This is the Homepage of the "Beginners chess guide"

Chess is a strategy game played on an 8x8 board where two players face-off with pieces.
The goal is to outmaneuver your opponent, control key spaces, and ultimately trap their king in checkmate.
Chess is a game of memorization, calculation, and long term planning.
Making chess both easy to learn for keen beginners (most likely you),
and endlessly challenging for those who want to go into the grandmaster level.

"are there any competitive chess games or tournaments?"

Yes, there are multiple online and over-the-board competitve chess games and tournaments.
FIDE (Federation Internationale Des Echecs in French, or International Chess Federation for english).
FIDE regulates chess competitions, sets official rules of play, calculates official Elo ratings, and organizes major events like the World Chess Championship.
Some of the most known events are the World chess "classical" Championship, World cup, Grand swiss, and the "Candidates".
There are thousands of other global tournaments and there are some in NZ too like the BOP tournament.

Basic Fundementals of chess

Each side has 8 pawns, 2 rooks, 2 bishops, 2 knights, 1 queen, and 1 king.

Pawns

: Pawns are worth 1 point of material and can move 1 or 2 spaces from their starting square but once moved, it cannot be moved 2 spaces up again. They can only capture pieces 1 diagonal space from them.
They can also preform a special move called "en passant" (In passing for english) where if one of your opponents pawns moves 2 squares up from it's starting square and one of your pawns are next to the pawn that has just moved, you can capture the pawn by moving your pawn behind the opponents pawn.
And if your pawn reaches the other side of the board it can promote to another piece like a queen, or underpromote to a rook, knight, or bishop.

Knights

: Knights are worth 3 points of material and can move in an L-shape and can hop over pieces. Knights are the most unpredictable pieces and are most useful for forking your opponent, a fork is when a knight (sometimes a pawn or bishop) attacks 2 important pieces that can't be defended, usually a king and queen fork where you'd win the queen next move.

Bishop

: Bishops are worth 3 points of material and can move diagonally as far as they can, and are used in Pins, A pin is when you stick a piece to the king and they can't move due to the fact that it's not possible for it to move. Rooks and queens can also preform pins. Pins are useful for shutting down a piece from the game temporarily.

Rooks

: Rooks are worth 5 points of material and can move horizontally and vertically, and are useful for skewers, a skewer is when you check the king and take a piece after the king moves out of the way. Queens and Bishops can also skewer pieces too.

Queen

: Queens are worth 9 points of material and can move like a bishop and rook combined, they are the most powerful piece as they can preform most of the important moves and should rarely be sacrificed.

The King

: The King is your most imporant piece and should protected from the opponents pieces, they can move 1 space in any direction beside them aslong as they don't end up in a check. They can also preform something called "castling" where if you havent moved the king and the rook and can hide the king in the corner for protection, Kings safety is the most important thing to learn.

Elo

: Elo is your chess strength, the more elo you have, the better you are at chess.

Zugzwang

: Zugzwang is german for "forced to move", in chess it means that any move played by either you or your opponent will end up winning for one another. Meaning that it would be better not to move at all.

king opposition

: King opposition is used when the king are directly facing each other, used mostly in rook and king only checkmates, or in pawn and king vs king endgames.

Fianchetto

: when you Fianchetto your Bishop, it means that you move it on to the square directly next to it off it's starting square, leading to long snipes in the middlegame.

Batteries

: Batteries are when you line up your rook and sometimes your queen for a devestating attack on your opponents king.

Files (open and semi open files)

: Files are the names of the columns on the board from a file-h file. Your rooks will denefit from open or semi open files as they get alot more sight and power on the board.

ranks

: Ranks are the rows on a chess board (1-8).

Passed pawns

:A passed pawn is a pawn that has a clear road to premotion. No pieces are in the way for it but it can still be taken.

Poisoned piece: All pieces execpt the king can be poisoned. A poisoned piece is when it is seemingly hanging but it would be horrible to take because it would lead to you losing.

outpost

: An outpost is where you can put a piece there and no pawn is able to kick it away.

Stalemates

: Stalemates are draws, wether by repetion (same moves are made 3 times), No squares left meaning the king is trapped and has no piece to move, draw by time/insufficient material meaning you don't have a possible way to checkmate; or you win on time but you have no way to checkmate the opponents king.

