Hello, I'm 21 from the states.... I haven't played chess much until now and recently got interested when I played against my friend that claimed she has beat all of her friends who play her ( I think her friends never played before because I got check mate rather quickly ).

Anyways, to get on point, I have been playing against the lower ranked ( 400-600 ) computer players with only moderate success. During ranked play most all of my loses are due to " blunders " where I had led most of the game and I was wondering if anyone would be willing to analyze a couple of my games and give me some critiques and maybe help me develop insight. My current look ahead is only on average 2-3 moves 4-5 at most and I am hoping someone could give me some tips that will help develop me a deeper game.

ack if you're still playing at 400-600 then you're very much a beginner. Best advice is to keep playing. Most of all if you want to get better read some chess books and listen to some analysis on other games (you'll find a sticky thread on it in this forum).

If you're having trouble with rated-600s, I strongly recommend you go through the tutorials of CM10, namely the beginner and even intermediate ones as well as the ones by Josh concerning tactics and strategy. Don't experiment too much with opening variations; pick one you like and stick to it for now (of course, make slight modifications depending on your opponent's openings). Pay more attention to your middle games and endgames.

If you have the time, read some books. Unfortunately, I've been playing the game for way too long to recommend books for beginners, for I never read any back then. If you play regularly online, find someone nice and better than you (not way better than you, of course), and after each game you lose, ask him what did you do wrong and what you could've done differently. Remember, winning is fun, but you learn the most from games you lose.

BTW, if you can calculate 4-5 moves ahead on average, I'm amazed. Because people who can do that aren't supposed to lose to 600s. No offense!

Well, looking ahead 4-5 moves is pretty good and you should be kicking butt against 600 rated players (even just 2-3 moves ahead). I think your problem is similar to mine. I try to look ahead too far and don't see obvious moves just around the corner. Often, the opponent just pushes a pawn and completely messes up all my plans.

I got much better when I started to proceed systematically. When you think of a good move then look at ALL the moves that your opponent can make in reply and see if there's any way to counter your plan. Also try to put yourself in your opponent's place and see what you would move and if there's anything you can do on the current move to stop it. All that seems pretty obvious when you say it, but it can be confusing in a game. The main problem is staying focused, and imagining what the board will look like after several moves. So what has helped me a lot is to do some memorization and visualization exercises. Look at a list of moves, then try to recreate the board from memory.

And of course, the tutorials in the academy are just amazing. Josh Waitzkin's academy is great, although sometimes the exercises are just too difficult. Try the Chessmaster series academy exercises. There are literally hundreds of them.

Oh jeez, I'm not thinking ahead as much as I previously though ... my thought process while playing is currently a bit clouded, I see a piece I want to take and i set my own pieces to take it, and that's usually how my games go, although, and I do this with peices I own that i don't want loss... when attempting check mate I usually look a LITTLE further ahead, I was thinking maybe someone could send me some scenarios to where I have to take X piece in X am mount of turns or checkmate in X+2 moves(as checkmate in 1 and 2 moves is already available to me) ?

Yes, I am going to need some help here... I'm doing alright against 700-mid 800s but much past that I am having a lot of difficulties. I am now requesting someone to play me on one of the various online chess options and point to me my weaknesses and suggest practice for me or reading material that will help me strengthen my weaknesses, analyzing my games in CMX is OK but it would be better if i had someone could tell me WHY and better demonstrate advantages of different tactics.