Chess Book Recomendations

Didn't fischer study like 1000 steinitz games? I figure studying the classics first will help me improve.

Thanks for the advice, I'll keep it underconsideration.

Still undecided about what to buy first

Recent books about Steinitz:

William Steinitz, Chess Champion by Landesberger

Games Of Steinitz First World Chess Champion by Pickard

Chess Secrets: Giants of Innovation: Learn from Steinitz, Lasker, Botvinnik, Korchnoi and Ivanchuk by Craig Pritchett

Wilhelm Steinitz: 1st World Chess Champion by Isaac Linder & Vladimir Linder

Steinitz: Move by Move by Craig Pritchett

Out of time to buy the books for today. Will tomorrow

Personally, I have never reached your level. Though at times, like you, I'd been "estimated" to have been at this level or that. As a friend, and unofficial coach to a player at around your rating, he'd always bug me if this book is good or whether this book is worth getting. It gets annoying because I highly doubt he'll be able to go through it all and yet play at the same time. I have over 200 books. In my heyday, I only used 10 books roughly on a daily basis.

Man, I see these books coming out and how I wish they were around back in the day. But I learned early on that it's not the quantity of books, or even it's relative quality (because, let's face it, it's subjective) but if it have me an idea.

Er. If it gave me an idea.

Ideas. To me is the quintessence of playing chess. When you run out of ideas, you're done.

Soo any book that sparks an idea (as I would say to my friend), gives you a better idea, or validates your ideas is worth getting. Despite reviews.

Thanks for the help guys!

I bought the soviet books and my 60 memorable games and also mentally filed away some of the other titles to buy later.

I'm studying The Soviet Chess Primer right now.

Play the Sicilian Kan by Johann Hellsten is reviewed here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140627080948/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen122.pdf

Maybe: The Most Flexible Sicilian by Alexander Delchev and Semko Semkov

In response to the OP, forget about the books you have, you need one good big book for every stage of the game plus a couple of books with annotated games.
Tactics : Neishtadt : improve your chess tactics
Endings : Silmans Endgame course
Strategy : how to reassess your chess 4th ed.
Games : tarrash 300 chess games, bronstein The sorcerers apprentice, Keres The road to the top.

Bobby Fischer said play over the games of Tarrasch,Bronstein,Keres for improvement. Stick with those books , play50% study 50%, play at least 15/10 when online, forget about bullet and blitz for the next 5 years. Also forget about opening books until you are 1900+ and maintain that strenght.

At your level you do not need specific books for opening, attack, defense and so on...Because the game collection books will teach those things masterfully. The most time consuming part of chess study should be playing through the games of Tarrasch, Bronstein and Keres. Understanding chess as a homogenous whole is what you need to go to 2000+, therefore studying whole games should take precedence at our level

And also forget about chess videos, those are passive learning and will never lead you anywhere. Take your time and understand that chess improvement is time consuming, there is no quick fix or way around it. With those books you are set for at least 4 years. assign a certain day of the week for a certain part of the game...so the way i do it is :
Monday : strategy book 3hrs
Tuesday : tactics book 1hr
Wednesday:whole games tarrasch 2hrs
Thursday: my club day where i go to play otb for 4-5hrs(no study on this day)
Friday: endgame book 1hr
Saturday:strategy book 2hrs
Sunday:whole games 2hrs

Of course this is dependent on how much time i have each day, some people also have a life besides chess. But that plan makes for 11 hrs of chess study per week, some people have more time than that to devote to chess, but one should watch out for information overload syndrome when studying chess...

"If you want to play chess competitively, then you must develop an opening repertoire." - GM Patrick Wolff (1997)

"... In games between novice chess players, color is not the most important factor, but acquired knowledge is crucial. Without the basics of opening play it is easy to fail, and that's why openings must be learned. ..." - Journey to the Chess Kingdom by Yuri Averbakh and Mikhail Beilin.

"I haven't finished learning Najdorf/Kings gambit/Semi slav yet!" - logozar (~5 weeks ago)

Are Tarrasch, Bronstein, and Keres games the best choices for learning about the Najdorf?

"without the basics of opening play"....the najdorf is not basics of opening play...y have no business trying to study the najdorf if you are sub 2000...learn how to play good chess instead, opening theory is just one big trap

Is it just the Nydorf that is ruled out if one chooses to "Stick with" "tarrash 300 chess games, bronstein The sorcerers apprentice, Keres The road to the top"?

I plan to read the "Chess Classics" (All of them) from quality chess first, then do Silmans endgame and Dvoretsky's endgame

Probably going through the above books will take at least a year.

After this, I have some silman books and after than plan to go over books with lots of GM games like Fischer's my 60 memorable games and New york 1924.

I plan to add other books to this list first, but I think it is good to focus on one book at a time.

I plan to cite this forum when deciding on a new book later, thanks

6 week update...

Where are you at in studying?

Thanks.

About that, Robert_New_Alekhine is my personal coach.

There are two relatively recent books about achieving that specific goal:

What It Takes to Become a Chess Master by Andrew Soltis

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708093409/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review857.pdf

Reaching the Top?! by Peter Kurzdorfer

http://www.thechessmind.net/blog/2015/11/16/book-notice-kurzdorfers-reaching-the-top.html

Silman's endgame books is to designed to be read in parallel with everything else you're doing. You read a certain portion when you are class D, then more chapters when you are class C, etc....all the way to class A...you could probably blow through the beginning stuff pretty quickly since you are already advanced...

Logozar is my coach, Robert is his coach, some GM or IM is Robert's coach...who in turn may have a team of coaches...I guess that makes me pretty low on the Trolltem Pole.