Masters

There are thousands of people better than you and me at chess. One of the best ways to improve is to watch the games of people who know more about the game.

Some of these names include:

• Magnus Carlson
• Hikaru Nakamura
• Wesly So
• Alireza Firouzja
• Levi Rozman (Gotham Chess)
• Eric Rosen
• From my own knowledge

I cannot recommend this series highly enough.

Gaming

The single most important thing to do to get better at chess is to play the game. Some sites include chess.com, lichess.org, and many others. Learn how the pieces move, and play 100 games. Then learn an opening, and play 20 more in that opening. Learn more about how to play that opening line. Repeat for a few common openings. Learn some endgames, learn some midgames, the list goes on. Be sure to analyze your own games to see how and why you won or lost. Chess.com has a good feature for this, so does Lichess.org.

Ratings

When you start, you will likely be rated between 800 to 1000 on the Fide rating scale. What this essentially means, is that you will be best suited to play games against people +-50 points from your rating. Winning improves your rating proportional to how difficult (how high rated) your opponent was.