Originally posted by trevor33A good tactics book which I am currently going through (and enjoying, actually) is "Chess Target Practice," by Bruce Pandolfini. It is helping my game appreciably. Pandolfini has written numerous chess books, which are not only quite instructive, but much more approachable and fun than most others. Seirawan is also good. Seirawan has a good tactics book, which actually may be better for you to start with, as he actually teaches the various tactics in it. Pandolfini's tactics book just gives you, as the title suggests, target practice. Good luck!
ok, so when i have read some of this (can you rec. any of them) and when i think im ready to read a tactics book do you know of any that will help.
There are so many things wrong with how white plays in this game it is hard to pinpoint just one (or even 10). You have to go back to basics. In the opening you have to achieve three things: fight for and occupy the four central squares of the board (the chessboard is like a city in which all the roads and routes of communication run through the centre - control those four squares and you basically control the entire city); get your minor pieces out quickly (bishops and especially knights do little or nothing on their initial squares); and get your king safe (read castle).
If you manage to do those three things you are on to a very nice start. Next develop a plan. This is hard, but look at a few master games, particularly from the 19th century. Ricardo Reti wrote a great book "Masters of the board" or something like that. He explains almost every move.
To be honest I don't think the opening was as bad as people are saying. The pawn set up you adopted is known as a Stonewall. The thing that you did wrong as far as the pawns were concerned was, to my mind, pushing g3 as it deprives your king of eventual pawn cover. Without that you have a nice bind on the dark squares and your bishop can guard over the white squared gaps; I disagree with the earlier commentator who said you put it in a bad place - it was fine where it was - the pawn push forcing it to move didn't achieve much. Breaking up the centre was a reasonable thing to do except that you shouldn't really have gotten enough from it to justify the sacrificed material - but you did so the outcome justified the manouvre.
At the end, as has been said you didn't want to swap off. I didn't like the way you pulled your king back at move 54, a better, if still hopeless against an accurate opponent, plan would have been 54. Kf2 planning Kf3-e4-d5 and Kxc4 and then Kxa4. The only problem is you can't defend your pawns either. Basically the point I'm trying to make is that with the threat of a forced checkmate gone, in the endgame you should use your king as the powerful attacker it can be. 56. b4 was bad as black can take en-passent and you haven't a hope of drawing then.
Don't worry too much about the above criticisms - I actually thought much of your game made sense, you're just lacking a bit of experience - a strong player could easily pull apart one of mine or any of the other contributors games ...