First Moves: The Ultimate Beginner’s Chess Course

Name: First Moves: The Ultimate Beginner’s Chess Course
Rating: 4.8 (6 reviews)

Chess basics. Fundamentals. Beginner level

Created byMithil Anande

Last updated 4/2025

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

Learn Chess from scratch
Rules and special moves
Attacking, Defending and Exchanges
Learn to use different platforms for practice and rules for tournaments
Simple Strategy
Tactics
Basic Checkmates

Course content

1 section • 27 lectures • 3h 38m total length

Introduction0:29
Chessboard and Squares9:02
Explore the chessboard, learn square naming from files and ranks, and master initial piece placement and the starting position for pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, queen, and king.
Value of Pieces2:28
How to write a game11:59
Pawn Movement3:18
Explore how pawns move forward, advance one square or two on their first move, cannot go backward or sideways, and capture diagonally to new squares.
Pawn & king movement11:05
Explore pawn movement and king movement, learn how pawns capture diagonally and block moves, then practice capturing sequences through puzzles and homework on a chessboard.
Rook and Bishop movement12:39
Learn rook and bishop movement and captures. See how rooks move straight along ranks and files and cannot jump, while bishops move diagonally on light or dark squares.
Queen and Knight Movement9:45
Attacking6:43
Check and Defending the check6:48
Learn what a check is and how to defend it by capturing the attacker, blocking the attack, or moving the king to a safe square.
Castling and En-passent16:18
Checkmate10:21
Capture unprotected pieces5:00
Exchanges9:23
Explore the three types of exchanges—equal, good, and bad—and learn to assess trades by piece values (knight 3, rook 5, queen 9). Practice identifying good exchanges and avoiding bad ones.
Defending pieces which are under attack7:34
Rules of Draws11:46
Stalemate8:18
Demonstrate stalemate as a draw by showing positions where no legal move exists and the king is not in check, including rook, pawn, and promotion scenarios.
Basic Strategy11:09
Chess Tournament Rules7:53
Basic Checkmates: Two Rook checkmate9:21
Basic Checkmates: One Queen Checkmate6:57
Tactic: Double Attack7:14
Tactic: Knight Fork9:12
Back Rank Checkmate4:59
Tactic: Pin8:11
Destroying the Defender5:50
Distracting the Dfender4:36

Requirements

Open mind and willingness to learn

Description

This course is designed to help you learn the fundamentals of chess, from how the pieces move to basic strategies, tactics and checkmate patterns. Whether you're completely new to the game or looking to build a solid foundation, we’ll guide you step by step to improve your skills and confidence. There are also downloadable files for solving puzzles. I have used simple English to help you understand the topics easily. After the topic there are puzzles so you can pause the video during each puzzle, think and then check your answers. The downloadable material includes explanation of the topic and then there are 8 puzzles to solve. Basic checkmates like two-rooks checkmate and checkmate using one queen are very important to learn at this level. Also I recommend solving puzzles from platforms like lichess. There is a seperate video on tournament rules as playing online and offline is different. The most fun part to learn is Tactics which can help you grab a lot of pieces of your opponent. It includes Double Attack, Knight fork, Skewer, Pin, Backrank checkmate, Destroying the defender, Destroying the defender.

Chess notation is also included as in the game it is also important if you wish to play over the board Chess tournaments.

Who this course is for:

For a person who wants to learn Chess from scratch