Mistakes Beginner Chess Players Make and How to Avoid Them
Beginner chess players make a lot of mistakes in chess.
Chess is a game that draws on your ability to calculate, recognize patterns, and visualize. So, why does it seem that novice players tend to make the same mistakes? Surely, the game is mostly about each individual's intelligence and creativity? The truth is chess is more about experience, study, and practice.
Beyond your mental agility, chess is about learning principles, identifying familiar patterns, and practicing a specific kind of calculation. For beginners, this can be overwhelming and frustrating. However, the good news is that by learning some simple ideas, like the ones in this article, you can quickly get the edge on other beginners and start progressing as a player.
Let’s take a look at some (very) common beginner mistakes and how to avoid them!
Getting The Queen Out Too Early
Here is a position you will see often as a beginner just starting to play chess. This is the setup for the Scholar's Mate in which white tries to deliver a quick checkmate.
When beginners hear they can deliver checkmate in four moves, they tend to try out the scholar’s mate. Some players stick to it religiously. The reason it is uncommon at a higher level is that the checkmate is easy to avoid, and the white queen can be threatened while black develops their pieces.
This is a classic example of why it is generally a bad idea to get your queen out early. It is the most powerful piece on the board, but in the opening, it is surprisingly vulnerable. If your opponent defends successfully, they can often make moves that serve two purposes: developing their pieces and attacking your queen. This gives them tempo (time) to create their own threats, while you will often defend. As such, getting your queen out too early is considered a classic mistake beginner chess players make.
Knowing When to Activate Your Queen
So if getting the queen out too early is a problem, just don’t do it, right? Well, it can be a bit more complicated than that. Beginners often bring their queen out because they are not sure what else to do. Not knowing openings or how to develop correctly is the root of the issue.
Usually, before getting your queen out you should develop your pawns and pieces to take control of the center of the board. There are many ways to do this, which brings us to our next point. Study your openings. Choose several openings and learn why the variations make sense. By understanding a few openings well you will quickly be able to take control of chess games at an early beginner level. For a low-ranked player, that really is all it takes to win a lot more games.
Further Reading: The 5 Best Chess Openings for Black
Exceptions and Clarifications
Most rules have their exceptions. It turns out in this case there are plenty. The reason getting your queen out early is a mistake for beginners, is because it makes your life difficult. Making your strongest piece vulnerable means you really have to calculate carefully and know your opening well. For beginners, this is quite a tall order.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of openings that involve getting the queen out early. The most well-known is the Scandinavian Opening, which is played at every level. Read more about the Scandinavian to see how you can create threats with your queen while keeping it safe and activating your other pieces.
Ignoring King Safety
A key part of chess is protecting your king. If you focus too much on attack, you can easily leave your king vulnerable. This can lead to early checkmates or long-term positional problems. Not paying attention to your king's safety is a very common mistake beginner chess players make.
Look at this example in which the king is exposed in the middle of the back rank. White can deliver a check with the rook and black has to give up the queen or else move the king.
By moving the king you give up castling rights, and it will likely be trapped in the middle of the board for the rest of the game. This will make it extremely difficult to protect and it will be easy for your opponent to create attacks. Additionally, your rook will be trapped behind the king where it will be difficult to utilize.
This is an example of why you always need to consider how exposed your king is.
How to Protect Your King
The easiest and most common way to protect your king is to short castle. This tucks your king behind your pawns and gets your rook out. However, remember that your castled king is still vulnerable to threats. The pawn on h2 for white and h7 for black is particularly vulnerable. A common type of checkmate beginners will see is a barrage formed of the queen and bishop delivering checkmate on h2 or h7.
The basics of king safety in the opening involve getting the king out of the center by castling. Then, defend the squares/pawns around the king and be aware of threats your opponent may be developing.
Further Reading: All You Need to Know About Castling in Chess
Exceptions and Clarifications
While it is important to always protect your king, sometimes you can delay castling in favor of quick development or a trap. Similarly, you can long castle, which is slightly less effective at protecting your king, but often gives you more attacking opportunities. This is because you can advance your kingside pawns against your opponent’s short-castled king and quickly develop your rook to an open file in many positions.
