SubJeff on 30/6/2013 at 22:53

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Brethren - you may take a while to get into it but so what? I'm going to sound like an old man now but I'm glad I've been playing chess with you guys rather than ANOTHER 1v1 game of Company of Heroes!

Nuth on 1/7/2013 at 09:05

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Books(Some of these are out of print but used copies are readily available. Not sure how many are available as e-books, probably not many)

Okay, so you guys know the moves and how to play a chess game, so I'm only going to recommend one true beginner book just in case anyone wants to start from scratch or brush up with a review of the basics. That book is Play Winning Chess by Yasser Seirawan. I like the way this book introduces important concepts and starts the reader thinking properly about chess very early.

Once a person knows how to play, my suggestion is to study introductory instructional anthologies. Two of the best to to start with are Logical Chess Move by Move by Irving Chernev(one caveat with this book is that Chernev tends to make emphatic statements that may make you think chess rules are clear-cut while in reality it's never that simple. Just keep that in mind, and it's a great book), and the other is Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking by Neil McDonald(this book is more modern and is also written in the move by move style. Probably written to address some of the faults of the Chernev book.)

Two more good ones are Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur by Max Euwe and The Amateur's Mind by Jeremy Silman. These also pretty much comment on every move. They differ from the first two in that these examine games between players of differing skill levels. That can make it easier for the author to get across whatever point he is trying to make because the mistakes tend to be more blatant than in games between masters. Still, I'd rank these as harder books than the Chernev and McDonald books.

Also, along with instructive anthologies, study basic tactics intensively. I can't emphasize enough how important this is. It is vital. It will improve board vision, helping you to stop blundering pieces away and helping you to see when your opponent is blundering pieces away. It will develop pattern recognition, so that you will see simple tactics without having to even think about it. And probably most importantly, it will teach you to calculate. Even when material isn't gained through calculation, so much of chess is calculation. You'll calculate two, three, four moves ahead and assess the board to see if you've strengthened your position through a sequence of moves.

Good beginning tactics books:

Winning Chess by Chernev and Reinfeld
Chess Tactics for Champions by Susan Polgar
1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners by Masetti and Messa

There are plenty of other good ones, including the tactics book by Seirawan that demagogue mentioned earlier in the thread, but the Polgar and Masetti books provide lots of exercises for the $. Basic tactics aren't something just to be learned, they're something to be overlearned. The chess quizzer at chesstactics.org is good for that, too. That entire website is good.

Chess Tactics from Scratch by Weteschnik is another good book for learning tactics. It tries to delineate the conditions involved in recognizing tactics. More explanation and less problem solving. Perhaps a bit needlessly complicated, but if the problem solving approach isn't clicking for you, you might give this one a try.

For books focusing primarily on strategy, I'd suggest Winning Chess Strategies by Seirawan which is probably a little more approachable for most people than Nimzowitsch's My System. My System is a classic though and I second LittleFlower's recommendation of it.

You'll get a good dose of strategy in the instructive anthologies I recommended as well.

One endgame book recommendation. Silman's Complete Endgame Course by Jeremy Silman. The book is broken into chapters based on rating levels, so you just study endgame material appropriate to your level of play. Very useful way of organizing a book.


I'd wait on the Watson, Yusupov and Dvoretsky books until you're beating me consistently. Or maybe beating me like a drum.

Nuth on 1/7/2013 at 10:53

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Sporadic. I learned the game decades ago, but I tend to get interested in playing for several weeks then may go months or occasionally years without playing a game. I'm not a tournament player. All my playing is online or against a computer. For many, many years, I had a chess book buying--I wouldn't exactly call it a compulsion--but looking back on it, I'd certainly call it a foolishness. I own a ridiculous number of chess books, few read and even fewer properly read. I have most of the books I suggested in the previous post and the ones I suggested that I don't have are ones that strike me as better than the similar books that I do have. Fairly knowledgeable about the history of the game, the masters since Morphy's time, that sort of thing. I'd say I know more "about" chess rather than actually knowing chess. I've plateaued--playing almost nothing but blitz and buying chess books but not reading them can only take a person so far.:p I know you guys are going to keep getting better for quite some time. I'll have to put in some hard study if I'm to up my game.

mopgoblin on 1/7/2013 at 15:25

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That's me.

Nuth on 1/7/2013 at 19:25

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Check out this blitz game by LittleFlower. Wow!

(http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=547979356)