@dannyhume Thank you kindly for your reply. I just found it right now!
I do appreciate all of your recommendations.
Bruce Pandolfini was my neighbor in NYC-- he actually introduced me to chess... just the basics, after I was hit by a car. I didn't know who he was, until after I saw Searching For Bobby Fischer. Ha!
I have one if his books you recommended, and Silman's Positional Chess.
I did just learn, as you said, that it's best not to study openings besides the very basics, until you're up near 2000. And great advice I got from Coach Bill was to study an opening AFTER you've played it; after you've analyzed your game and if you liked the opening, research what opening it was and learn a little but about it.
Again, I truly appreciate the time you took in answering my question. I didn't think anyone saw my question.
Cheers.
I've sent you some "cookies" as a thank you award! 😉
Most advice will say not to study specific openings until a high level club player (1700 and higher maybe, though some say as high as 2100 even), but rather you should study general opening principles (pawns occupying the center, develop pieces, castle king to safety, connect rooks).
Yes, Chess King will inflate rating (I am roughly where you are on Chess King, significantly less in tactics/endgames, preposterously less in OTB chess rating), so there is no good correlation to other ratings.
Between the resources you have --Chess lessons here, Tactics Trainer, Chess King apps (make sure you pay attention to the rating ranges for the suggested apps), Logical Chess by Chernev-- the one big other thing that I recommend above all else (depending on how much you want to spend) is the Chess Steps Method (Stappenmethode) of workbooks and the companion Chess Tutor CD's. They cover all of chess, and very little of the openings other than very general principles, which is what most higher-level players would advise. The Chess Steps workbooks go from Level 1 to 6, while the Chess Tutor CD's go from level 1 to 3. Level 1 is for players up to 800 rating (USCF), level 2 up to 1400, level 3 up to 1600, level 4 up to 1750, level 5 up to 1900, and level 6 up to 2100. Each level has 4 workbooks, each with 600-700 problems to solve, with levels 1 and 2 having a few additional workbooks.
Books that cover "general opening principles" inlcude the following (roughly in order of difficulty):
Chess Openings for Kids by FM Charles Hertan (don't be put off by the "for Kids" ... good basic opening principles)
Discovering Chess Openings by GM John Emms (he says he considers his more recent book First Steps 1.e4 e5 as the sequel)
Openings for Amateurs by Pete Tamburro (the first part is about general advice; the second part is a repertoire, more advanced)
How to Play Good Opening Moves by GM Edmar Mednis
Annotated game collections ... google Dan Heisman's Book Recommendation List for several of these. Besides Chernev, two books by Frisco del Rosario --"A First Book of Morphy" and "Capablanca: A Primer of Checkmate"-- are all right and easy to read, as is "Russian Chess" by Bruce Pandolfini.
Strategy: I really like the books "Weapons of Chess" by Bruce Pandolfini" and "A Complete Book of Chess Strategy" by Jeremy Silman.
Finally, check out RussBell's pages on this site ... he lists lots of great books and gives brief descriptions so you can see which one corresponds to what you are looking for.
All the above said, my number one recommendation is the Chess Steps Method.