Have you caught the chess bug and now you’re on a mission to improve your abilities? Learning chess is infectious – once you’ve caught the chess bug, you’re in for a lifetime of learning.

Play games – play online or even on an app. However, we strongly recommend that you play “live” games over the board. It’s a great way to facilitate learning as it’s “active learning” you remember better that way. Also, you are making connections with others who share in your passion! Come to the chess club and sign up for the academy, where we spend an hour learning and an hour putting into practice what we learned with game play. Academy members aged 12 and up are invited to our Maple Ridge Invitational tournament, which we run three times per year, and this is a great introduction to formal tournament play. Then, when you are ready, you can play in an official CFC-rated tournament and earn a chess rating!

Tactics – in talking to various grandmasters that we’ve met at the Canadian Open about how to improve one’s chess game, one theme comes up over and over again, and Mr. Radic always says, “Tactics for breakfast, tactics for lunch and tactics for dinner.” The best way to improve your ability to play is about recognizing a wider variety of patterns and doing tactics are a great way to increase your pattern recognition and stay sharp. You can find many tactical puzzles through books, websites, and apps.

Play through games of the masters – Once you become fluent in chess notation (we teach you how to do this at the academy) you can “read” chess on your own. And a great way to learn ideas and tricks is to study the games of the masters. If you don’t like reading, you can even view games for free on YouTube. Some of our favourite masters include world champions Paul Morphy, Jose Raul Capablanca, and Bobby Fischer.

Play through your own games – Again, once you become fluent in chess notation and have recorded games either though tournaments or through casual play, go over the games with a friend, someone from the academy, or Mr. Radic. If none of these are available, you can also go over your games with a chess engine. Many of these engines can be found on a reputable chess app or website like Chess.com. or lichess.org. Playing through your games and learning from your mistakes is a great way to learn.