Blunders and Tunnel Vision
One of the first joys you discover as a chess player is developing a plan of attack. Maybe you’ve learned an opening with quick checkmating opportunities. Or, you could have seen a player deliver checkmate by sacrificing a series of pieces. It is absolutely vital in chess to come up with a plan and try to enact it.
But what happens when you stick too tightly to the plan and fail to analyze the board? Usually, a blunder.
Tunnel vision in chess refers to the idea that by focusing too much on your own plan or pieces, you ignore threats from your opponents.
Look at this position from the Caro Kann Tartakower Variation. White is looking to checkmate on h7 but may have forgotten that this square is protected by the knight on f8. White’s position is not bad, but it needs to be aware of black’s pieces to avoid making a terrible blunder.
How to Avoid Tunnel Vision
You can avoid tunnel vision by developing a fundamental skill in chess: board awareness. By analyzing each position and considering both your and your opponent’s plan, you can avoid a lot of blunders. When creating your plan try to consider not only what you want to do, but how your opponent may respond. If you see a strange or unexpected move, stop to consider it.
By keeping your plan flexible you can respond to unexpected threats and identify unexpected opportunities.
Exceptions and Clarifications
While not technically an exception, sometimes giving up a piece works in your favor. Sacrificing pieces in this way becomes more common as you advance as a player. This is because to sacrifice a piece, you need to calculate that it will give a clear positional or tactical advantage (unless you have memorized a trap!).
That said, there is no exception to practicing board awareness and considering your opponent’s moves. Always make sure you have a plan in chess, but you should also be willing to adapt or abandon it when necessary.
Making Exchanges Without a Good Reason
One of the trickiest parts of beginner chess can be knowing what to do in the middlegame. Often in upper beginner brackets, both players will develop their pieces normally, castle their kings, and create reasonable pawn structures in the opening.
What to do next?
What often happens is players will trade off pieces, create attacks, and move into the middlegame. Sometimes beginners do this without too much thought. If your opponent offers a trade you may accept it just to move the game along. This often leads to your opponent being able to enact their plan and you being stuck with a less favorable position.
Take a look at this example from early on in the Scotch Game. White offers up the knight to trade and black may feel inclined to accept - wouldn’t that force white to develop its queen too early?
Not in this case. Without the black knight to threaten the queen, white simply has a pawn in the center and black will struggle to develop. If black accepts this unfavorable trade, white is already better.
Knowing When to Make an Exchange
Always consider whether a trade is beneficial for you. For example, if your opponent wants to trade your good bishop (a bishop on the opposite colored squares to most of your pawns), then it is unlikely to be a good trade. Considering how active your pieces are (how many squares they can control), is a great way to start understanding whether a piece should be traded or not.
By avoiding random trades in the middlegame, you can quickly become a stronger chess player.
Exceptions and Clarifications
There are times when trades are almost always good. For example, if you are up material then trading pieces is usually beneficial. This is because it takes you towards an endgame in which your material advantage can usually be converted into a win.
For example, if you are up a knight but your opponent still has all their other pieces, they can still mobilize them to create significant threats. However, if you can trade out all of the pieces and be left only with pawns, kings, and the knight, you will likely take more of your opponent's pawns and win the endgame.
Bonus: Under or Overusing En Passant
En Passant is a special move in chess in which a pawn moves two squares from its starting square past an opponent's pawn, and can be captured “in passing.” In the following example black may have forgotten about en passant and by playing f5 has given white a winning position after exf6. White will have a protected passed pawn, which will be very difficult for black to deal with.
Many beginners don’t know about this rule and may be surprised by it. I didn’t know about it for quite a while and lost several games for that simple reason. Being aware of the rule is important to ensure you know when you can use it.
That said, upon learning about the rule some players tend to get overexcited and use it too often. It’s important to consider the merits of en passant in each situation and make sure you only use it when necessary.
Conclusion: How a Beginner Becomes an Intermediate
Every chess development journey is different. As a chess novice, you may just be enjoying the game or looking to improve as quickly as possible. For every beginner, working on some of the skills described above will quickly help you advance as a player.
There are many mistakes beginner chess players often make. Underlying them is a lack of some of the fundamental skills that a player needs; many of which we have looked at in this article. By learning the basics—like board awareness, how to develop your pieces, how to take control of the center, and when to trade your pieces—you can quickly advance toward an intermediate level.