In this position, it is black to move and I believe black is better. White has a safer king as black’s king is more exposed but I am finding difficulty on how to bring it to a safe position. King to F8 is risky because of the dark squared bishop. White has a better pawn structure than black however black has better attacking chances on the king side. Black seems to have more piece activity than white. I am very keen to move my pawn to c4, blocking the light squared bishop to the queen side and I can also do a fork with pawn to g3. I really want my knight at the e4 square but it’s difficult because white can do a knight trade with knight to f2. This is a type of position where I am getting confused seeing which is the best move in a game. That (rook) at f1 is also a potential threat.

•  Development: White needs 1 move to connect Rooks, Black needs 2
•  King safety: White’s King is safer, Black’s is stuck in the centre
•  Weaknesses: g5 and e4 are weak; f7, c3 and a3 might become weak
•  Piece activity: about equal
•  Forcing moves and initiative: White has e4-e5, Black has …g5-g4
•  Lines: No fully open files, but Black’s Rg8 looks positive and White’s Bishops have good scope.
•  Centre and space: White has a better centre although Black has enough space for their pieces.

So, nothing that suggests this position is better for Black.

•  Your g-pawn is under threat, although you have a counter-threat against e4.
•  So you can play …Nh7 to protect your g-pawn, or …g5-g4 to get it to a square where you aren’t losing it for nothing.
•  Alternatively, you say that White can have that g-pawn if you can have the e-pawn, and play instead …dxe4.
•  Yet another idea is to threaten to win the d-pawn by pinning the c-pawn against the Queen: …Qc7 or …Qc8 or …Rc8 threatens …cxd4 when White can’t take back.

This will give you the engine evaluation in pawn’s-worth and the best move (or the best 4-5 moves in order)
If you leave Stockfish turned on, it might change its mind about exactly what the evaluation is, or which of the 4 moves is a bit better than the others, but it should give you a broad idea about the position.
If I do that to your position, it comes up with +2.3, which is to say, although material is equal, White has an advantage in position which is worth more than 2 extra pawns.
If I look at the 4-5 best moves for Black, it lists them as …dxe4, …g4, …cxd4, ….Qc8, and …Qc7, and they’re all about as good as each other.  I didn’t think of …cxd4 and I don’t know the idea behind it.   That is the disadvantage of computer analysis — you can see the evaluation and the moves but you don’t get any explanation.  +2.3 might mean that White’s position is better but not why… or that Stockfish sees that in 10 moves’ time White can win 2 pawns… or win a Knight for a pawn.
But the computer is a good check on your assessment and analysis.  The best way to use it is the way things happened here: you committed yourself to an evaluation, and then checked it.  And that process is the key to improvement.
bw
D

Dear Dave, 
Hope this email finds you well. 
I’m looking for a coach to teach chess for my 7-year-old daughter. 
My friend recommended you, but I don’t know whether you are available or have available space for a beginner. 
Look forward to your reply.

Thanks for your interest.

I am available for coaching and have space, but I would not like to charge you money to teach a beginner.

Beginners mostly need practice, and some basic advice which is freely available.

If she has no opponents at home or at school, then I suggest you sign her up at ChessKid.com (a child-friendly place to play) or at lichess.org (an adult space, but you can turn off chat, so you can only say things to each other like ‘Good game’ and ‘Thank you’).  You can also get computer and ‘phone apps which play chess:
https://www.dadsuggests.com/home/best-chess-apps
The free level of ‘Play Magnus’ might amuse.  Some of the free chess apps like Stockfish are of Grandmaster strength, so watch out for that!

Beginners nearly always lose (or win) games because they miss (or spot) captures and simple tactics.
There are places where you can practise simple tactics for free, including lichess.org.
https://lichess.org/training
To learn what the simple tactics patterns are, you can refer to
https://devonjuniorchess.co.uk/content/middlegame-tactics-advice
https://devonjuniorchess.co.uk/content/course-chess-tactics
Someone made a video series out of that last collection:

And for defending:

Playing games and revising simple tactics are the most important things to start with.

She will also need to know how to finish off a game of chess:

And to start a game properly:
https://devonjuniorchess.co.uk/content/openings-advice

For more basic advice, try these resources:

https://www.chessinschools.co.uk/chess-at-home

and if modesty permits:
https://onionschess.co.uk/content/4-book-deal

If she does not like to read books, there are many videos on YouTube which are free.  I have made some myself, as you see.

I hope some of that is helpful.

For coaching, I charge £30 per hour, and for a month’s worth of lessons, I expect you can buy all the books your daughter might need for her first year or two of playing chess!

If she starts to play on lichess.org, let me know what her online name is (I am drdaveexeter), and I will be able to see her games, and I can tell you which bits of advice need more attention.

When I started writing books for juniors with Tim Onions, the first thing I did was go and learn Japanese Chess (Shogi) and Chinese Chess (Xiangchi), because I wanted to remember what it was like to be a beginner, trying to grapple with a complex game but with a limited conceptual armoury  (e.g. how does the horse move again?)

During lockdown, I’ve had a regular date with David Beckwith to play board games online.  We both like that category of game in which chess fits: abstract strategy games.  (You may be interested to learn that chess comes only 46th in the list of best abstract strategy games [or used to].)

We’ve been playing at boardspace.net, a rather wonderful achievement by David Dyer, who has created online versions of classic and newer games — I think there’s about a hundred there.  We started at A and worked our way through to Z, picking out ones we thought were promising, then went through A->Z again to see if we missed anything.  It was surprising how many games were decided because one or other of us forgot a rule!

So in the last 18 months I have tried to learn a LOT of new games, and I can roundly endorse what I read in the journal Games and Puzzles Design, by its editor in the first issue:

“Embed the rules.” (Cameron Browne)

“To ‘embed the rules’ means to use relevant features of the game’s physical components (board, pieces, environment, etc.), to enforce implicit rules which then do not need to be explicitly stated to players. This might also be described as
‘hiding the rules in the equipment’… “

This applies particularly when pieces have very different values or movement.   A nice example is from when I was battling with shogi.   There is a quite a barrier for the non-Japanese reader in getting to grips with the characters written on the pieces.

(Oliver Orschiedt‘s picture, used under CC)

I found a kids set, which had the moves written on the pieces, and the pieces of clearly different sizes:

Not obvious from the dismal photographs, but the pieces bear tick marks in the corners and on edges to show which directions they can move.

Another nice way of approaching the same goal with identically shaped and sized pieces was this one from Schmidt Games: the moves are painted on the pieces.

Inspired by these sets, I made insect-themed sets, for the full game and a simpler version Dobutsu Shogi:

Not perfect, the unpromoted yellow ladybirds on the third row up should really have only one spot. but they came with 4 and I didn’t bother to paint them out.  I was happy with the caterpillar promoting to butterfly!

And I found a symbol set, also very nice:

Got the idea?

So, I thought, wouldn’t it be great to have a way of teaching Western chess with a set where the rules were embedded?

Of course, I was late to the party: Bauhaus got there decades ago.

Kent Wang’s photo (shared under CC)

You can quibble about the King and Queen but I think that’s as close as you’re going to get to embedding the moves in the pieces.  And wouldn’t it be an easier game to learn if that was our standard set, and not the Staunton?

From Boardspace, games like Hive, Cookie Disco, Arimaa and Xiangchi were a miss on the Browne rule, while Mijnlieff was a definite hit.