The Chess Player

How to complete The Chess Player

This means moving past 'knowing how the horse moves' to genuinely understanding piece values, basic tactics, and opening principles. Chess rewards a few simple habits that prevent most beginner blunders.

1. Learn how each piece moves plus the special rules: castling, en passant, and pawn promotion.
2. Memorize rough piece values (pawn 1, knight/bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9) to judge trades.
3. Drill the three core opening principles: control the center, develop knights and bishops, castle early.
4. Study the basic tactics: forks, pins, skewers, and discovered attacks, using free puzzle trainers.
5. Play full games against a beginner-level bot or person and review your blunders afterward.

Tips

• Lichess.org is free, ad-free, and has built-in puzzles and a game analyzer.
• Before every move, ask 'is anything of mine hanging?' to cut careless losses.
• Don't bring your queen out early; it gets chased around and wastes tempo.

What counts as done

You can play a complete legal game start to finish and explain why you made your opening moves.