Originally posted by sannevssrYou sure its a chess shop? 😉
I can recommend "chess for zebras" by Jonathan Rowson , very instructive and loads of fun.
Doesnt deal with openings particularly though,
One of my best friends works in the biggest chessshop in amsterdam and If u let me know which openings, I could recommend something.
It's worth browsing through a chess book before you buy it - or going on detailed recommendations. Some books are too advanced to start with. Just as if you were learning a language you want a book that suits the level you are at now.
I would recommend a good all round book such as "Play Winning Chess" by Yasser Seirawan
(I found all his books to be excellent with titles that accurately describes whats in them)... "Chess for Dummies" mentioned earlier in this thread is also a good all round book in my opinion.
You might also want a separate book that covers a range of openings for you to discover your favorites before moving on to more specialist openings books. Two chess publishers worth browsing through the titles of are Everyman and Gambit.
Next up might be a tactics book and an endings book. For tactics the Chess Tactics Server is a good place to visit: http://chess.emrald.net/
Another question you might ask about books is how prepared you are to sit and go through a lot of notation as the ratio between notation, diagrams and text varies considerably.
Originally posted by flipnfillukIMO, the best book to teach you how to "think chess" is "Logical Chess Move by Move" by Irving Chernev. When the book came out it was originally in descriptive notation, but now there is an algebraic edition as well.
Any of you guys know any decent chess books around to improve my general play and openings???
Cheers for any help.
Dan
To learn general opening strategy and how they work in specific openings, I strongly recommend "Winning Chess Openings" by Yasser Seirawan.
Good luck and have fun!
My 20 favorites:
A Chess Omnibus
Birth of the Chess Queen : A History
Bobby Fischer : Profile of a Prodigy (Revised Edition)
Chess Bitch: Women In The Ultimate Intellectual Sport
Chess: Endgames
Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual
Fundamental Chess Endings
Garry Kasparov on My Great Predecessors, Parts 1-5
How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course
I Play Against Pieces
Kramnik: My Life & games
Lasker's Manual of Chess
Rethinking the Chess Pieces
Strategic Play: School of Chess Excellence 3
The Art of Checkmate
The Chess Artist : Genius, Obsession, and the World's Oldest Game
The Tactics of End-Games
Why Lasker Matters
Why You Lose at Chess
My favorite in terms of really helping me start putting the pieces of the game together is "The Reassess Your Chess Workbook: How to Master Chess Imbalances" by IM Jeremy Silman. I got it because I'm still working my way to learning chess strategy and just memorizing openings is exhausting. I work through one problem a night and it's really helped. Between that and Bedlam I've come up 200 pts since starting the site. I still have A LOT of work to go, but it's been good for pulling my game together and teaching me how chess pieces move together. :-)
Originally posted by der schwarze RitterBotvinnik thought so highly of Jose R. Capablanca's "Chess Fundamentals", that he called it the best chess book ever written.
Just about any book by or about Jose Capablanca will help improve your "overall" play. Also, Lasker's, "Manual of Chess," or Tarrasch's, "The Game of Chess," or his "300 Chess Games," are very good for learning general play in all three aspects of the game: opening, middle game and end game.
"The Game of Chess" by Siegbert Tarrasch is a great book, although some of his views on certain openings are out-of-date and/or eccentric.