Hi, I'm new and I need the next step

I agree that Nunn's endgame book wouldn't be the first thing to study as a beginner because you likely will lose (whether you are checkmated or not) before you even get to the endgame if you haven't studied tactics.

I disagree with these. Many games of a novice vs novice reach endgames.  Knowlegde of endgame will help novice beat fellow novice. We must remember many novice likes to trade, many novice are afraid of queens and likes to trade it. Nunn's book is excellent. But I suggest Winning Chess Endgame by Seirawan or Pandolfinni's Endgame course as first endgame book for beginners. Nunn's book might be too daunting for them.

I do think basic end games are important. Beginners do need  to know the mating patterns if they have a Rook vs. King. etc. Or opposition in the end game. King vs. king with pawns. Square of promotion. These lessons taught to me helped my confidence. A stronger player showed them to me because like jamby said. Beginners like to trade. I did at the time and did find my self in endgames with no clue how to proceed.

Discgolfgirl... definitely the at least second coolest disc sport (and i'll think it's the coolest once i blow out my knee), and therefore you have a friend in me (i play ultimate much better than chess, and slightly better than disc golf)

I started where you were exactly 18 months ago, and have jumped from 1200 to just over 1400 uscf currently, and sit at 1500 or so on chess.com correspondence.

Dan Heisman's pretty insufferable, but if you go through his novice nook columns one at a time, that's a good start, agree with the other posters that it's a good place to start.

The single best thing that will jump your rating is just pausing after every move, and asking what the threat is. Is there some check, capture, or fork that your opponent is trying to set up.

Hanging pieces (leaving them insufficiently guarded) is the single biggest destroyer of rating points at low levels.

The 2nd best thing you can do is figure out how far you need to calculate. The answer, at least to get to 1500 or so, is usually not too far. Again, after your opponents move, if there isn't any "forcing sequence", meaning a series of captures or checks, then there isn't much to calculate, and you can just make the best "positional move" (ie: getting your pieces onto useful squares, or try to set up a tactic of your own. Often these two aims can be achieved in the same move.

If there is a forcing sequence, that's when you need to slow down and figure it out. Alot of times you have to remember that capturing with check, or throwing a check in the middle of a sequence can affect thigns and do your math very carefully there. At the end of the sequence, make sure the material is at least even.

A few final immediate improvement tips:

1) against weaker opponents, learning very simple drawing techniques is huge. just knowing what can and can't force checkmate is awesome. if your opponent has two knights and a pawn left against your lone bishop, make sure to trade your bishop NOT for the knight, but for the last pawn. (two knights can't force mate). There are a few stalemate ideas out there, that once learned, seem to apply to other areas in the game as well.

2) Get a good endgame for your level. Knowing how to force mate with rook and king is the single most important thing you can learn. The reason is that if rook and king is enough to win, then queen and king also will be, and pretty soon if you can get all the other pieces off the board, two pawns will also be enough. (and then frequently one pawn as well).

This is, from a psychology standpoint, critical. If you are winning a game (say up a rook), you shouldnt feel pressure to take chances and force mate, just keep making even trades, and force your opponent to try to take the risks. Having a good endgame takes all the pressure off getting an early knockout.

There are alot of good free endgame youtube dvds, (and you can search), but if you buy a book, buy Jeremy Silman's complete endgame repetoire. You'll pay 20 bucks and only read the first 50 pages (he will explain why), and it will be completely worth it.

3) People will advise against this, but develop a simple opening repetoire and spend a little time studying it. People will say the opening is least important, but you need to try to steer the game into positions you are comfortable with, and emotionally, getting trashed repatedly by move 10 just stinks.  Try to find one in a style you are comfortable with (for example if you're solid and defensive learning the caro-kann, and semi-slav as black will be hugely helpful, and as white you find the lines you are most comfortable with. If you are aggressive you might learn the scandanivian or some sicilian variation along with the Kings Indian. Then when you play blitz or whatever, play the same thing EVERY Time for 6 months until you have an understanding of the position. Just being able to get to move 10 alive in a game is a huge emotional step, and learning one opening (as opposed to 20 cute traps) is the fastest way to understand the pros and cons of a position.

