How to spend $100

Ok, I realize that similar questions are asked a lot...  Books?  Software?  Computer? Etc.  I have read many of the posts...  But, I wanted to broaden the question a bit.  I am 39 years old and a new player.  I'm not deluded enough to think that I will be a GM someday and take over the world, but I am excited to have a new lifetime hobby.  I love the essentially inifinite depth and the fact that I can study it for a lifetime and keep improving.  Anyway, I was given a $100 gift card and have decided to use it for chess stuff.  My rating is around 1150 for what that's worth.  But, I am a bit overwhelmed by all the material out there.

First, is software, ie Fritz, Chessbase, etc. worth it for a novice?  If so, is my 2.8G laptop good enough?  

Should I stick with some books for now?  Master games? Endgames and tactics?  Watch DVDs or videos?  

I need to create a syllabus for myself and use the $100 ti get started.

Thanks for the help.

And, I know that I can get everything I need on this site.  I love it.  And that it's not the amount of stuff I get but how I use it.  I know all that.  But like any hobby, the stuff is a lot of fun too - so...

I bought Fritz nearly 3 years ago, and have got a lot of use out of it.

The Study Plans here are a good place to start, and you can pick and choose your own order of study.

http://www.chess.com/article/view/study-plan-directory

Books... books... more books.

Hi there,

I'm 33 and started playing chess about a year and a half ago. I started at 800-900 and now am around a 1450 player.  The best money I have spent is the highest chess.com membership (especially for chess mentor and the videos). Chess Mentor is nice because sometimes I find it hard to stay dedicated to books (but with mentor, it's interactive, so you get to move the pieces around, and it's easier for me to stay focused). 

I watch chess videos daily (chessnetwork, chessexplained, etc.). 

And of course, I play a lot of games. :)  I think the 15/10 games are better for improving play than the 10-minute games, so I have to be more dedicated to playing more of those. Just my take. 

Good luck! 

I would buy Bain's Tactics for Students, Silman's Complete Endgame Course, and Chernev's Logical Chess Move By Move. Those three books will last you a couple of years and form the foundation of your chess understanding.

I would stay away from Fritz, Chessbase, DVD, videos, etc. unless you are looking for entertainment. Those are all products geared at millenials, and the quality of information does not match that available in print. I remember one review that compared the content here to "the intellectual equivalent of eating a snickers." :)

I would also recommend playing slow games, so that you can take your time for each move. OTB is the best if you can find it. On the internet, the best servers are ICC and FICS. Both have a Team League that plays 45 45 time controls (45 minutes + 45 second increment).

Software: for now stick with the free stuff. SCID, ChessX, etc. are all good programs that allow you to use multiple engines and run through pgn files. Perfect for the beginner.

Books: I'd start with Dan Heisman's Novice Nook articles. You can find the past 10 years or so as free pdf files at ChessCafe. They are geared toward the beginning adult chess player, and, personally, I find them very informative and good. Once you get through those, you can find many free books (Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals, for example) online. You can also buy cheap, used chess books from Amazon, or find them at library book sales, etc.

I'm not a member of Chess.com, so I can't speak to that.

I do agree with the previous posting of slow OTB games. With that in mind, maybe a membership in USCF so that you can play in some tournaments and really get in some good OTB games.

Thanks everyone for the help...  I will be taking all of your advice seriously...  I do need some help...  I'm getting my butt kicked around here.

Just for the record, there is a very active slow time control league on this very site.  It's not always 45 + 45 but sometimes 90 + 30 or another functionally equivilent time control.

http://www.chess.com/groups/view/dan-heisman-learning-center

And yeah, I would get Logical Chess, Bain's Tactics, Silman's Endgames, and spend the rest on your vice of choice.  Another book that I really like for beginner is Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals, but that will have a lot of overlap with Logical Chess. 

When I first got re-interested in chess I started out with Arena(free chess GUI). A fine program to be sure. But I recently downloaded "Lucas Chess" and it seems to me to be close to perfect for a beginner. Download Stockfish DD or Gull(Engines) and you've got a very good starting chess program there. Not only can you play against different engines at different settings. But there is a plethora of tactical exercises included. I do the Tactics Trainer here followed by certain ones in Lucas chess just about every day. Analyzing your games is quite simple in Lucas Chess as well. And no I don't have any affiliation with the program or it's creator. :)

Do tactics, tactics, tactics. As often as you can.

I have Fritz 13 and I love it. But it does have a fairly steep learning curve. Eventually, you may indeed want to buy Fritz. But IMO Lucas, or one of the other free GUI's would be more than suficient to start out with.Preferable even, as it's much easier to use.

Other sources of good information are:

chessgames.com   they have a huge collection of masters games in PGN form. A tresure trove of chess knowledge.

The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis has an excellent video series on Youtube. Well worth checking out!

Hope that helps....

I'm with this guy.

The free software & engines are more than good enough for what you want. Your laptop should be ok & if it isn't $100 won't fix it anyway. The starving people will still be starving a day later so leave them to the charities. $100 on beer & girls will only give you a hangover & the clap.

