I started off my chess life with D. Brine Pritchard's "The Right Way to Play Chess". Explains all the basic opening, middle-game and end-game principles - including pawn structure!
I then went on to "The Road to Chess Mastery" by Max Euwe and Walter Meiden. More advanced opening principles, a collection of good sample games. Also read "Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur" by the same authors.
I don't know any more great books that you could read at this level - although Reuben Fine's "The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings" is highly recommended (though very tiresome reading).
Originally posted by SirLoseALotThe problem with that thread is that it isn't really appropriate for a 1252 player.
Many threads asking about books have been posted before,but it's a hell of a job finding them without the 'search for thread title'...
If you are only going to read one book, I would recommend something like Reinfeld's "1001 Chess Combinations..." There's no point learning strategy if you miss all the tactical landmines and opportunities along the way. This book took me from 1200 to 1600, just on tactics.
If you are going to read two books, I'd recommend something like Irving Chernev's "Logical Chess." There are other good intros to the middlegame, but this one goes into exhaustive detail on each move.
If you are going to read three books, I'd recommend Averbakh's "Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge." There are other combination books, other middlegame books, but this is THE intro book for the endgame. Developed to teach young russian prospects what they needed to know about the endgame, it gives you everything you need to know to be a 2000 player in about 100 pages. You can go to other books to fill out your knowledge on the details of rook endings, but read this one first.
The opening is a special problem, since even with a good knowledge of principles, playing over the board requires some amount of memorization. One solution is to pick some repertoire system that allows you to memorize a minimal amount of lines (Colle System and such). But you limit your experience that way. You should really try out a lot of openings and positions to find what suits you.
If I had to recommend something, it would be "HOW TO WIN IN THE CHESS OPENINGS" by I.A. Horowitz. Very nice overview of opening ideas. Covers the whole shebang, but not to the depth and detail of the encyclopedias, databases and specialty books. Still, after reading it you have a pretty good idea of the what, how and why of most openings.
Attack with Mikhail Tal! Attack with Mikhail Tal!
Err... or not. I love this book, but I don't understand it. Completely. Yet. 🙂
Uh... more seriously, one of my personal favorite "overall beginnerish books" is Lasker's Manual of Chess. However, I don't think it exists in algabreic notation, if that's a problem. Regardless, it's a great book.
The dirty secret is that books are more entertaining than they are helpful. The best thing to do is study tactics, tactics, tactics, and when you get tired of that, study some more tactics. And play against people better than you (as much as you can stand, since you'll lose a lot). While you're doing that, I'd try the Silman "Reassess Your Chess" books, which really have helped some people.
If you want a good opening book, I've heard good things about Seirawan's "Winning Chess Openings".
Originally posted by lloydkI have to disagree a bit. If you're a 1250 player, books on combinations and the endgame and that explain the basic ideas of the middlegame can be very helpful. That's especially true of the endgame. I know some folks that have been getting their head beat in by me in the endgame for decades. 😉 If they'd just pick up a book on the endgame, they'd do much better.
The dirty secret is that books are more entertaining than they are helpful. The best thing to do is study tactics, tactics, tactics, and when you get tired of that, study some more tactics. And play against people better than you (as much as you can stand, since you'll lose a lot). While you're doing that, I'd try the Silman "Reassess Your Chess" book ...[text shortened]... want a good opening book, I've heard good things about Seirawan's "Winning Chess Openings".
Also, "How to Reassess your chess" by Silman is OK. It's a nice adaptation of some of Nimzowitsch's and Euwe's instructional material that teaches you about planning. But recommending it to a 1250 player just doesn't seem right. He's going to read the first three chapters and throw it down.
The basic intro text's mentioned by dkappe are pretty reasonable for a beginner and will tide him over until he's gained enough experience to benefit from more advanced texts.
Winning Chess Tactics by Yasser Seirawan is a good one, its co-written by Jeremy Silman (Whos one of the better instructional authors). Its starts off pretty elementary(which is good for you 1200 people) but picks up a little bit towards the end. For me, it just helped me see deeper into my tactical combinations and showed some of the more specific things to look for. How happy I was when i solved a mate in 8!
Anything by Jeremy Silman, even if you dont understand everything, all you have to do is make an effort to learn what the book is teaching.
My System by Aron Nimzowitch. It is a very confusing book for a 1200 player, but in the end, you wont regret it. Just read it all, and play out everything, and follow along with the lessons. Eventually you'll have to read that book (if you desire becoming a master) and that is the landmark book on positional chess.