3) spend money. you can DIY a suprising amount if you're resourceful, but it's definitely a time investment, and at least initially, a small dollar investment will be pretty cost effective. Chess.com is solid of course, but even though it's a competitor i recommend fritz products from chessbase.

you really need two-three things, and two of those things come with the purchase of one of their commercial engines (warning they dont run on macs).

Those things are: the engine itself, (shredder is actually a pretty good engine), the database, and ultimately the fritztrainers.

Houdini is probably the best engine but any of them will do. The key is the interface.

After all of your slow games (and even some of your fast ones if you're really motivated), along with your correspondence games, put them into fritz (and if you need help with this there's a ton of references online or you can ask me), and analyze them. 

there's the analysis button, but if you ever fel lost in an opening, there's also the database which a purchase of an engine comes with. The database is useful for teling you when you first made an unusual move, and if you're stuck in a sitaution and your openings keep seem to be losing, you can then find a different move from the database. (the free one fritz comes with has 2.5 million games, i think you can purchase others that have 7 million games or more), The databases have limitations, but they also do alot more than what i just described. You can then crosscheck it with the engine (which you already have on your phone).

FWIW, shredder on the iphone plays at a 2400 level or so, which is kind of like a very autistic IM (just shy of GM) giving you an evaluation of the game, only they express it in pure numerical terms (-1.5 means the engine thinks black is a pawn and a half better, regardless of material).The top engine is houdini and it allegedly plays at over a 3000 level, for whatever that's worth. I have fritz 13 and it's around 2650, which is more than good enough for my purposes.

Lastly, you can get some things on fritz that you just can't get in the same clean format on youtube (which is admittedly free), specifically, the training dvds. they have lots of stuff there, and some of the speakers are better than others, but the advantage of the fritz dvds are not only are the players and advice legitimate (Nigel davies is my personal favorite, but others may have different opinions), i can instantly challenge the advice given on the dvd by the gm by pausing the dvd, and playing the move on the computer (hard to explain but the fritz interface allows this). i can then have the engine refute my move if i think something is better.

For me, having an opening repetoire dvd was huge in me developing my own ideas (and stealing many of the ones on the video), and the $20 or so was worth it)

From there you'll jump 200 points no problem, and then the tactics youre studying will pay off, and the middle game, which is i think the hardest part to understand, will make sense bit by bit.

Disclosure: there are others here better than me, but this journey is still fresher in my mind probably.

I was probably about a 1050 18 months ago when i first bought fritz and a single dvd, was 1200 after my first tournament from a brief month or two of studying, and over the last 16 months have picked up another 200 points in the USCF, and am at 1500 in correspondence here, and 1500 on the tactics server here. Blitz, i still make mistake #1 and drop pieces, and am only 1200 or so as such.

Chess the Easy Way by Reuben Fine

http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Easy-Way-Sam-Sloan/dp/0923891501/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369274380&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=ruben+fines+chess+easy

You can reach around 1750-1960 strength  if you diligently work though Fines book and put in alot of hard work and time practicing.

The principles and rules that he teaches in his book are timeless.

Sigebert Tarrasch's book is also good:

http://www.uscfsales.com/the-game-of-chess.html

You are correct , I like to add knowledge of outside passed pawn advantage, utilizing pawn majority,bishop plus rook pawn vs lone king draw position, bad bishop vs knight, bad bishop vs good bishop,rook belongs behind a passed pawn ,opposite color bishop endgames and queen vs lone pawn near promotion are also usefull for beginners. These things are not really complicated to study.

Thanks for the advice, Dischyzer.  I will definitely check out tactics.  

