Mastered the Basics? Then You're a Master

Whenever you learn a new activity, you will hear "study the basics" a lot, with "the basics" being the most important and fundamental skills.  Frequently, these are not sexy and even dull, such as artists drawing hundreds of boxes or musicians endlessly drilling their scales. There's nothing artistic about a cube or musical about a scale, but these form the necessary foundation that mastership can be built on.

And if you get good enough, even the basics become beautiful.

Source: https://conceptartempire.com/drawabox-lessons-review/

I have a blackbelt in karate.  Do you know how I stand out from a beginner?  It's not so much that I have "secret karate skills" that a white-belt hasn't learned.  Rather, I do the basics really well, and most blackbelt classes spend most of their time drilling the basics.  Indeed, most advanced karate skills are just the basics done in a certain way or with a slight variation.  After all, at the end of the day, there's only so many ways you can punch and kick someone.

This applies to chess.  Unlike karate, though, the basics of chess are truly vast.  Simply listing the basics will make this one of my longest blog posts.  Actually learning all of this will take even longer.  If you can do it, though, if you can truly internalize all of the basics, then there's a strong argument you are approaching master status.  Like a blackbelt, a chess master doesn't rely on "secret chess skills" to win so much as they do the basics really, really well.

Let's take a look at the chess basics.