Book And Course Recommendations

Do you have a favorite chess book or course that you've learned a lot from? Let us know here!

I'll get us started with my favorite chess book, the Seven Deadly Chess Sins by GM Jonathan Rowson, which is a fascinating look at decision-making, mostly relevant for classical chess.

My favorite endgame book is Concise Chess Endings by GM Neil McDonald, which should be helpful for most levels and time controls.

For something positional, check out GM Johan Hellsten's, Every Pawn Structure Explained. 

There are tons of other great books and courses out there. What do you recommend?

How to Win At Chess - Levy Rozman

thanks for pointing that one out, much needed

What is better, Book or Course?

"Curso Completo de Ajedrez" from GM Miguel Illescas. It's in spanish and I don't know if it's translated.

The one book that got me from 1600 to 1800 national rating in only a short amount of time is 'Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy, advances since Nimzowitsch" by John Watson.
It was my first introduction to positional chess and after reading this I had a completely different view on the middlegame.
Apart from the physical copy , you can also buy it in digital form on Chessable.

I'd like to mention endgame musthaves: Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual is insanely good on absolutely every level. Also 100 Endgames You Must Know by GM de la Villa has so many good reviews that it would be a mistake to not mention it although I haven't tried it yet.

P.S. All this courses are available as books!

well i took courses of vienna from chessly and well alapin to counter Sicilian, Through I am currently learning ruy lopez from chessable

체스의 정석 - 성진수 (The essence of chess - st. Jinsoo)

It is korean book.

Won't agree that Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual is good on absolutely every level. On lower levels it can be too dificult. Even for me (2000+ on chesscom), some puzzles there are just way out of my league. I agree that it's basically the best endgame book (I also highly recommend the Chessable version), but for lower levels, I would recommend something simpler like mentioned 100 Endgames You Must Know.

The mammoth book of chess-

More like both books have courses on them 😉

How to Reassess your Chess, by Jeremy Silman. My favorite endgame book is Silman’s Complete Endgame Course. These books say a lot about needed and “digestible” knowledge.

Positional Play by Jacob Aagaard

How to Reassess your Chess, Jeremy Silman.

Really hard to learn and understand book, more for master level players

Set of book for beginners to cover every aspect of the game:
Openings:Fundamental Chess Openings by Paul van der Sterren: this book gives you an overview of the most important openings out there, and it teaches you what the basic ideas behind them are. It has a lot of text, as opposed to other opening books which are mainly collections of moves.
Middlegame:Logical Chess Move By Move by Irving Chernev: this annotated game collection will teach you about plans and ideas, and even explain the featured openings to you. Like with anything else on chess strategy, you'll need to have a decent tactics foundation to understand it, though; so I recommend going through chess.com's puzzles first.
For tactics, just do puzzles on chess.com.
Endgame:Complete Endgame Course by Jeremy Silman: this book is divided into sections according to skill level, and takes you by the hand to learn exactly what you need to know about endgames.

The Amateurs Mind and How to Reassess your Chess by Jeremy Silman and Think like a Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov pushed me across 1800.

Ivan Sokolov's Winning Chess Middlegames is the best book I've seen to improve your understanding of the middlegame.

1) How to Reassess Your Chess
2) Silman's Complete Endgame Course
Both books by Jeremy Silman