SquirrelChess.com - How to get started playing chess online

How to get started playing chess online

Written by Sciurus

Thursday, 14 December 2006

Nobody can learn to play chess without playing chess games. However, many beginners have to overcome a barrier to get started because they are intimidated by the more experienced players making up the vast majority pretty much everywhere where chess is played: the local chess club, servers on the internet, and even their own computer is semingly unbeatable when it comes to chess. So what is a good way for beginners to start playing? Originally an email answering a question submitted by a blog reader, this article gives a short introduction into starting to play chess online and against computers.

Two things have to be said before we get into discussing playing chess. First of all, this article is based on my own, limited experience of starting to play chess online as a beginner. Second, if you start out playing chess, be prepared to lose - a lot. But with each loss, you will hopefully learn something and become a stronger chess player.

Playing chess against computers

How to get started playing chess? With the high availability of personal computers, nowadays chess beginners often start playing their first games against computers instead of human opponents. The first chess games I ever played were also against computer chess programs. Computers certainly don't make annoying comments when you blunder away your pieces but nevertheless playing chess against computers can be a frustrating experience. In my first games against computer programs I was happy if I did not lose material within the first 10 moves. After all, modern computer chess programs easily beat most human chess masters and humans simply need to win a game once in a while to stay interested in chess. Fortunately, some computer programs have options to reduce their playing strength (Take a look at your software's manual for the details). Playing with reduced strength, these programs make a bad move every now and then to enable you to win. An easy way to check out a reduced-strength computer chess engine is to play against Shredder on the free java-based "Play chess with Shredder" web page, which offers three levels of playing strength (The full version of Shredder as well as other chess programs allow finer adjustments). To become a better chess player, however, it is important to lose games. After losing, I strongly recommend going over each game you played to find the reason for the loss, even if it can be painful to realize how dumb this mistake was. Many chess programs actually provide features that make it easier to find what went wrong. In many cases, this is called "analysis mode". This way, you may not make the same mistake again and improve although I have to admit that sometimes it took me several lost games to become more careful myself.


"Online chess", photo by aileron

Playing against computer programs, however, also has drawbacks. Depending on how the software is programmed, you might end up playing very similar games. After all, computers are just machines that literally compute moves and not human beings with moods and feelings. Furthermore, computers play differenly than humans and most chess coaches recommend to play against humans as much as possible. Fortunately, the Internet gives plenty of opportunities to play against human chess players ranging from novices to grandmasters. However, the choice of chess servers on the Internet can be overwhelming, particularly if you are not familiar with all the buzzwords that are used on the chess servers.

Playing chess on the internet

First of all, you have to distinguish between correspondence or email chess servers and chess servers where "live" chess is played. On the "live" chess servers, your moves are transmitted to your opponent (almost) immediately and vice-versa. Therefore, playing on one of these servers feels almost the same as playing over-the-board (except that you have to move the pieces with the computer mouse and that you do not see your opponent). Some popular chess servers for "live" play are the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) (free), the Internet Chess Club (ICC) (paid membership required), and Playchess.de (paid membership required).

In correspondence chess, everything moves a bit slower. When you make a move, the move is stored on the server until your opponent logs in the next time orsend to your opponent by email. She/he has then a certain preset time, usually a few days, to respond and make a move. Examples for correspondence chess servers are ChessWorld (limited free membership and paid subscrptions) the Free Internet Correspondence Games Server (FICGS) (free membership), and last but not least a few people are also playing correspondence chess here at SquirrelChess.com (free registration), among many other popular choices. Before starting to play on one of the correspondence chess servers, it might be a good idea to check out the fineprint. Some of them allow the use of computer programs and some don't, so make sure to choose an appropriate server if you want to play against humans only (which I would recommend) or if you want to use some help by your computer.

Personally, I am an advocate of correspondence chess. Almost all chess beginners are lacking tactical skills and therefore lose a piece or two due to blunders in almost every single game. The slow nature of correspondence chess games gives time to carefully analyze chess positions which helps to avoid but does not completely eliminate the worst blunders and helped me personally a lot to get started (see also the blog post on the advantages of correspondence chess for beginners). Furthermore, making a move in a correspondence chess game takes only a few minutes (although I sometimes spend much more time on analyzing a position) - a time that you might be able to squeeze in between other items on your schedule while playing a full reasonably slow chess game takes more than an hour. Even though correspondence chess games often take months to finish, you might end up playing more games over all this way if your busy life puts up too much resistence for scheduling a two-hour game.

