Improving with books

My chess rating is 1420. I don't havela a chess mentor or a teacher so i training by myself. I know everybody sais that tactics improve your play but is the opening and middlegame, posetio creation that triggers my mind. I rhink that after you master middlegame game (build your posetio) and don't mess it up in the beginning then after that you should look for tactics and practise them. So the question im savina double with is can i improve by reading chess books?

I have this amazing app on my smartphone called chess book study where you download your pdf chess book and open it and that app gives you a virtual chess board where you put moves and later you can return to the beginning and replay the moves. Can i improve like this and whats the best book about opening, middlegame?

PS: i had this book which had all three parts of the game opening, middlegame , ending don't know the name.

Yes, I suppose you can improve a little by reading books, but at your strength it is much more effective to play a lot. Slow games (more than an hour per game), against people slightly stronger than you. Try to get them to discuss the game with you afterwards. Figure out what went wrong and try not to do that next time.

Play 1.e4, answer 1.e4 with 1...e5 and 1.d4 with 1...d5, and try not to spend time on openings for a long time, apart from developing your pieces asap, fighting for the center, getting your king to safety and preventing him from doing these things.

Your games will be won by whoever wins the most material, so practice tactics. Attack!

The best books are those with lots of exercises, but for now you're better off spending your time playing.

Hi!

I can tell you from my own experience that playing alot is far from enough at this level. You study from relatively low rated players bad habits, that take ages to rechange your mindset again later.

I did exactly that- I was playing alot and became a solid beginner level. Then, when I started training with my coach and reading his book, it wasn't easy to change my mindset so fast because I studied so much bad and incorrect stuff from playing other beginners/intermidiates.

So think about it, and of course it all depends on what your absolute goal is in chess- becoming an expert, or just have fun with as less thinking as possible- two legitimate courses as far as I'm concerened..

If you want to try this "mindset change" stuff I mentioned, I recommend (very persistantly...) you tried this free ebook sample, it's written by my coach and I read the full version and feel like my brain has grown!  Some ideas will take some time to sink in, as I said, old habits die slow...

http://store.payloadz.com/details/1365707-ebooks-non-fiction-the-process-of-decision-making-in-chess-volume-1-mastering-the-theory-free-44-pages-sample.html

I'm now also reading "Imagination in chess" by Paata Gaprindashvili and it's great practice, but I think most of the stuff are covered in the first book I recommended.

Hope I helped!