I’m one level above beginner in chess. However, with my iPhone and playing online, I’ve developed a strong interest in playing chess recently. I often have 5-10 games going at any one time.
I ordered this book today since I found it for sale on Amazon for $19. The Amazon reviews were very favorable. Is this one of the better books to read on chess? Any other suggestions?
Assuming this is the book by Silman, I own it (a gift) and have read it. It might be hard to say how much you’ll get out of it. If you haven’t really given a thought to some of the ideas on how to get better — thinking about strategy and working your pieces cohesively in a plan, then it’s at least a good introduction to that. You might get more out of it if it fits your style. I don’t know what other books to recommend, though.
It’s a very good book, and you’re likely to get a lot of useful information out of it, particularly if you haven’t considered the strategic ideas it discusses. Having said that, from the standpoint of playing better, you may be better off simply studying tactics. A large majority of amateur games are decided based on tactical oversights, and knowing about things like knight vs. bishop imbalances will do little to help with those.
I’d recommend going to ChessCafe and going through the [archives of the Novice Nook](http://www.chesscafe.com/archives/archives.htm#Novice Nook) column. Lots of good stuff in there.
I haven’t played chess for many years but in high school was in the school team and used to play chess by mail (Does that still exist?).
Anyway, the player who I always considered to be good was Alexander Alekhine and I used to try and follow his games to see his moves and try and work out why he made them Of course I could never be that good but it did give me an idea about how necessary it was to be creative.
There is never agreement about who was ever the best player. Alekhine could have been, but there are so many. Fischer was brilliant but so erratic I doubt if I could ever hope to fathom his moves.
It’s more than a good book; it’s canonical at this point. If you want to really fit in with chess enthusiasts, start referring to it as “HTRYC”. I highly recommend any Silman books, especially Amateur’s Mind and Complete Endgame Course. They’re good enough (and modern enough!) to supplant My System and Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual, IMHO.
True, but I can’t tell you how many times I beat my students with a tactic, and they say something like “You’re lucky your rook was there, or otherwise that tactic doesn’t work.”
What they fail to realize (and I try to correct) is that while tactics are the vanguards of strategy, strategy is the root of tactics. Putting your rooks on the open file is only beneficial because it allows your rook to, y’know, do things. And controlling the center allows your pieces to fork both sides of the board. Having a space advantage allows your pieces more safe options for moves.
So to me, saying that studying strategy isn’t important because tactics decide games is a bit like saying studying sanitation isn’t important because it’s disease that kills.
I wholeheartedly endorse this - Reassess and Amateur’s Mind are both incredibly useful, and the endgame book have a lovely approach to sequencing that lets you absorb what you need without your head exploding.
I also recommend books with significant exposition as a sort of side entertainment. Bronstein was great at this, and either his 100 Open Games (Spassky’s favorite book growing up) or the 1953 Zurich tournament are both simply fun to muse over.
Finally, for tactics, I used to browse Laszlo Polgar’s massive book, but in the end found that the online resource Chess Tempo was the best find to sharpen those, and it includes a sort of internal rating system (based on Mark Glickman, if that means anything to others) to help determine your progress.
Have fun!
I would suggest something other than a book on how to play chess. Look to the newspaper for the daily “mate in two” puzzles and work through those. There are even books on mate in two, or three, that will greatly improve your chess reasoning.
Back in my intensive chess playing days I suffered from a disease known as Chess Book-itis, I bought so many chess books, convinced that the next one was the key to my next level of greatness. Alas, not the case. But I will say that Silman’s book was one of the few that I did get great value out of . Just a warning as you get more and more interested in chess you will find yourself drawn more and more to chess books, tactics books, openings books, endgame books, esoteric books on how to use your pawns (Pawn Power by Kmoch) I now own one chess book, Blunders and Brilliancies which awesomely has case after case of chess grandmasters screwing up.
Well put. Rudolf Spielmann, by no means a rabbit, once said of Alekhine’s play “You know, I could have played any of his combinations {complicated tactics}. But I can’t get the positions from which the combinations come”. In other words, while himself a great player, he conceded the other’s clear superiority in strategy.
@Morgenstern: Beware, though. Many problems owe little to practical play and are worthwhile only as curiosities; they are to playing chess what solving crosswords is to writing prose.
Fair enough; I certainly don’t mean to say that strategy is unimportant or that it should be ignored. I’ve just known a number of people who would consistently miss straightforward tactics in their slow games, but spend all their study time on (relatively) advanced stuff like Reassess.
Thing about Chess Book-itis is that I always buy more books than I have time to read. Sometimes it seems like I think if I just touch the books, I’ll absorb their information without reading it. Right now, I have six books out from the library that I haven’t even cracked open. :rolleyes:
To the OP: There are a lot of online chess resources these days. I highly recommend, if you have the money, buying a premium membership to chess.com. Their Chess Mentor is even better than their videos, which are also superb. If you’re willing to put the time into it, I truly think it could make you a Master; that’s how extensive their tools are.
I should mention: all the positions on Chess Tempo are from actual games.
Make sure you read the book with a physical or computer chess board in front of you so you can actually make the moves and see the variations, the physical layout actually is helpful and provides visual clues that your brain can use to recall important information. At least that was my experience.
I also thought playing a lot of blitz chess helped me see recurring themes through repetition so that I would know quickly where my thought processes needed to be focused. But it is not for everybody.
As a completely random aside: I was recently in New York on a visit, and I saw the famous Lewis Chesspieces there. They were awesome. Anyone with any interest in chess, or for that matter beautiful medieval carving, who happens to be in New York should check them out - they are at the Cloisters, on a short-term travelling exhibit.
The best one is the berserker (rook, or “warder”) - he’s literally chewing on his shield.
In that case they’re far more likely to be useful, thanks. 
It was written back in 1959 so it’s probably completely outdated. But my favorite chess book is The Complete Chess Course by Fred Reinfeld.