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

Two-move mates are the building blocks of every combination. Once the practice groups above feel comfortable, this is the next step.

• The Goal: Solve ten in a row without a mistake.
• Why It Works: Solving these builds tactical intuition and piece coordination, as every combination of pieces produces its own mating patterns.

Puzzle Storm

A three-minute sprint: solve as many puzzles as you can before the clock runs out.

• Wrong answers lose time, so guessing is punished.
• Aim for consistency, calculate until you are sure, then play the move.
• Chase your own high score. A great warm-up before club night, and a fun way to practice at home.

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.

Following the pros

Watching strong players explain their games is a painless way to absorb good habits. The channels, podcasts and news sites we recommend are on a separate page.

Buying a chess set

You don’t need your own set to play at the club, but if you want one for home, buy the standard tournament setup rather than a decorative set. Look for plastic pieces with a 95mm king and a vinyl folding board, the same gear used at tournaments everywhere in Australia.

We recommend this tournament set from Chess World. Go for the double weighted pieces (they feel much nicer to play with), and choose whichever board colour you like.

Books

We keep our book recommendations on a separate page, grouped by level, with notes on which one to start with.