Advice for good chess books

Originally posted by powershaker
1100 player needs Lev Alburt's Comprehensive Chess Course Volumes I, II, III (Tactics of the Tournament player). Master those three volumes and you'll be 1800.

I've been playing for three years and have gone from a 1000 to around a 1500. These my opinions on the titles I have read:

Bobby Fischer (& other writers)
Bobby Fischer Teachers Chess - Very Underrated. This makes an excellent book for someone who knows nothing about chess since everything is explained with pictures, not notation. The only drawback is that
the books focuses almost entirely on back-rank mates, something you don't even see on the 1200 level.


Fred Reinfeld
NOTE: If you don't have the patience to learn Descriptive Notation (k4, Nkb3, Qkr5, etc.), these books aren't for you.

The Complete Chess Player/The Complete Chess Course - Two different titles, virtually identitical in their content. If you are going to buy one book, this is it. Covers all apsects of the game on a 1100-1600 level. The Opening Theory is a outdated but still gives you a great start on identifing all the major openings you'll see.
How to Think Ahead in Chess - This title does not get mentioned as often as his two 1001 titles, but I like this one a lot more. The book focuses enterily on non-mating tactics. Unlike the 1001 books, Renfield goes into detailed explanation on each problem. The problems are also organized by tactic (pins, forks, skewers, etc.)
1001 Brilliant Chess Sacrifices and Combinations/1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate - 2002 great tactical problems!!!



James Eade
Chess For Dummies - My father-in-law bought this one for himself. This is a good overview book if you want modern Opening theory and/or don't want to read Descriptive Notation.


Michael de la Maza
Rapid Chess Improvement - Go to Borders, Buy a cup of coffee, Skim the book for an hour, Take detailed notes on the visualization drills, and Put the book back on the shelf.


Fred Wilson & Bruce Albertson
303 Tricky Checkmates - Good, not great. I bought it because I was overlooking a lot of mating nets in my games. After going through the book three or four times, I saw a drastric improvement in this area. However, I was a little disappointed because most of the problems did not use "over-the-board" situations, which would have been beneficial in improving my planning ability.


Bruce Pandolfini
Chessercizes - A great tactical problem book. Good after you have read some the books I listed above.


Jeremy Silman
The Amateur's Mind, Reassess Your Chess - The first two books I ever bought due to the overwhelming number of recommendations I found on the Internet. Silman is an excellent teacher, but these books were way over my head when I was an 1100 player.

Logical chess move by move and a similar book which i just picked up on sat. and started reading through the first 3 games. Its called

Chess: the art of logical thinking

Same as logical chess but the games are played by recent GMs. Anand, Kasp, Karpov, Kramnik, Topalov etc.. 30 games explained move by move.

Its great.

All of Yasser Seirwan's Winning Chess Series books.

Try Chernev's "Capablanca's Best Chess Endings" and Kmoch's "Rubinstein's Best Chess Games." If you don't want to learn how to play chess correctly and want to retard your development, then buy a couple of books on the Dragon and Benoni.

Originally posted by der schwarze Ritter
Try Chernev's "Capablanca's Best Chess Endings" and Kmoch's "Rubinstein's Best Chess Games." If you don't want to learn how to play chess correctly and want to retard your development, then buy a couple of books on the Dragon and Benoni.

Originally posted by starscream74
Michael de la Maza
Rapid Chess Improvement - Go to Borders, Buy a cup of coffee, Skim the book for an hour, Take detailed notes on the visualization drills, and Put the book back on the shelf.

Im reading Silmans Reasess your chess again. I tried to get into it a while back, but it seemed too deep. I've seemed to have gained some more chess knowledge since then, and can appreciate it more.
Seems to be a book for at least a 1600. The amatures mind is a step down from this one, and should be easier to follow for below 1600

Originally posted by Grandmouster
Im reading Silmans Reasess your chess again. I tried to get into it a while back, but it seemed too deep. I've seemed to have gained some more chess knowledge since then, and can appreciate it more.
Seems to be a book for at least a 1600. The amatures mind is a step down from this one, and should be easier to follow for below 1600

Take Capablanca's advise and learn the endgame first. He never studied an opening book in his life, however, he did study Rook and pawn endings for two years. GM Anakov told me once that in Russia, beginning players study only classic games for two years before they're allowed to ever study an opening manual.

Originally posted by zebano
Many people say this and I disagree. I got my first rating as an 850, I read the book as about an 1150. It made sense and I immediatly began looking at games differntly.

Originally posted by zebano
Many people say this and I disagree. I got my first rating as an 850, I read the book as about an 1150. It made sense and I immediatly began looking at games differntly.