So you need to either increase your budget or go for books .... after careful research as to which ones are best for you. for chess.com membership they usually offer a free trial to new menbers so test it out 1st.

Better to take it to a Casino & bet it all on #7 at Roulette then use the winnings to go further upmarket to get what you need like a Professional Coach

Id spend that $100 for a few hours with a chess coach, so that you can see your weak areas of play. Books and such are helpful, but they cannot show your errors. Chess improvement comes from not just adding positives but removing negitives from your play. Books cannot "see" your negitives as a chess coach can!

I don`t know if it is possible but maybe you could use it to pay entry fee in a local tournament in your city.

It is definately possible that you might lose every game in a real tournament.

The good thing is that you will be able to meet the strong chess players in town ...at least some of them...and they can bring you to the local cafes that play chess or maybe actually play with you in person.

 i am with the guys with beer and girls

notch up anoter vote for tis post

I guess I got lucky. I picked up a copy of Chessmaster X for $10 at my local Staples in the clearance isle. I know it's not as good as Fritz or Houdini etc., but for $10, I got a lot of great lessons and a decent engine to analyze games. Maybe check around on Craig's List to see if you can find a cheap copy. 

Bibliomane, I'm going to make this incredibly simple (and much less than $100). Moreover, I'm 100% certain that your rating will jump hundreds of points if you follow this plan.

You need 4 things:

1) WINNING CHESS by Irving Chernev. This is probably the most outstanding tactics book for non-masters ever made. On the left page, there'll be 3 diagrammed problems. On the right page, there are 3 diagrammed answers (no flipping to the back of the book to see if you got the tactic right). Buy a used copy of the 1971 version at the Amazon link I added.

Take your time on each problem. Your goal isn't to have a best guess, but to know your answer is best because everything "locks in". You'll still be wrong sometimes, but you'll develop much more confidence. Also, tactics are all about pattern recognition. For your study to translate into real gains at the board, you want to recognize patterns in as little time as possibly. Consequently, go through this book at least 5 times (8 is better). Each time will get faster. Your pattern recognition will be killer in real games and your new tactical eyes will see beauty in the game that never existed for you, previously.

2) THE AMATEUR'S MIND by IM Jeremy Silman or THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO CHESS (3rd Ed.) by GM Patrick Wolff. Currently, you may think you know the "rules of chess", but there are some very basic principles that I've come to believe are the unmentioned rules of chess, like rooks need open, usable files to be powerful and in pawn-cluttered positions, knights are often much more powerful than bishops (especially when positioned on the 5th or 6th ranks near the center). Silman's work is good if you've already read a different introductory chess book. However, Wolff's work will lay a complete foundation for you. If you haven't read an introductory book or didn't get much out of the first one you read, get Wolff's! Yes, the name is silly, but the book is outstanding! After giving you a complete foundation for the game, he answers the question, "What next?". You'll get best value if you go through the book a second time to fill in the gaps that were elucidated the first time.

3) SILMAN'S COMPLETE ENDGAME COURSE by IM Jeremy Silman (or a similarly high-quality intro. endgame course). Spend 10-20 minutes each day on endgames... in perpetuity. So, when you finish the book, start afresh. Many endgames are guaranteed wins or draws if you know what you are doing, so keeping this fresh will win you many points or half-points over the board!

4) LONG TIME CONTROLS and post-game ANALYSIS in your chess games. It's the most important part in becoming a stronger player... playing long games. I've spent a large amount of time investigating what makes GMs so much stronger than the rest of us. There are only 2 features I've seen show up in different studies, repeatedly. The first is neuroplasticity. They began studying chess early in life and their brains became better-wired to see much more on the board (and the unseen possibilities) than those who learn in adulthood. If there's a remedy to this for the adult learner, it is focused pattern-recognition training. The second is that they learned by playing long games and analyzing them afterwards. Most adult-learners play blitz games* and never review them. Instead, they say "Hey, I'll read _____ and hope this will be the magical book that takes me to the next level."

Knowledge is important, so book study is important... but there really is something magical about the creativity and growth that occur when you are striving with all your mental fortitude, for an extended period of time, on the same problem (game). Champions become champions through repeatedly operating at the limits of their abilities.

Do NOT use chess engines to analyze your games for you, until after you have gone through the game move-by-move and commented on the game in your own words and with your own ideas. Analyzing on this level takes a lot of time, but you are rewarded with real-world increases in playing strength. I use SCID vs PC, an open-source software, to do my post-analysis analysis and to manage my games. I've downloaded the current version of Stockfish (Stockfish DD) into SCID vs PC. You can type your analysis into the comments editor and save each of your games. Save the games on a cloud storage service (i.e. Dropbox or Google Drive) so you'll never lose them.

*I play a lot of blitz, and even lightning, games. They do next to nothing to help me improve my game (and may even be detrimental), but they are great distractions from the constant pain left behind after neurosurgery from a tumor. If I weren't in pain, 100% of my games would be long games, until I reached the peak of my abilities. Then, I'd trash fools in blitz, haha!