best chess books to study.

Disagree about My System. It may not be suitable as a first book, or primer, on positional play but it need not be put off that long. The first, or one of the first, books I read on positional play was "Best Lessons of a Chess Coach" and I was completely lost on his treatment of colour complexes.

Later I read Stean's Simple Chess, and that subject made more sense - though I still didn't grasp it well enough to see or use the concept in my own play. Now I can and do use the concept, though certainly not as successfully as say a 2000 level player with a better grasp of positional play.

If you can enjoy a book, and understand enough of it, to get through it, I don't think it any kind of waste if you didn't get everything the author covered - at least you get introduced to the concept, and with further reading and additional experience you'll begin to grasp the idea and it will become part of your play.

Build up your chess 1 – fundamentals (U1500)
Build up your chess 2 – beyond the basics (U1800)
Build up your chess 3 – mastery (U2100) or 2000

Boost your chess 1 – fundamentals (U1500)
Boost your chess 2 – beyond the basics (U1800)
Boost your chess 3 – mastery (U2100) or 2000

Chess evolution 1 – fundamentals (U1500)
Chess evolution 2 – beyond the basics (U1800)
Chess evolution 3 – mastery (U2100)

I think the right order is given at:

http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/docs/14/artur_yusupovs_awardwinning_training_course/

Work through all the Fundamentals Level 1, then Beyond the basics
Level 2, and finally, Mastery Level 3.

Yes, the Yusupov books are certaily good for highly motivated people. That's orange first (build up orange, boost orange, evolution orange), then blue, then green...

And the elo # should be replaced by U1800, U2100 and U2400 IMHO

For someone rated about 1500 here I'd recommend:

1000 Checkmates by Fred Reinfeld

1000 Winning Combinations by Fred Reinfeld

The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played by Irving Chernev

Logical Chess Move by Move by Irving Chernev

Practical Chess Ending by Paul Keres

It's hard if not impossible to list 5 books covering "every aspect of the game" for anyone, at least for me. Eventually you might also consider investing in a one vol opening manual such as MCO and a comprehensive endgame book such as Basic Chess Endings

PS: please ignore this totally ignorant piece of advice "... forget about   My System because u will understand nothing if you are under 1500" You might not fully understand every chapter in this book but it's a real classic and could certainly be substituted for any one of my choices above. 

GOOD LUCK!

They are not very well-known yet, and they're hard to tackle. Don't really suit a beginner I think : I would recommend them to a highly motivated student who has already hit at least 1500 OTB

It's interesting to hear so many different perspectives on what books are best.  As an amateur I am always looking as to what people think are the best and surprisingly you could ask 10 people and they could potentially give you 10 different answers.  Its also interesting to hear what level of player should be reading a certain book.  Take silman's How to Reassess Your Chess for example.  I have read on many sites that one should not read this book until you reach about 1800, while Silman himself recommends this book to players 1400 and up.  I guess the moral of the story is that one book may offer a wealth of knowledge to one player, but be completely useless to another.

Also, Silman sells the book

This would also really depend on your current skill.  Here are 5 books that would cover a lot.

Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces (game collection)
Art of Attack (middlegame)
Modern Chess Strategy by Pacman (middlegame)
MCO (opening)
Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual (endgame)

But if you're thinking of the first 5 books a player should get then it would be something like Seriwan's winning chess series.

For a beginner? My two cents:

(Tactics) Khenkin's 1000 Checkmate Combinations, as mentioned on Page 1, is excellent. Highly recommended.

(Openings) I'll recommend an old book that I obtained near the beginning of my career in the late '90s, An Opening Repertoire for the Attacking Player, by Keene and Levy, 1994. The recommendations are reasonable, with certainly enough content for a beginner but not so much that it is confusing, and many example games in the notes.

(Middlegames) Simple Chess, by Michael Stean.

(Endgames) Essential Chess Endings, by James Howell

I really believe that with regular tournament practice/analysis and diligent study of these books, a player could reach at least 1600.

Make sure you read some of the books written by Max Euwe, former world champion but he was also a school teacher and the reason that the Dutch have done extremely well at chess. If you have never read Euwe, you should. Logica chess, master plays amateur, his biography, his Book on Fischer etc... Hè was à mathematics teacher that beat up aljechin to become world champion.

U2400? So high?

Yes, Aagaard thinks this training program can bring someone close to IM level.

I'm pretty sure no 2200 player knows everything in the 'mastery' books anyway

Maybe it's more like that mastering the material in the orange series (which, by the way isn't probably supposed to happen just by doing all the exercises there - these books should be suplemented with additional study and of course plenty of practice by playing) is supposed to take you around 1800 when you are ready for the blue ones and when you are around 2100 level then you might be ready for the green ones which are 2100+ level. And these rating are ELO's which are different from chess.com ratings.  But yes, these are challenging books and even the orange ones contain exercises that are of interest to players lot stronger than 1800.

Still, they are easier than some of the Dvoretsky books.

Here is the first example in the first orange book of Yusupov's series. The lesson is titled 'mating motifs'.

I immediately understood that it wasn't going to be a walk in the park...

Thank you for the example but his book is difficult.

An arbitrary limit of 5 books makes it a tough challenge to decide which to recommend: there are certains classics, like The Art of Attack that are so highly regarded as to be considered "must read" books - yet they aren't necessarily beginner friendly.

In the Art of Attack, Vukovic states very early on that since successful attacks are brought about through superior position, that a knowledge of positional play is crucial for the attacker (and by extension, the reader of his book).

But that level of positional understanding is not likely going to be the product of a study of just one or two books that deal with the topic.

Were the criteria to be 5 books to begin with, my list would be very different as I'd put the emphasis on tactics and recommend only one book for each subject of positional play and the endgame. Any my positional play recommendation would be an easy to read primer. So the list instead would be:

1. Capablanca: a primer of checkmate;

2. Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors;

3. Chess Tactics for Champions;

4. Simple Chess by Stein; and

5. Silman's Endgame Course.

My emphasis is on tactics simply because, in the past (when I was active and had put a lot of time into study), it was a study of tactics and mating patterns that was the easiest to grasp and which produced the quickest results.

Material on positional play I found I digested it best in chunks: a simple primer first, then something a bit more sophisticated a bit later, etc. I think positional material requires a certain amount of experience (after you've read each book) before the lessons imparted actually begin to sink in and become part of your play.

.

i have the 3 books and they are not so difficult

The Mammoth book of chess

By Graham Burgess