Forums

My Chess books and what to add to the collection

Sort:
TheGreatOogieBoogie

Here is my list of Chess learning materials, some are from years ago and others are more recent.  Some are books and others are software and all are in algebraic notation.  Here's the list:

  1. Think Like a Grandmaster
  2. Killer Chess Tactics
  3. The Improving Chess Thinker
  4. How to Think in Chess
  5. Modern Chess Openings 14th ed.
  6. Improve Your Positional Chess
  7. The Nimzo-Larsen Attack
  8. Standard Chess Openings
  9. Encyclopedia of Chess Wisdom (this was my first book as its text implied it was basic and therefore need to know)
  10. Basic Chess Endings
  11. Hypermodern Opening Repetoire for White
  12. Secrets of the Sicilian Dragon
  13. Turning Advantage into Victory in Chess
  14. How to Become a Deadly Chess Tactician

The following is a list of Chessbase software:

  1. Modern Ways of Playing the Sicilian
  2. The Van Geet Opening
  3. The Dutch Defence Leningrad System
  4. Aagard/Lund: Right Decisions
  5. Basic Positional Ideas
  6. Renko's Course Tactics 2
  7. Fritz Technique Trainer
  8. Smirnov's GM Secrets, Self-Taught GM, Positional Understanding, and How to Beat Titled Players courses
  9. Fritz 12 and making extensive use of its database to find master games to study.

The materials listed were in no particular order and after looking at my collection find that I have too many opening materials and only one book dedicated to the endgame.  Today I typically study tactics with Chessimo or Chesstempo, and The Improving Chess Thinker came in the mail last week so it's my newest one.  I feel like I'm missing something in my chess knowledge, and most books (especially opening ones) didn't really help and Basic Chess Endgames is too dry and most examples are draws.

 

I'm thinking of adding Silman's endgame course as it separates into rating categories and Chessbase 12 starter edition to my library.  I want to organize my study time and actually apply what I watched in Self-Taught GM about training.  I read Dvoretsky's stuff is good, but I shouldn't touch until I'm at least class B.

Martin_Stahl

I would ask, how many of  those books have you read all the way way through? (excluding opening references of course)

There a lot of great books out there and if you do some searching, you can find some good recent posts on the topic.

I know I'm going to stop buying chess books soon; I have some money that is for the purpose of buying a couple of books soon but after that I'm making myself a deal that I can't buy another one until I have completed at least two of my current ones.

I'm working through Forcing Chess Moves right now (which as some very cool, though provoking tactics in it) and have another tactics book I'm going to start after going through that one twice (first time with a cursory read and solving the puzzles while entering them into a database for further study).

I have also started reading/studying the first book the Yusupov Chess School book series.