There are so many chess books out there so it may become difficult to choose which books are best for us. Obviously nobody can read everything. Therefore I'd like to raise this question. If you were to recommend a group of chess books, anywhere from 3-5 of the best books that would cover every every aspect of the game what would they be.

Susan Polgar's book is very good. It helped me a lot.

True kenpo. Not all people benefit from books. I happen to like going through books I feel I benefit from it. Others may be different. I'm just simply asking which set of books people think are the best. For example. For openings fco...for middle game how to reassess your chess, and for endgames silmans endgame course. Not saying those are the best I was just curious what everybody's opinion was.

1) Silman's Complete Endgame Course for the endgame.  The way he separates critical endgames for each level of play is amazing.

2) Nimzowitsch's My System.  Probably the most revolutionary chess book ever written.  I've read it three times over already and have picked up something new each time.

3) Khenkin's 1000 Checkmate Combinations.  For tactics/attacking motifs it was a toss up b/t this and Art of Attack by Vukovic, but this one takes the cake for me because of its simplicity in delivery of the patterns and the in-depth explanations of each of the checkmate patterns.  My favorite thing about this book over other attacking books is it ALSO teaches you how pieces work together by explaining how the pieces' separate abilities (rook+knight for instance) compliment each other to create mating nets/combinations.

4) Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games.  I'm not a huge fan of Fischer's style of play (I prefer the playing styles of Petrosian, Capablanca, and Karpov), but the personal annotations and analyses by Fischer in his game collection are extremely insightful and easy to understand.  He rarely goes into extremely indepth lines (save for a rather lengthy endgame analysis in a game of his against Botvinnik), and after studying through it (I'm on game 43 right now) I've found that my positional play has been tempered with a better sense of the initiative and how/when to open up lines for an attack.

And now for my absolute favorite chess book of all time.... *drumroll*

5) Vasiliev's Tigran Petrosian: His Life and Games.  There's not much I can say about this collection of Petrosian's games that hasn't already been said.  IM Jeremy Silman is in love with this book.  I'm in love with it because of the great insight into not only Petrosian's games and development as a player (it follows his life from his young years where he first started playing to his years as World Champion) but also because of the insight into his life.  I've never felt so connected to a chess player as when I read through this book.

-D

**EDIT**

I should have been a bit more specific I guess.  Book 1 is for the endgame.  Book 2 is for positional understanding.  Book 3 is for mating patterns, tactics, and attacking theory.  Books 4 and 5 are two (very different) games collections from two of the greatest world chess champions  (Fischer being the legend he is, and Petrosian being the first Chess Champion to successfully defend his title since Alekhine).

-D

Great stuff hoard. Exactly the type of insight I was hoping to get out of this thread.

This is a difficult choice. Here is my pick :

- Seïrawan's Winning chess Tactics as your tactic primer

- Dan Heisman's Everyone's 2nd Chess book (tactics + thought process)

- Reti's Masters of the Chessboard (game collection)

- Mammoth book of greatest chess games (game collection)

- Averbach's Chess Endings Essential knowledge (2nd edition)

1. Chess Tactics for Champions, by Susan Polgar;

2. The Art of Attack, by Vukovic;

3. Silman's Complete Endgame Course;

4. My System;

5. The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.

Man knows his stuff http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Events_Books/General_Book_Guide.htm

nice link daniel332 :) lots of good stuff there ...

matty -- a great book on combinations, which is a big part of chess, is "Combinations: The Heart of Chess" by Irving Chernev ... very clear and concise explainations, great examples, helps you learn to see the board, positions, and ways to improve your position ... that covers a big part of the game ... this would be mostly middle to end game type stuff ... a position is presented and you would be working with about 3 to 6 moves (for both sides) to try and make a big difference in your position's strength ...

and it can be got quite cheaply used at amazon

Anyone try this list.

*http://www.chessarea.com/chess-instructions/chess-instructions-for-beginners.html

*http://www.chessarea.com/chess-instructions/chess-instructions-for-intermediates.html

*http://www.chessarea.com/chess-instructions/chess-instructions-for-advanced.html

Do you guys think its better to read alot of different books, or is it better to have a few good books on each subject of the game and just refer to the information in those books over and over?

Thank you for list, msjenn:)

It's better to study the books

Better to have a few books covering each subject, than many books. The best books begin right where you are now (in terms of relevance and difficulty of study), and subsequent books then build (and reinforce) on the concepts, and introduce new topics.

I will use some books from my own collection to illustrate what I mean by example:

Strategy:

Chess the Art of Logical Thinking (McDonald)

My System (Nimzowitch)

Giants of Chess Strategy (Mcdonald)

Secrets of Positional Chess (Marovic)

Zurich 1953 (Bronstein)

Tactics/Attack:

Chess Tactics for Champions (Polgar)

Capablanca: A primer of checkmate (Rosario)

The Art of Attack (Vukovic)

The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal (Tal)

Endgame:

Silman's Complete Endgame Course (Silman)

The Survival Guide to Rook Endings (Emms)

That list is a little light in place, particularly the endgame, but it kind of gives an (and some examples) of how to construct a study repetoire and some possibilities to fill it with.

I didn't mention openings, even though I have 3 opening books (covering 3 openings that are a big part of my core repetoire) simply because I don't study them in any systematic way; rather, I'll use them post-mortem to help analyze a game, or read some theory when the mood strikes.

Strategy, Attack, and Endings I study together, so I always have 3 books on the 3 major aspects of the game, that I'm working on. I know others would split the time up differently, but I go with about 40% tactics, 40% strategy, and 20% endgame.

One important thing too, when studying, is not just selecting the right books - you have to be consistent as well. You well get more out of, for instance, doing 50 problems every day then you would by doing 350 problems once a week.

Hope that helps.

if you have gone past the learning of chess the best books for studying for me are chess collection games. with move by move. some of the best books ive got are understanding chess move by move by john nunn,modern chess mbm by colin crouch,Logical chess mbm by irving chernev,and the new series of books by everyman chess ive only got 2 at the moment cyrus Lakdawala the SLAV, and neil mcdonald the RUY LOPEZ,all well worth saving the penny for.

I want you to have "Improve your Positional Chess" by Hansen.

That book is very beautiful and really helps me improve my knowledge in understanding being a positional chess player.

The various "move by move" books I've looked at are very good and highly recommended. Chernev's book really brought the game to life for me (thanks to his excellent annotation) 20 years ago, when I read it for the first time.

The first McDonald book I mentioned, "Chess: the Art of Logical Thinking" is annotated move by move as well, and done in the same spirit as Chernev's Logical Chess. The games (a lot of fairly recent positional masterpieces, and all played by top GMs) are chosen very well, and it places the emphasis on text over heavy variations.

I have Emms "Nimzo-Indian Move by Move" and its very good. The nice thing about this new everyman series is that the aim of the books is not just to teach opening lines, but the underlying motives behind the variations and they are also instructive as thematic, well annotated, game collections.

Nunn's "Understanding Chess" is on my Amazon wishlist.

save the pennys john nunns understanding chess move by move is a great book this is my second time round reading this book and my understanding of the game is getting better all the time. a very good buy. 

1-artur yusupov the fundamentals series

2-Dan Heisman- Back to basics - tactics

3-Silman's Complete Endgame Course

4-simple chess-Michael STEAN

5-susan polgar - chess tactics for champions

and forget about "My system" because u will understand nothing if you are under 1500

why no one here didn't mention Artur Yusupov books especially chess quallity series