best chess book(s) for novices

Recommendations for READABLE chess books that may not be over my head with my mid 1100 rating. Snide and sarcastic suggestions are already assumed and will be ignored, actual helpful ones respected.

Just noted similar thread below and have noted Winning Chess series - anything else?

Logical Chess by Irving Chernev is one of the best books ever written for beginners. There is an explanation for every move of every game.

While we're on the subject of chess books, although not exactly what you're looking for, i just bought Bobby Fischer goes to war by David Edmonds, and John Eidenows.

I plan to read it tonight 🙂

Endgame Course by Bruce Pandolfini

This should be good enough for endgame knowledge up to 1500-1600.

Great book and very easy to read. Big diagram on every page with 1 lesson per page!

Originally posted by RahimK
Endgame Course by Bruce Pandolfini

This should be good enough for endgame knowledge up to 1500-1600.

Great book and very easy to read. Big diagram on every page with 1 lesson per page!

Originally posted by cmsMaster
I have it, and it has the essential endgames, but it's very boring as well.

If you find pandolfini's course boring (As I do), try Karsten Mueller's fundamental endgames DVDs. They're really informative and lots of fun to watch.

Yasser Seirawan's Winning Chess series

Pandolfini's Endgame Course

Logical Chess: Move by Move Irving Chernev

Any book of Tactical puzzles, I recommend 303 Tricky Chess Tactics by Alberston and Wilson

These have all been previously mentioned. I know that you said the Endgame book is boring, but like Rahim said, the stuff in it is VERY basic and I would consider a good portion of it the very minimum you need to know about endgames (you can probably ignore the stuff about checkmating with a King/Knight/Bishop vs. lone King, I have never encountered this situation OTB or online, and people will argue with me but I don't see any value in it). If you go through those books and learn the material, then continue to do tactics puzzles regularly, there's no reason for you not to be 1600 ish in a very short time.

weapons of chess is one of the best books that i've ever read for a novice player. no board needed and it walks you through with lots of pictures and examples. gaurintee you that a lot of those concepts could help a player in 1300 and 1400.

Chess for Dummies

EDIT: Don't be put of by the title, it's part of the "for dummies" series, is by James Eade a US chess federation master and it covers a lot of ground very clearly.

Chess Tactics by Paul Littlewood.

Originally posted by impatient
Recommendations for READABLE chess books that may not be over my head with my mid 1100 rating. Snide and sarcastic suggestions are already assumed and will be ignored, actual helpful ones respected.

Just noted similar thread below and have noted Winning Chess series - anything else?

I a few books on chess (novice). My favorite is Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev. Just buy it and you'll see I'm right.

I READ (oops) a few books on chess (novice). My favorite is Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev. Just buy it and you'll see I'm right.

I am sure all of the above books would fit the bill.

The Purdy Book most of all. You can also look into Silman's "Reasses your chess" It's basically a rewrite of Purdy's work imo...

However, I would recommend that you skip all of the books and buy ChessMaster 10th edition... it's 20 bucks at BestBuy and cheaper online Im sure...

They have an exhaustive amount of training in there that are backed up by drills. Plus, you can play thier fake human opponents and watch some of the best games of all time with annotation.

GM Larry Christiansen has a great series on historic games (Morphy etc...) that is really entertaining.

After you are done with the lessons you can still use CM10 to review your completed games on here...

For me the most painful and nessesary of all chess books are endgames and CM10 does a good job going over some basics in regard to those as well.