My favorite book is autorized by Patrick Wolff- USA champion- sold at most bookstores for about 30.00
Any good chess books?
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Even Silman's detractors admit that his endgame book is useful. Doles out needed endgame knowledge by rating. Considered essential by many.
There are so many good endgame books.
Siman's Complete Endgame course is highly recommended. The chapters are grouped by rating levels, which is pretty useful.
Winning Chess Endings by Sirawan is also good. I like his writing.
Essential Chess Endings by Howell might be harder to find but it's worth it.
The Starting Out books are also good. Survival Guide to Rook Endings by Emms. 100 Endgames You Must Know by de la Villa. Understanding Chess Endgames by Nunn.
Van Perlo's Endgame Tactics is a book with lots of endgame puzzles, most involving some tactic that wins. It won the book of the year award. It's mostly for honing your practical skills rather than learning theoretical positions, although there's awlays overlap.
Besides those there are some that are slightly more advanced and talk about overall strategy like 'Endgame Strategy' by Shereshevsky and 'Secrets of Chess Endgame Strategy' by Bo Hansen.
Once you're done with those (10 years from now?) and feel ambitious enough, then you can tackle Dvorestky's Endgame Manual.
There are many good titles :
- Silman's endgame book if you want to focus on most important skills to master at each level
- Averbach's Essential endgame knowledge, Seïrawan's winning chess endings, Alburt's Just the facts, Jose de La Villa's 100 essential positions or Howell's book are good "everything you need to really know in one volume" books (pick one !)
- Rosen's Chess endgame training and Mednis' Rate your Endgame are very good endgame training books (though they are more of intermediate-advanced level, so maybe better to start with one of the above list)
- Chernev's book on Capablanca's endgames is a very good guide to practical endgame play in 'normal endgames'
Thanks for the replies.
I found that Silman's is the best. I am in the process of going through it.
It has all the basic ones that you mentioned and they are shown first.
Remember that a book is only good if you play it on a board as you study it.
Sitting on your book case, it just takes up space.
hicetnunc wrote:
There are many good titles :
- Silman's endgame book if you want to focus on most important skills to master at each level
- Averbach's Essential endgame knowledge, Seïrawan's winning chess endings, Alburt's Just the facts, Jose de La Villa's 100 essential positions or Howell's book are good "everything you need to really know in one volume" books (pick one !)
- Rosen's Chess endgame training and Mednis' Rate your Endgame are very good endgame training books (though they are more of intermediate-advanced level, so maybe better to start with one of the above list)
- Chernev's book on Capablanca's endgames is a very good guide to practical endgame play in 'normal endgames'
Which one of these books is good for players around 1200 because the East European authours are different.
DENVERHIGH wrote:
Remember that a book is only good if you play it on a board as you study it.
Sitting on your book case, it just takes up space.
Thanks for the tip.
msjenned wrote:
hicetnunc wrote:
There are many good titles :
- Silman's endgame book if you want to focus on most important skills to master at each level
- Averbach's Essential endgame knowledge, Seïrawan's winning chess endings, Alburt's Just the facts, Jose de La Villa's 100 essential positions or Howell's book are good "everything you need to really know in one volume" books (pick one !)
- Rosen's Chess endgame training and Mednis' Rate your Endgame are very good endgame training books (though they are more of intermediate-advanced level, so maybe better to start with one of the above list)
- Chernev's book on Capablanca's endgames is a very good guide to practical endgame play in 'normal endgames'
Which one of these books is good for players around 1200 because the East European authours are different.
Depends on which kind of 1200s we're talking about. If we say adult beginners with some chess practice, then Silman's or any book of the 2nd batch would be okay.
No. There are no good chess books. its all marketing.
I agree with the others who stated Silman's Endgame Course is a bible for endings. I like how he has a vast amount of material in it, but has broken it down into manageable chunks based on your playing strength.
I also bought, just today, Emms "Survival Guide to Rook Endings." They are frequent enough (and tricky enough) that I feel a book dedicated soley on how to handle them should serve well as I nibble on the material inside it.
The book that seems hard to evaluate is Glenn Flear's Practical Endgame Play--beyond the basics. I have it as a reference book, but there is too much essential endgame knowledge I would want to master before I would do a systematic study of Flear's book.
blake78613 wrote:
The book that seems hard to evaluate is Glenn Flear's Practical Endgame Play--beyond the basics. I have it as a reference book, but there is too much essential endgame knowledge I would want to master before I would do a systematic study of Flear's book.
I would consider this one as an advanced text. Dvoretsky would probably come before it, for me it's more of a master's read.
hicetnunc wrote:
blake78613 wrote:
The book that seems hard to evaluate is Glenn Flear's Practical Endgame Play--beyond the basics. I have it as a reference book, but there is too much essential endgame knowledge I would want to master before I would do a systematic study of Flear's book.
I would consider this one as an advanced text. Dvoretsky would probably come before it, for me it's more of a master's read.
I would tend to agree. It is nice to have it on your bookshelf for correspondence games, so you can get some guidance if you get the type of near endgame it deals with. Amazon asked me for a review, and I thought about it; but in the end felt incompetent to review the book.
As a refresher, after a year long absence from chess, I've found these books to be very good:
Back to Basics: Tactics. Its a good primer for those who are weak tactically. For me it was a very nice (and quick) refresher.
Capablanca: A Primer on Checkmate. I first read this one a couple years ago and I'm now reading through it again. It illustrates, using well annotated games, the various mating patterns. The annotations are also - in and of themselves - very good.
Simple Chess by Stein. I read this one several years ago. Its a very good primer on positional play, again using full games with lots of well written explanatory prose.
Logical Chess Move by Move by Chernov. I first read this as a kid over 30 years ago, and it was the first chess book I read that made GM games understable.
Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking. Kind of an updated version of Chernov's work, but using more contempory games. Its also a little more sophisticated than Chernov, in that Chernov assumes no chess understanding beyond how to move the pieces, while this book is a little bit more advanced.
There are many others, but the above list consists of books that I rate very highly in terms of instructional value for beginner to intermediate players (especially those who, for whatever reason, have been put off by chess books).
I'm really trying to improve my endgame. I can win the basics
K+Q vs K, K+R vs K etc and I'm ok at King and Pawn endgames and King and Rook endgames. Does anyone know mabye what I should learn next. Also if you know about ANY good chess book that will help me with endgames I would really appreciate it if you told me.