Pawn structure/damage pawn satructure

: how your pawns are positioned on board and how they benefit you (king safety, attacking opportunities, support). Damaging pawn structures is when you play a pawn move to weaken you opponents pawns by doubling them up or isolating them (no piece is able to protect them).

50 move rule and 75 move rule

: 50 move rule is when after no captures or pawn moves, both players can agree to a draw. 75 move rule is the same thing but forced.

Chess Notation

: Chess notation is the langauge of chess, it uses algebraic notation to locate pieces on the board and where they have moved. Example e4 means a pawn has gone to e4.
All pieces have their own notation, nothing=pawn, N=knight, B=Bishop, R=Rook, Q=Queen, K=King. A knight move would look like Nf4 and a rook move would look like Rh6 symbolizing that the piece it notates has moved to that square on the board.
X= a capture, It means the move you played has captured a piece on the board and will look like Rxb2 symbolizing a rook has captured a piece on b2.
+=Check, it's when you check the king like Be4+ symbolizing you have moved a bishop to e4 to check the king.
#=checkmate, Checkmate is the ultimate blow to your opponent and would look like Qg2# symbolizing that you have moved the queen to g2 for mate.
1/2= stalemate, a draw.
E.P= En passant, the special pawn move andwould look like exd4 normally without E.P.
0-0 and 0-0-0= Castle or long castle, it shows that you have castled with the kings rook (0-0) or the queens rook (0-0-0).
e8=Q= a pawn has premoted to a queen. There are other promotions called underpromotions where you would promote to another piece that isn't a queen like e8=R for rook, e8=N for knight, and e8=B for bishop. You'd usually do this rarely for some type of brilliant move for checkmate or a discovered attack.
Finally if 2 of any of the same piece can see a square you moved to it would be notated as Nfd6 symbolizing that a knight on the f file went to d6 when another knight of yours also saw that square or maybe Q3h2 to symbolize that 2 queens on the same file can move to the same square but the one on the 3rd rank is the one that moved.

all the moves (chess.com wise):

Brilliant (!!)

: A move that sacrifices a piece for an advantage. Like forced mates, or material advantages.

Great (!)

: The only move that works in that position.

Best (star)

: the best move.

amazing (thumbs up)

: the secondary best moves, Chess.com says that these moves are just as good as the best.

Good (check mark)

: alright move.

Book move(open book)

: opening theory move.

forced (arrow)

: the only move that was possible.

missed move (X)

: You had a winning move but you played something else instead.

Inaccuracy (?!)

: A move that isn't completely losing that you lose some advantage.

mistake (?)

: Not as severe as a blunder, but does lose alot of advantage.

blunder (??)

: Very bad move, Somehting like losing a piece or letting mate in one happen.

Chess Fun Facts

1) The Rarest Checkmate possible is called the Doubly disambiguated bishop checkmate.
It's exceedingly diificult because you need 3 bishops of the same coloured squares lined up in a corner with the opponents king in the corner.
A queen that needs to have a discovered checkmate available from the Bishop.
And a piece that the bishop takes when the final move is played. If all is done then the chess notation should be something like "Bh1xg2#".
2) The most popular chess game is called the Immortal played by Adolf Anderssen (white) and Lionel Kieseritzky (black).
It's known as the most popular because Adolf Anderssen sacrificed 1 bishop, 2 rooks, and his queen to deliever what is believed to be, "the most beautiful checkmate ever played".
3) The most debated fact in chess is "who's the best player in history?"
Some say Magnus Carlsen for having the highest FIDE Elo in history of 2882,
some say Bobby Fischer due to his absolute dominance over chess in the early 1970's, even conquering the Soviet Union without the help of todays AI and Chess Engines.
others say Garry Kasparov for his Genius and mental capacity to think over 20 moves ahead, whoever you debate for is your choice.
4) There are more possible chess games than there are atoms in the universe. This is know as the "shannon number".
5) Most famous move played was on July 11, 1972 when bobby fischer (black) and Boris Spassky (white) played in a championship and on move 29 fischer played Bxh2(?), trapping his own bishop and losing it. This move is known as the "bishop blunder". It's famous because fischer was known as an almost unstoppable player and to see him make this rookie mistake was shocking for the entire chess world.