10 Essential Chess Books

Originally posted by magnublm
I don't remember where I collected this information, but the topic of which books to recommend keeps popping up, so here you go:

[b]10 essential chess books

There are thousands of books written about chess, more than for any
other game. There is simply no way to read them all, as more are
published every year. Here is a list of the ten books uni ...[text shortened]... know exactly what they know.

Any other recommended books, fellas?[/b]

Dvoretzky's Endgame Manual is supposed the god of endgame studies...
especially for this site, may be useful to keep on the shelf for reference...

I just perused my bookshelf and these were the essentials that jumped out:

"Chess Tactics for Advanced Players," by Averbakh. Shows the importance of the double attack and how it plays a key role in all successful attacks and counter-attacks.

"Chess Middlegame Planning," by Romanovsky. Shows the role for proper handling of the central stage of the game, as well as how to hatch a plan.

"Complete Chess Strategy Vol. I, II and III," by Pachman. Shows the first principles of the middle game, principles of pawn play and the center, and the endgame. A good all around primer on all three phases of the game.

"My Best Games of Chess," by Smyslov. Excellent analysis of high level games by a World Champion. Playing over Smyslov's games will teach you how to win a won game!

"Three Hundred Chess Games," by Tarrasch. A wonderful, instructional set of games played by Tarrasch. Chess players may enjoy playing through Tal's games, but they learn how to play the game properly by going through this book. Basically a distillation of the whole of chess knowledge through the Hypermodern era.

"Capablanca's Best Chess Endings," by Chernev. 60 of Capa's best endgames. I've gone through this book many a time and still continue to find instructional value and enjoyment from it. If I'm every planning to be stuck on a desert isle, this one is definitely going.

"Rook Endings," Levenfish and Smyslov. Rook endings occur in over 50 percent of endings. Master the material in this book and you greatly increase your winning percentage.

"The Tactics of the End-Games," Jeno Ban. This book is similar to the Averbakh book mentioned earlier. The author demonstrates the importance of the double attack in the end-game, as well as assorted other dirty tricks your opponent might not be considering. Think the end-game is dry and dull? Read this book and you'll never view the end-game the same again.

"Domination in 2,545 Endgame Studies," by G. Kasparyan. Every type of endgame tactic and situation is demonstrated with an encyclopedic 2,545 studies. Some examples: Trapping Minor Pieces, Trapping a Rook, Trapping the Queen, etc. Every great endgame composer is represented in this volume: J. Berger, Birnov, Bondarenko, Bron, J. Fritz, Gherbtsman, Gorghiyev, Gurvich, Halberstadt, B. Horowitz, Kling, Kubbel, M. and V. Platov, Prokes, Rinck, Troitsky and many, many others. This book is a tour-de-force of the endgame study.

You definitely need to have Max Euwe's "Road To Chess Mastery" on your list. Also, since we're in the computer age, maybe you should include E-Books and DVDs. Just to give you an example of one of the new ways that people are using to study chess, please check out :

http://chessmiddlegamemastery.blogspot.com

The post that was quoted here has been removed

I have 9, 67% in descriptive notation.

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Thanks!

How often is "occasionally"?

Tactics puzzles - Occasionally use Chess Tactics Server,
Reinfeld's 1001 Chess Sacrifices and Polgar's 5334 Chess Problems.


What I'm really curious about is has the idea that chess is 99% tactics born out and thats a majority of your study, or is it just something where you do a couple problems a day to stay sharp? (and is this different from how you studied a year ago).

Renaud and Kahn, The Art of the Checkmate should make any top ten.
Lev Alburt, Chess Training Pocket Book is a strong candidate.

Now that computer training has become routine, the books on my shelf that still get the most use are:

Muller and Lamprecht, Fundamental Chess Endings
Mark Dvoretsky, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual
Jeremy Silman, Silman's Complete Endgame Course

Reuben Fine's Basic Chess Endings mostly gathers dust bunnies on the shelf. Thanks to ChessBase, Encyclopedia of Chess Openings spends more time on the shelf than on the desk.

Originally posted by Kepler
I have two that could reasonably replace Basic Chess Endings and The Ideas Behind the Openings.

Mastering the Chess Openings vols 1 & 2 is also a why rather than a what book on opening theory.

Fundamental Chess Endings by Karsten muller and Frank Lamprecht is more of a bible for chess endings than a condenstaion of Basic Chess Endings. Again this could ...[text shortened]... It did me no good at all. I found that playing the game was the only real way to improve for me.

I agree with you. The Fine books were great in there day but are quite out of date now.