Lesson of the Week: How to Learn Chess

When I was growing up, I used to watch "Family Ties", the network sitcom that launched Michael J. Fox. He played the main character, a young man who was extremely smart and confident. On the show, one of his hobbies was to play chess. Chess seemed like a game that only intelligent people played, so I wanted to learn it. My father bought a chess board and let my sister and I play each other. It actually didn't seem that hard to learn, and before I knew it, I was captain of my high school chess team.

The biggest mistake people make about chess is that it is an IQ test. Chess has this mystique that the best players are geniuses and losing a match means your opponent is smarter. That is not true. Everyone starts out bad. It's the nature of the game. It takes a lot of thinking moves ahead and paying attention to the current state of the board. There is a lot going on with every move, but experience makes this multitasking easier.

Nowadays you can play online versions of chess against other people. That's probably the easiest way to learn to play. Yahoo Games has a online chess game that has a "how to play" section. You can get the basic rules there and play people at your level. Other sites, such as MSN, have similar versions of chess online for free.

That's a good start, but you will still be a novice. If you want to be skilled at chess, then you must study just like anyone else. There are many books on chess openings and defenses. My favorite opening is the Ruy Lopez and my favorite defense is the Caro Cann. There are many to choose from, find one that suits you and make it your own.

Experts in chess get that way by studying the past games of grand champions. So anyone can be a great chess player, you just have to work at it, just like anything else.