Your 4 favorite chess books

I would love to know your favorite chess books , and how they influenced you.

My favorite books

1. My System - This was the book which introduced me to strategy in chess.I came across ideas like open files, prophylaxis(love it!)
2. The Sorcerer Apprentice - a great book by Bronstien. My first book of collection of annotated games by a player.
3. Inner game of chess - this book taught me to look for ideas, calculation in chess
4. Improve your chess now - lot of good ideas on training n improving chess

My four favourites:

1) Secrets of Pawn Endings by Mueller and Lamprecht
2) Fundamental Chess Endings by Mueller and Lamprecht - I suppose their style suits a relatively untalented relative beginner like me
3) Starting Out: The Queen's Gambit Declined
4) Starting Out: Sicilian Scheveningen

OK - just call me boring!

This is really a tough call !!!

1. Play Winning Chess By Seirawan (The first book I read. Followed by Winning Chess Tactics and Winning Chess Strategies.)

2. Winning With Chess Psychology by Benko and Hochberg ... an introduction to all aspects of psychology, includes Lasker's "playing the man" against Marshall by not allowing Marshall to get attacking positions and even sacking to get them himself ... also includes a short history of chess ... and personal info/games from Benko himself.

3. How To Think Ahead In Chess by Horowitz and Reinfeld ... This first gave me an idea of how with the opening I could aim for familiar middlegame plans and ideas. I used the Stonewall Attack for quite some time after reading this and had many nice attacking games. (See also The Stonewall Attack by Soltis)

4. The Most Instructive Games Of Chess Ever Played by Chernev ... a great classic game collection with many ideas of strategy demonstrated ... I have read this at least twice cover to cover. ... further reading - Logical Chess Move by Move.

1.The art of the checkmate - learned some neat checkmating patterns

2.Smyslov's best games I,II - learned a thing or two about how to actually reach positions where I could apply these mating patterns.On a sidenote,I find Smyslov is often overlooked when people talk of great champions.He deserves better.

3.Petrosian's best games of chess 1946-1963 - introduced me to,and instilled a love for,exchange sacrifices.

4.Alekhine's best games - great games but I'm not sure what I got out of this book.Perhaps some lessons in trying to look further than the obvious move.

I haven't read many yet but here is my list:

1.Winning chess strategy by Seirawan, this guy is just an unbelievably good writer and the material is excelent too!

2.Silman's complete endgame course, I like this book very much as it was my introduction to engames, not only does this book explain everything very clearly and is nice for the biggining player, it also made me love endgames!

3.Training for the tournament player by Dvoretsky and Yusupov, this book is far above my level but it is a great read and gave me some nice ideias about how to improve

4.the stappenmethode series, ok ok this is not a book but rather a collection of tactics exercices, but it is a great piece of work and if completed correctly will bring you easily to above 2000 elo

Secrets of Endgame Technique: School of Future Champions Vol. 3 (Dvoretsky School of Future Chess Champions) by Mark Dvoretsky and Artur Yusupov

Endgame Analysis: School of Chess Excellence 1 (Progress in Chess) by Mark Dvoretsky

Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual by Mark Dvoretsky

But don't forget:

Practical Chess Endings (Batsford Chess Book) by Paul Keres

How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course(Exp. 3rd Edition) by Jeremy Silman

Silman's Complete Endgame Course: From Beginner To Master by Jeremy Silman

My System: 21st Century Edition by Aaron Nimzowitsch

I have hundreds of other chess books -- most of them are trash. Some of the puzzle books are fun, but not much there for learning.

1. 5334 Problems - Laszlo Polgar
2. Logical Chess Move by Move - Irving Chernev
3. Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess - Bobby Fischer (strange I know, but I loved it, and its geared towards new players with fantastic results!)
4. 500 Master Games of Chess - Savielly Tartakower

Nominated : The art of Learning - Josh Waitzkin

Originally posted by Nowakowski

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess - Bobby Fischer (strange I know, but I loved it, and its geared towards new players with fantastic results!)

Nominated : The art of Learning - Josh Waitzkin

I loved Waitzkin's book too. highly recommended.

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess isn't written by Bobby Fischer though, they simply stole his name and gained huge publicity, and money of course.
the book is not only totally worthless, it's basically stolen property too.

The Life of Mikhail Tal (omitting the "and Games" part, which I didn't even touch 😛)

Originally posted by heinzkat
[b]The Life of Mikhail Tal (omitting the "and Games" part, which I didn't even touch 😛)[/b]

🙂
If you play over games to learn from them then you did it right 😉

Tal's games are a joy but incomprehensible to "normal" human beings.

1. World Champion Openings
2. Pirc Alert
3.Beating the French
4. Winning Chess Openings

I have read Art of learning - great book!

The most practical help comes from:

Play The Queens Gambit - Chris Ward
The Pirc in Black & White - James Vigus
Beating Unusual Openings - Richard Palliser
Logical Chess Move by Move - Irving Chernev

the most enjoyable books that i have read to date are

1: Modern Ideas in chess - Reti.

2: The search for chess perfection - Purdy

3. Simple chess - Michael Stean

4.The most instructive games of chess ever played - Chernev

the worst book that i have is petroff defence, by everyman chess, Raetsky/chetverik. You need to understand and play chess in machine code to get anything from that book, when i opened it up i thought it was a knitting pattern and was gonna give it to my mom.

Interesting review http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews_js/js_search_chess_perfection.html - would love to get this book