Beginner Resources
Hand-picked resources for players starting out or coming back to chess. We’ll keep adding to this list. If you’ve got a recommendation we should include, send it to illawarrachess@gmail.com.
Online practice
Lichess Practice
Free, browser-based guided exercises, no account required. Start with these three groups, in this order:
- Piece Checkmates I, drives the basic mate techniques (K+Q, K+R, two rooks) into muscle memory until they’re automatic under time pressure.
- Checkmate Patterns, the named mating patterns (back rank, smothered, Anastasia’s, Boden’s, etc.) that every club player needs to recognise on sight.
- Basic tactics, the workhorse motifs (fork, pin, skewer, discovered attack) drilled until you spot them in your own games.
Work through each group until you can solve every position without help. Half an hour a few times a week is more useful than an hour once a fortnight.
Mate-in-2 puzzles
Once the practice groups above are comfortable, switch to the Mate-in-2 puzzle trainer and grind it until you can solve ten in a row without a mistake. Forced two-move mates are the building block of every tactical combination, once you see them instantly, longer sequences start to click.
Video
Naroditsky’s Sensei’s Speedrun (YouTube playlist)
GM Daniel Naroditsky climbed from low ratings up to GM-level on fresh accounts, narrating every move out loud. Start with the Sensei’s Speedrun playlist linked above. It is uniquely valuable because the early videos play at club-player ratings, so the explanations cover the kinds of decisions you actually face, not just spectacular grandmaster ideas. There is also an earlier speedrun playlist to work through once you have finished it.
Books
We keep our book recommendations on a separate page, grouped by level, with notes on which one to start with.