7 Best Chess Books for (very) Ambitious Beginners
This is a list of the best books every beginner chess player would find useful. They are meant for players who are about to play their first over the board tournament, and for those with an online rating below 1200, but are extremely ambitious and want to make rapid progress.The 7 books below are divided into categories: tactics, strategy, positional play and endgames. I have also included books that teach you how to study chess instead of teaching you chess. For most adult improvers, those may prove to be the most useful ones. Read the full article about the best books for beginners on Chessreads.
100 Endgames You Must Know, Jesus de la Villa
100 Endgames You Must Know has become the most popular endgame book of all time alongside Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual. It covers every important theoretical endgame in a simple, easily understandable way, with clear explanations, covering key ideas, patterns and concepts, making it a truly great resource for players of all levels.
1001 Chess Endgame Exercises for Beginners, Thomas Willemze
1001 Chess Endgame Exercises for Beginners covers a relatively narrow section of the game but it does so in an extraordinarily useful manner. Willemze has created an introduction on how to win and how to not lose with reduced material.
Endgame Strategy, Mikhail Shereshevsky
Instead of going over theoretical endgames and endless variations, the Endgame Strategy focuses on essential endgame principles, patterns, and ideas one must master in order to navigate complex endgames, regardless of the pieces involved. I can’t think of a book that has helped me win more points and half-points in over the board classical games.
Chess Pattern Recognition for Beginners, Arthur van de Oudeweetering
Chess Pattern Recognition for Beginners is a great book for all novice players who wish to grasp the basics of strategy, pawn structures, positional concepts, and attacking and defensive tactical themes. It’s “The Fundamental Guide to Spotting Key Moves in the Middlegame”.
How to Study Chess on Your Own, Davorin Kuljasevic
How to Study Chess on Your Own is a practical guide on perfecting your chess study. Its purpose is to, as Davorin puts it: “Encourage readers to study with proper structure, and help readers become independent in their study.”
Perpetual Chess Improvement, Ben Johnson
Ben made it possible for improving players like myself to get a glimpse of how others approach the greatest question in chess: How do I improve? His Perpetual Chess Podcast provided me, and many others, with a way to get the much needed answer to that, and to many other questions. After years of interviewing the most influential people in the chess world, Ben has assembled a book that captures the essence of those hundreds of conversations.
The Giant Chess Puzzle Book, Zenon Franco
The Giant Chess Puzzle Book is a great resource for beginners and advanced players alike. It begins by covering every important tactical theme, concept and pattern one needs to understand in order to solve puzzles successfully and efficiently. It continues with a set of elementary, introductory problems, many of which are accompanied by written hints, something many tactics books lack. From here, things get more difficult.