but compared to some who have played for years and years I WOULD be classed as one.
This is an interesting topic I have pondered several times. I first learned how to play chess with my father in my late teens (mid 1970's) I played for several years learning from him only, however he read Fischer and Spassky and after a couple of years I could I could beat him quite often and considered myself a "decent" player. I stopped in the 1980's until I came to chess.com in the beginning of this year. When I started playing here online, I did truly feel like a beginner again, my first couple of months I fell down to the low 800's and it has been a long climb up this year. I have now played over 400 games here, and don't consider myself a beginner, but I am a novice when I look at the levels of many players on this site. I am currently ready to break the 1600 barrier and feel pretty good about my playing ability to maintain this level. It is however a little intimidating when I start playing people in the 1700 and 1800 ratings. There are many games I have played here when I still feel like a beginner!
I learned how the pieces move in 1968 (I was under 10), and played as a beginner until 1975. Then, by discovering chess books I learned something that did not exist in my neighborhood among my friends and family: skill in conducting an attack, controlling the center, developing your pieces, etc.
In my mind, I've always seen beginners as people playing below a certain level (not a well-defined level, however) but of course this is not the true sense. I realise that truly, there are both weak and strong beginners and actually they are defined by experience. So, in this vein, the number of games someone plays (coupled with any other chess experience) would define a beginner.
I didn't think too much about this, but probably a player for whome hanging pieces to one move captures is a serious part of his/her game could be considered a beginner for my standards. Oh wait, would that make me a beginner in blitz ? I can't let that happen.
You've got your casual player who may play for many years and still be a beginner (and just not know it because he beats "everyone" including his uncle), and then you've got your serious player who enters organized play for federation ratings.
It's almost a philosophical exercise to try to convert chess.com ratings to something real like USCF, CFC, or FIDE, but I recently noted a turn-based, almost 1400 here wondering if k+q v. k was a draw or not due to all the stalemate possibilities. Definite beginner.
Language, or more accurately, the human mind, is amazing to be able to communicate ideas with symbols and sounds. We all understand the concept itself even if it took a whole sentence instead of just a word to communicate it. This is why It's fairly useless to try and find a better way to say it. For example synonyms like novice and rookie also relate to experiance.
Because I understand it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone, I may give more context when communicating this idea to another person. E.g. Frank is a beginner, well, he's been playing for 20 years, but he's rated 1000.
Beginner contains "begin", the root of novice means "new" essentially the same thing, different languages. Both connote a lack of skill but also an expectation of improvement. So there is a time limit or expiration date, a thing can be new for only so long although I suppose one can re-begin as many times as one wishes.
I have taught hundreds, make that thousands of elementary beginning band and orchestra students how to play musical instruments for over 21 years. Many of them have never even set hand on a musical instrument.
Now, after one year of study with me, one of two things happens to each child: 1. The child advances to intermediate band/orchestra. 2. The child repeats beginning band/orchestra. I have a specific set of goals that each child must meet to advance to the next level.
I consider myself a beginning chess player. Is it because I'm rated under 1200 on this site? No. I'm a beginning chess player because I'm still in my first year of study. My goal is to pass the class!
You see, even though I'm 50 years young, I've never been taught the game, nor read any books on chess. Sure, I knew how the pieces moved on the board, but I knew nothing concerning the principles of play, i.e., center control, rapid development and king saftey.
Jump to: navigation, search. A chess rating system is a system used in chess to calculate an estimate of the strength of the player, based on his or her performance versus other players.
1874 USCF, an OTB rating issued by the US Chess Federation for official tournament play, is pretty damned good, and would be invincible to all normal casual players who "know how to play" chess. That guy in the office who is "kinda good" at chess or your Uncle Larry who "plays chess" would get murdered by an 1874. He would seem like a god to them.
Beginner is about 650 actually. 900 is someone who has won a few games at their high school and is pretty decent among his friends. He gets destroyed in his first tournament. 1200s are starting to take the game kinda seriously and know some openings and some strategy. Likely won't lose to normal people anymore. 1400 is good enough to be "The guy is beats everyone's ass in chess" in his area of a small town and would be champion at a small to medium size high school.
Chess.com ratings are hard to corrolate to USCF ratings, and while some people say subtract about 200 pts from your Chess.com rating to get your real rating, some loose studies people have done have come out to show the ratings are kinda close, and if off maybe only by 100 pts or so.
Don't listen to the elitists who say "If you're under 1400, your a rank beginner and shouldn't read anything but 'Bob the Bunny's first Chess Book, how the pieces move." They just want to make themselves sound important by saying only they are ready for the more advanced stuff.
1874 is a good rating, is a person who is good at chess, is 99.8% of all people who know how to play chess, and will go the rest of his life probably never losing to a regular person who hasn't seriously studied chess. He'd get destroyed in a state championship, but he's good enough to where the only time he'll lose is in tournaments or to other fairly serious players.
On the world stage where masters, IMs and Grandmasters roam around, sure. But as far as chess among all the world's players, in normal parlance, when people say "You good at chess?" 1984 is a moderately advanced player. 2000 is expert, so 1800-1999 would make sense to be advanced. Intermediate would probably be more 1400-1600.
Compared to a beginner 1300 is already god-like. A 1300 will never seem to make even a single mistake. Most people don't ever make it to 1800. So yes, compared to a beginner, 1874 is literally unimaginably good.
Some people mistake it for ranking though... it's not a rank. The higher the number your rating is the better. Beginners are below 1000, modern world champs are above 2800. Average adult tournament player is something like 1500 or 1600.
But how much do the national rating systems vary from country to country and where do people start out when they first start to play at a chess club? Here in Sweden adults start at 1300 and don't get much lower than that. My lowest rating was 1285.
I once took some lessons from a Mexican master and he didn't understand the numbers, because in Mexico they start at 1600, he said - that's a huge difference! In our neighbour country Norway a person with the sam rating is considerably stronger than here in Sweden which so you can expect losing some rating points if you travel to Norway. As for Denmark the difference is not that big - the rating numbers seem to correspond well.
My peak rating was 1789 (I am currently inactive) and I competed in some internaional tournaments and got an ELO-number of 1830, if I remember correctly. How does this compare to other countries around the world? If you look at a masters' national rating, you often find that it differ considerably from his international rating.