How to improve at chess

For someone new to chess the first thing to learn is how to set up the board and how to move the pieces. A good guide can be found at here that will show how to setup the board, move pieces etc.

The next step is learning how to checkmate the opponent. Practically as a beginner you should at least know how to checkmate with a King + Queen against a lone King. This will do as pawns can promote to queens although ideally you'll gradually learn extra checkmate (e.g. King + Rook against a lone King). As you progress you'll discover more and more checkmating patterns. A list of 36 common checkmating patterns can be found here

It's at this point that players struggle to find a direction to continue improving and will often ask what is the best approach. The answer is that it depends on the person both in how they learn and what they find enjoyable. Some people prefer books, others prefer watching videos while others prefer learning through trial and error or prefer explanations from a person. Generally the most important thing is that the student enjoys the learning process.

Personally I've always liked reading books so I've learnt using books. For a beginner who wants a fairly comprehensive foundation I'd recommend Yusupov's books. To see what they're like you can check pdf excerpts from Build up your Chess 1, Boost your Chess 1, Chess Evolution 1 and Revision and Exam 1. The format it uses is that it explains a concept, gives some examples and then tests it with puzzles and solutions given afterwards. When looking at a chess book my advice is that if you read it and feel that you have haven't learnt anything, don't understand it or dislike the author's writing style then book isn't for you. Hopefully the pdfs can show if you find the content good or not. The series is aimed at people rated from 1000 to 2200 and has opening, middlegame and endgame chapters for the student to learn. If you think it looks good you can acquire one of the books, work through it and if you complete it you can move on to the next one.

However this approach isn't for everybody so I'll introduce another approach known as the woodpecker method. It's said that chess is 99% tactics and one method that is quite effective at rapidly improving your chess is to repeatedly solve tactics puzzles. The idea is that as you solve puzzles you learn to recognise patterns and also develop your calculation abilities. To get the most benefit whenever you get a problem wrong you should see the solution and understand where you went wrong that will also teach you new patterns you'll be able to apply in your games. If you would like free sites that provide tactics puzzles I'd suggest chesstempo or Lichess both of which are free, offer unlimited daily puzzles and if you register puzzles will be tailored to your strength. You can do as many puzzles as you want so you can train for an hour at a time or just do one puzzle a day.

One common theme is many new players believe they have to study openings. This isn't really the case when you're under 1200 as most games will be decided by a tactic like leaving a knight hanging or missing a fork. So until games aren't decided by hanging pieces or missed tactics studying openings gives you very marginal gains compared to tactics practice. Here are a few good rules of thumb for the opening:

Fight for the centre
Develop your pieces
Try to castle early
Knights before bishops
Don't move the same piece twice in the opening
Avoid early queen moves
Avoid pawn moves that don't help you control the centre (i.e. a3/h3/a6/h6 if played as a waiting move is bad)

These rules aren't absolute but if breaking the rules you should have a good reason for it. For example if moving a piece twice wins material it's fine to break the rule.

Now as for the chess games you play my advice is to play with a time control that means you always think and consider your moves. Some examples of OK time controls are 3+2, 5+3, 10+5, 15+10, 30+20. Playing with an increment means you won't win on time when a queen down and ideally should have time to think over all your moves. If you want to improve faster it's always a good idea to analyse your games and see where you went wrong so you can learn from your mistakes and improve the next time you play. Most strong players will routinely analyse their games afterwards in the hope of identifying weaknesses in their game they can then rectify. If you know a strong player they may be happy to look over your games and highlight areas where you can improve to become a better player.

Once you hit around 1200 then you can start expanding your knowledge on openings, middlegames and endgames as you won't be making basic blunders anymore and can then learn how to exploit smaller errors that your opponents make.

Having said all the above I'd like to finish by saying that the most important thing is to have fun. If you're enjoying your chess you'll get twice the benefit with half the effort. So while I've said new players shouldn't study openings if you enjoy studying them then do so with my blessing! I think most important thing is that any chess improvement shouldn't be a grind but doing what you love most.