The Art of Attack in Chess is supposed to be a good one, I just got it, but havent had the time to read it yet. But I was looking up book reviews, and GMs have been saying it is an important book for students.
Any good tactical puzzle book. I would reccomend just a puzzlebook, because after Yassar Seirawans, you got the basics of each tactic
and finally any good book on endgames. I prefer Dvortesky's Endgame Manual
And have a notebook handy whenever you are going through a book. Write down any thoughts you have, any ideas, any answers to puzzles or anything of that nature and your rating will increase hundreds of points at a time!
Gotta disagree with both those who recommend 'My System' and those who say books are useless. 'My System' is, IMHO, likely to do you more harm than good. But books are good- studying tactics is useful, but it is also important to look at a lot of whole games, so you get an idea of how to arrange your pieces in such a way that there are likely to be good tactics in the position for you.
I'd say get a couple of books of tactical problems- preferably simple tactics, that you can solve reasonably quickly, to burn the patterns in (for instance, the Reinfeld books are probably too hard, as are cds like Renko's and CT-ART- you're looking for a large collection of 2 and 3 movers). Do some every day. Then get some annotated game collections- preferably collections aimed at the beginner. A good sequence would be three of Chernev's books- Logical Chess, The Most Instructive Games..., and Capablanca's Greatest Chess Endings. They include something like 150 games- play them over till you know a lot of them, and their notes, by heart. I'd also get a simple endgame primer... Averbakh's book is probably about right- you could also go through the new Dvoretzky endgame book learning only the blue diagrams, but that is a lot of work, even so.
I find it hard not to acquire a lot of hess books, but I find I learn more if I concentrate on a few of them... repetition helps, a lot. BTW, another book I think is useful, after you get through the above is Sammy Reshevsky's 'Art of Positional Play'- another game collection, but the games are very interesting, and spell out specific technical points in a way that not too many other books do (plus I really like Reshevsky's games). A good example of this is game 2 or 3 (sorry, book is not in front of me) between Spassky, and, I think Petrosian, in which one of them advances a pawn one rank too far, and the other uses a strategy of trading off pieces, and winning the pawn. The following maneuvers with the King are very instructive, and likely to stay with you longer than something out of BCE.
I'd also get one of the newer collections following Nunn's style of deeper annotations, for practicing visualisation. A _great_ choice here would be 'The Mammoth Book of The World's Greatest Chess Games', one of the best values in Chess books published recently- 100 games from all periods of chess, with some really deep annotations- not as deep as stuff by Speelman or Timman, but deep enough for your purposes. Set up the positions, and then follow all of the variations in your head, starting over whenever you lose the thread... even if it takes you a few hours to do it at first, it is time well spent. Unfortunately TMBTWGCG is out of print... but it is probably worth what people are selling it for on Amazon, even though it's more than twice what it originally cost.
HTH HAND
Oh, and btw- if you are looking for a good set of elementary problems, check out: http://www.entertainmentjourney.com/index3.htm I don't know what is up with the site these days- some of the links are now broken- but it's a _lot_ of free problems of the sort you probly want to be doing. Do a couple of pages every day, and you will get better.
Originally posted by deathbypawnI agree, although very general stuff, and the fact that the Winning Chess Openings does not have anything on my beloved english opening, still very good set of books.
I would highly recommend the "Winning Chess" series by grandmaster Yasser seirawan they are superb
I bought the whole series for my 11yr old nephew for xmas, his game has dramatically improved in only a few months.
This said, I think not the best for advanced players
"I agree, although very general stuff, and the fact that the Winning Chess Openings does not have anything on my beloved english opening, still very good set of books.
I bought the whole series for my 11yr old nephew for xmas, his game has dramatically improved in only a few months.
This said, I think not the best for advanced players"
Yep, I got them all for about 10 bucks a while back... they're all good, and I think the brilliancies one could be gone over a lot of times even by a very good player- the games are good- but they seemed to have a very small amount of content for books that expensive (at retail). If you can get them cheap, grab them.... otherwise just get the one on endings (you don't need too much content here- just key positions, and the explanations are clear), the games collection ("brilliancies"😉, and maybe the tactics book. The strategies book is OK too, if you haven't been exosed to the ideas before... but if you have a few chess books, you will have been.
Everybody raves about the tactics book- I can't tell why- for a book that size and cost it has very few problems, and mostly verbal explanation of tactics... if there's one thing that doesn't need a lot of verbal explanation it's tactics... the book would have been better with 1/4 the words, and 4 times the diagrams.