As far as disc golf goes, I don't know if you have tried competing in any disc golf tournaments, but I think most players don't.  It was several years before I tried it.  I have been playing tournaments for a couple of years and I have gotten better, but the best I've achieved is a Women's Advanced Masters State title.  I alsmost got the US Masters Advanced Women's title last year, but I lost in a sudden death playoff.  The year before that, I almost won US Women's Advanced Masters, but I blew it on the last hole.  Maybe Chess is more up my alley? 

play lotsa chess until you see patterns and then use'm

I'm not sure what my rating is.  Shredder estimates it between 1400 and 1500, but I've read that's probably a couple of hundred points high.  It seems liek I am getting pwned on openings and then the chess engine starts playing at the elo I've set once the defense is completed, and I can dominate at that point.  So I just try to survive the patterned opening defense so I can do tactics and take advantage of the artificial mistakes inserted by the computer.  

Wow.  That was a lot you posted.  I really appreciate the time you put into it and I will be referring to it over time.  You make a lot of sense.  Good luck with ultimate!

I'd say both are up your alley. Sounds like you have had good success in DG. Yes, I play tournies. But it's been difficult because I work weekends. Actually going to Selah Ranch this weekend for some team golf with my old ultimate friends. I used to travel weekends to play tournaments around Texas. Hey, officially I can play masters now too.

With the same diligence you play disc golf increasing your skill in chess is possible.

Selah is world class golf, but those courses are really too difficult for me.  I think I will probably play the DD AM Championships at Cedar Hill this weekend.  

Love those courses. A bunch of my friends from Lewisville will be playing there. Good luck. Should be a great weekend for Golf in North Texas.

I mainly suggested Nunn's endgame book because OP said she had a Kindle and I noticed (at least here in Europe) it's currently on special offer for about 7 euros. You should have some sort of endgame book even as  beginner - you don't have to understand everything in it - but when you go wrong in an endgame you will be more motivated to go to it and look up/study the approriate sections.

Trying to play without knowing what's a won endgame and what's not just makes your middlegame play worse.

I also agree that you should just pick a few  openings and stick with them - ones that suit your personality are best. Maybe pick one main 'safe' opening and one main 'sharp' one for each of e4 and d4 for Black and then some system for white that gets you out of your opponent's book lines quite quickly (unitl you are ready to develop a full e4 or d4 repertoire).

I'm a premium member at playchess - easiest way to become this is to buy Frtiz 13 from them for about 40 euros - it's an OK engine (although I actually use Houdini multi-core instead nowadays) , and comes with access to their online 'book', cloud databases and 6 months free premium membership (which has audio-visual training aids and online commentary on the all big chess matches). Any match you play on their server is saved automatically and you can just replay it with Fritz's analysis engine on afterwards.

Of course Chess.com is very good too and has the best chess forums on the internet.

This might be the worst advice given to anyone, ever.

It's exactly the approach I took and it yielded significant measurable results.

Could you expound on why it's bad advice?

So when you were an absolute chess beginner, you studied John Nunn's endgame book and became a good chess player?  Ok.

True. I used Pandolfini's endgame course and inspite of the many errors, it helped me focus on micro-problems on a board with fewer pieces and helped see how "won" games are actually won.

I think of it as choice between "information overload" (which is what you deal with in the beginning of the game with openings and having to figure out how to even select a damn move!) vs "focussed self-study lesson plans in closing out the game" that actually occur. Higher ROI, plain and simple.

Newbies learn how to close out games with basic endgame studies and even more specifically: learn to develop the muscles required to perform basic forcing-move calculations that will become a staple (if they want to ever stand a chance of getting better) as they grow as players.

Unfortunately most people find it boring and prefer having fun with all the pieces on the board ... but the endgame is the best bootcamp for players starting out. 

Not really bad advice as an earlier post called out.  Hey ... everyone's got an opinion and I've offered my side of the arguments. If we're debating and not trolling, perhaps the other side could offer their view points as well.

The original poster asked for suggested readings, what would you recommend?

I think that by the time someone's ready to study in earnest, as the OP appears to be, endgames are actually the one of the best places to start, right up with the most common tactical motifs.  I believe that those two will certainly bear the most fruit anyway.

We're talking about a person who didn't even know what a skewer was (read the thread).  Studying an endgame book isn't going to help one bit.