Silman's Complete Endgame Course should do the trick. Also, Reassess your Chess is a fine choice for middlegame and you can probably get a discount if you order both books together on Amazon.
What book!?!?!?
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Oh sweet. Thanks.
Well you can go the way of books that are too advanced for you (ahem) or which can do you some good but aren't nearly as appropriate as other books.
Try Logical Chess Move by Move or something by Seirawan on the topic you like. The Silman endgame book isn't bad, it's just that you still have a huge hole in your knowledge of tactics and the principles of opening and middlegame play, and addressing that will help you a lot.
The other Silman book is not for you at this point and would only use up your time and money.
There are other great books for your level. I expect you'll get many responses as I've seen this thread's topic several times. The recommendations in those threads filtered out pretty handily.
Oh so those are for advanced people. Okay thanks for tellin me that.
Animals wrote:
Oh so those are for advanced people. Okay thanks for tellin me that.
The Silman endgame book is arranged by the difficulty of the endgame lesson. It's a good book, and part of it can be used by even the weaker player, but for the sake of efficiency one should be working hard on tactics (those help you right away and all the time--you'll win games due to this and you'll always be studying tactics even if you get quite good) and getting the basic principles of opening play and middlegame play down cold. A little bit of opening knowledge can help. By that I mean specific moves in openings and their variations, but not very much of it. The opening principles will help your game far more at this point than knowing moves can. Some basic endgame knowledge is appropriate now too, but no book is needed; just work on elementary mates and k+pv.k until you feel solid.
Can you guys give me some options on what books I should get? Where I live I can not get a REAL chess caoch so I will read book instead. I want to learn fast, and I would like to know what you guys think is the best. I would really like to perfer books on gambits and endgame study. Midgame as well. I suck at endgames.