Many chess servers have thousands of active players. How can you find opponents within this crowd? Almost all of the above mentioned servers offer rated games (one exception is SquirrelChess). Ratings can be scary for chess beginners but are actually very helpful for both finding opponents and for gauging progress. There are many different chess rating systems but they all have something in common: if you loose a rated chess game, your rating will decrease and if you win it will increase. But there is no guarantee that you will lose all your games against higher rated opponents (you can always have a strong day!). Ratings are based on statistics and playing a higher rated player just means that the probability of winning decreases the higher rated your opponent is. While each server uses a slightly different rating system, as a rule of thumb you will win one out of four games against an opponent with a rating of 200 points above yours.

By choosing opponents whose rating is similar to yours you can make sure that you will play against people with roughly the same playing strength as yours. Most people recommend not to play against weaker player all the time. Try to play against stronger players in order to improve. The idea behind this is that stronger players will find your mistakes and exploit them, enabling you to learn from your mistakes. I would recommend to aim for opponents which are in average 200 points above your rating. This way, you will still win every once in a while to stay motivated (and nothing is better than to checkmate a higher rated player, even if it happens only seldomly, trust me).

One problem with the rating system is that people starting out have no rating. Therefore, most servers assign an arbitrary provisional rating to newcomers. In most cases, you will start with a rating around the average of all players on that server. The "real" rating of beginners, however, is usually far below average. The first time I signed up on a chess serer and started playing rated games (at FICS), I was lucky enough to win my very first game. Therefore, I did not only start with an inflated rating, it even increased quite a bit after my first game! This had the funny effect that I was battling against much stronger players for the next few games until I lost enough games to put my rating in a more reasonable range. There is simply no way around this and most beginners will probably lose quite a few games at the beginning (I still lose most of my games, but playing chess is fun nevertheless). Usually, it takes around 10 games to bring your rating in a reasonable somewhat meaningful range.


Screenshot of Jin's "seek graph". Each symbol corresponds to a player looking for an opponent. Points higher in the graph are seeks from players with higher rating and the time controls get slower towards the right.

Now that you are able to identify suitable opponents, how do you get them to play against you? Of course there is (fortunately) no way to force player XY to play and the ways to get people to play against you vary from server to server. On the "live" play sites, people challenge other players who are online. On the FICS and ICC servers, for instance, the command "seek 30 0" will tell the other people that you are looking for a game with 30 0 time control (Each player has 30 minutes to make all his moves. For more details consult the documentation of your favorite server). If somebody accepts your challenge, a chess board will appear on your screen and the game starts. Most programs used to play also show you the challenges made by other players, most often sorted by rating and

time control (see seek graph). You can then make your choice and accept one of these challenges. Unfortunately, some people do not like to play against new players and at the beginning you might have to try it a few times to get a game. Don't let this put you off, though. After a while, you will get the hang of it and more people will accept your challenges. Most people I encountered so far when I played online were very friendly and helpful, particularly after I told them that I am a beginner!

Another way to find suitable opponents is to sign up for tournaments. Most servers regularly offer various tournaments. For instance, I like the "sttourney" at ICC, which gives me one slow chess game every Tuesday. Having a tournament game in your calendar also makes sure that you don't skip practice and watch TV instead. Due to the much slower pace, correspondence chess servers work slightly different. Most people play several correspondence chess games simultaneously and participating in tournaments is the most common way to play chess. Many correspondence chess servers offer tournaments for beginners were you get automatically paired to play several games against other beginners.

Before you start, it is very important that you spend some time browsing through the website of the chess server you are using. At least, read the instructions on how to get started and the basic rules. Spending an extra 20 minutes before starting to play will save you (and your opponents) a lot of time and frustration later. Most importantly, obey all the rules. If you don't like them, shop around and look for a server with rules you can live with!

Summary

To make a long story short, here are my recommendations for absolute chess beginners to get started with playing chess online: First of all, shop around and take a look at the various chess sites. I would recommend giving both correspondence and "live" play a try and if you don't want to spend money on memberships, there are many free sites around (see above). Then, start playing and do not get discouraged when you lose many games - even if the mistakes leading to the losses look very stupid in hindsight. This is something every beginner does and even after playing chess for nearly a year now I am still leaving even my queen en prise every now and then. It takes a while to get used to playing chess and to accumulate some experience. Also feel free to challenge me for a game either here at SquirrelChess or if you meet me on one of the other servers (my handle is "Sciurus" at ChessWorld and the Internet Chess Club (ICC)). But most importantly, have fun!

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