Can anybody suggest me what kind of books a 1400-1500 player should be reading? I just cant seem to get any better. I have a few books on tactics and one by Edmar Mednis on the opening. I have heard "Think like a grandmaster" by Kotov is good but is it too advanced? I have also looked at a book by Silman called "The Amatuers mind". Need some advice before i buy one. And in general which area should i be focussing on.

What area you should be focussing on is something we can't tell without seeing some games you lost. If I had to guess, it's probably tactics, or otherwise just not knowing what to do (bad planning).

If you have good tactics books, keep doing the exercises until you see them all in a split second.

Perhaps a good next book would be a games collection with heavy annotations - the classic in this area is "Logical Chess: Move by Move" by Irving Chernev. The Silman book you mention also gets good reviews.

Think like a grandmaster is OK but it's very abstract, it is hard to apply the ideas to practice.

But the hard advice stays: books don't improve your play. STUDY improves your play. You should first look at the games you lost and figure out why you lost them. Perhaps the problem is something else entirely (like bad concentration).

Almost all my games are lost on some oversight! so maybe concentration is a big factor..its amazing i never thought of that as possible cause.. thanks Scarblac. I did go over a few of my games and more often than not i can never see much in it apart from that one combination which either gave me the winning position or the losing one. So does that mean its all tactics study for me?

 TACTICS is the bread and butter for all of us!

If you're no longer dropping pieces, I recommend an endgame book.

Else: stop dropping pieces.

Excelling at Chess Calculation by Jacob Aagaard is well worth considering. Perhaps you could look at some reviews of it on the internet. Good for players 1400-2200.

Try Tactics trainer on a regular basis and review the combinations you fail.

Learning chess move by move may be the best book suggestion in the posts above.

And focus. No book will teach you that : you have to practice it ! Try OTB chess if you can - it helps

I agree with the advice that if you're still dropping pieces because you missed a tactic, then everything else is of minor concern.

The ChessCafe website has a good column by Dan Heisman (Novice Nook), with all old columns in the archives. It talks a lot about blunder checking, time management, concentration et cetera. Could do worse than reading a lot of them :-)

I just played over 2 of your recent losing games against 1700+ players. You were in winning positions in both.   Would it be helpful to post them on this site for analysis? It may help you to pin down the reason for losing and thus what you need to work on.

Scarblac seconded.

Tactics and those Nooks will serve you well for the foreseeable future. 1470 live (if that translates to c. 1450 USCF) is still low end intermediate player. Don't get too fancy with your study (such as being ultra positional), instead acquire a great basic foundation that will serve you for the remainder of your chess career. Being tactically hyper-competent would be great.

these are the games i just lost against 1700 players chesteroz. Funny both were knight forks that got the better of me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would highly recommend The Amateurs Mind by Silman.  It goes beyond tactics( though like hicetnunc said the tactics trainer on this site is great) and shows the misconceptions that various ranges of players have, and how to correct that. Reading that book completely changed the way I looked at the game.  Great book for the intermediate player, IMHO.

Best tactics book by far I have ever got was forcing chess moves. 

 

Others advice was good as well

I just read some of that Novice Nook suggested above. I play at 1400 ELO online elsewhere so am still a beginner but it appears that analysis including opponents threats (the forks) as Dan Heisman discusses is contributing to the losses.

Different Openings and end games would give you how to go about and plan the tactics.  Great you are so serious about mastering.  As someone suggested, study of the games will lead you in your games.  You have many books and irrespective of the author,  study the openings.  Our Online Chess of Chess.com provides time and opportunity for checking whether the move is okay and you can consult the flip board and analysis board for seeing the possibilities of a few moves hence. I think at your present situation, this should be enough and with that urge, you will transform to a good club player before long.  All the best.

B.SATYANARAYANA

If you have good positions but lose by oversight like I sometimes do, you should analyze positions more and spend more time thinking about every aspect of your moves.

Dear, Lot of advices are given to you by regular players. Please note the the following if it seems to advisable.

1. Please learn a particular opening .(for White and for Black)

2. Always watch the opponents last move.

3. Please always play tricky and positional.

4. Don't under estimate your opponent.

Thank you and all the best.

If you get confused by positional/strategic aspects of the game ( color weaknesses, outposts etc.) you might want to look at Simple Chess by Michael Stean.

If there are some holes in your thought process, then proceed straight away to Dan Heisman's Novice Nooks, as the earlier posts have suggested.