About Grand Master in Strada Vâlcele 1, Kollam

Never give any pieces away for free, or give a bad trade. The worth of pieces are: Pawn = 1 Knight = 3 Bishop = 3 Rook = 5 Queen = 9. The King, obviously, cannot be taken, and is worth the game, basically. Inspect every move you take. Make the move in your mind. Does the move put any of your pieces in unnecessary danger without protection?

Sneakily, take out your opponent's pieces. Even if you're one pawn up, that could win you the game. Needless to say, being, say, down by a knight, you could still win the game. Just look for isolated pawns that could be nicked by you. However, don't let your guard down. Don't go complete aggression. Go about as a rule of thumb, 60% aggression and 40% defending.

Move your pieces forward. Chess is like a medieval war. You need to push the opponent back and invade their territory, in hopes of getting closer and closer to their King. If you're in a war, and you're being pushed back while your opponent is moving in on you, is that good for you? No, it will help your opponent win.

Use all of your pieces! A rook is worth 5 points, and is easily abandoned in the lonely corner of your side, all by itself, doing nothing. A waste of 5 points! However, if you move it down to the center of the back of your side, it would be dominating and attacking one of the two most powerful files of the game board - the Center. Combine that with your other Rook or your Queen and you will be attacking the most important parts of the board!

Don't touch a piece if you don't know where or if you're going to move it! Not only does it conflict with the touch-move rule, but it also makes you look like a bit of a dandy, and that you're not sure about where you're going to move the piece, if at all (If this rule is applied then you DO have to move it, if possible).

Practice, practice, practice! You don't have to practice against other people. You can also buy a chess engine to install for your computer and/or laptop, to play against the CPU! In more recent Windows and Mac computers, a chess game is built in. Use this to practice!