What's the deal with chess? By 8th grade Mass Media Student Brett M

 

    So, you just watched The Queen’s Gambit and you think you’re a pro at chess now. Well, not really, but you want to learn chess and you’re concerned because it’s “hard”. Chess has always been known for it’s complexity and confusion to new players, but to tell you the truth, it’s not as hard as people say. Chess is really just about memorization, and maybe a little bit of intuition.

The Pieces

The game consists of only 6 different pieces in total: Pawns, Bishops, Knights, Rooks, the Queen, and the King. All of them except for the pawn and perhaps the knight have really simple movement patterns and aren’t that hard to grasp. For example, the rook literally just moves in straight lines.

The Board

The board is made up of an 8x8 grid with a black and white checkered pattern. 4 of those lines are separating your pieces from your opponent’s. On the 2nd line from your perspective is a row of pawns, protecting the pieces on your back line. That line consists of the rooks on the sides, the knights another space inwards, then bishops, and then it’s your queen and king. Depending on which color you are, your king and queen could be in a different spot, but the color you are, is the color spot you put your queen on. 

Strategy

Well you knew this was coming, but don’t be alarmed, as I said earlier, all there is to it is memorization. There is a thing called Opening Theory in the chess world, and that pretty much means which opening you use. You don’t need to come up with one, as there is already a wide variety of openings, with a few variations each. The whole idea of this is that with an already planned out opening, all you need to do is memorize and practice a single opening to really start playing your first game, or the beginning at least. From there, it might take a little bit of learning basic strategies and ideas, and memorizing your endgames, and you’re practically already a level 1200 player.

Conclusion

Of course, I didn’t teach you EVERYthing about chess, so you might want to do a little digging of your own. I would suggest Lichess, an app on your phone where you can learn strategies, and pretty much figure out how to begin playing. I would also suggest watching Hikaru Nakamura, a chess streamer on Twitch who has recently gained popularity from teaching other big YouTubers, such as Pokimane and even MrBeast, to play chess in just a matter of weeks. He can provide helpful insights and suggestions for you to up your game. So get out there, and make your first checkmate!