If you’re dreaming of outdoing Oscar in Duolingo’s Chess course, you’re probably thinking a lot about how to improve your game!

No matter your chess level, playing a game (or more!) a day will set you on the road to progress. 📈 Here are tips for getting better at chess!

Tips for chess beginners

If you’re new to chess, there’s nowhere to go but up! Here are some ways you can improve your game.

📚 Learn basic checkmates
A great first step is to learn basic checkmates, in particular:

  • checkmating with a lone queen
  • checkmating with one rook
  • checkmating with two rooks (often known as the “Ladder Mate”)

Even if you’re up a queen, it won’t matter if you can’t use that extra queen to checkmate your opponent! With practice, you’ll soon be able to efficiently checkmate your opponent under pressure, instead of risking forgetting how to finish the game. 😅

⏳ Play slower games
Playing slower—and longer—games allows you to spend time thinking about each move instead of spitting out moves like you’re a supercomputer. Challenge yourself to play at least one slow game a week with a time control of 20-60+ minutes for each side.

Faster games like blitz or bullet are fun, but they rely on intuition and so aren’t a great fit for beginners. Instead, practice in slower games gives you a chance to work on calculation, visualization skills, and strategic thinking.

🧠 Choose strong opponents
Playing against better opponents, not weaker ones, will help you strengthen your own game! It’s human nature to enjoy winning, but you won’t realize your own mistakes—and then improve your game as a result—when competing against players significantly worse than you.

Mistakes are a necessary part of the learning process. You’ll never forget that time you fumbled a winning position!

♻️ Drill chess tactics
In chess, tactics refers to short, forced sequences of moves that give you an immediate advantage. Forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, and more are all examples of tactics.

Practicing different types of tactics helps you build critical pattern recognition, which is especially important for new players. In beginner games, blunders are rampant—so you’ll have plenty of chances to turn a game around by finding winning tactics. (Yes, even if you somehow managed to lose your queen on move 5!)

Tips for intermediate chess players

If you’ve got the basics covered and you’re ready for a new challenge, here are some ideas:

🤖 Analyze your game with a chess engine
Make use of a computer to level up your game! Take note of your biggest tactical blunders, as well as the largest shifts in the computer’s evaluation—any moments where one player went from winning to losing, or vice versa. Focus on a couple of your biggest mistakes per game, and try to understand what went wrong. Did you hang a piece by marching it right into enemy fire? Or did you forget one piece was defending a second one, and accidentally moved the defender away from its duty?! 🫣

To help identify and understand your mistakes, have the chess engine play out its recommended move and compare it to what you played.

🤓 Study openings
Familiarize yourself with common openings, and try to find ones that suit you and your unique playing style. Pick at least one opening for White, and one for Black, and study the most common variations for each.

As you get more proficient, pick more openings for each color that will allow you to answer most common moves. For example, as Black, learn an opening to respond to White’s 1. e4, and also learn an opening to respond to White’s 1. d4. This will allow you to be prepared for whatever your opponent throws at you!

Tips for advanced chess players

Even advanced chess players can keep improving their game!

🔍 Focus on endgames
The more advanced you are, the more likely the game is to be decided in the endgame, after a lengthy 50+ move struggle. Gone are the days of blundering a piece within the first 10 moves. (Well, most of the time, anyway…)

Start with king and pawn endgames, followed by rook endgames, and save trickier types of endgames for later. Introductory concepts such as opposition and triangulation will serve you well in many endgames—there is no need to delve into the intricacies of complicated bishop and knight endgames right away!

Your next move is to practice!

The best way to improve at chess is to find what motivates you and makes you fall in love with the game. The more you play, the more you’ll gradually improve—and the more fun you’ll have!