My second chessgame - which books do you recommend?

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Avatar of ForLoops

Hello, community!

I just started playing chess. I had known the basic rules for a long time (as in how the pieces move), but I just learned abou t the rules that are less known to those who are not familiar with the game, such as castling etc. (And I just learned about En Passant in this last game.) 

I decided to pick up a book, learn some basic tactics and start playing. In my first game, I got destroyed in nine moves against a much stronger player. After doing some puzzles on ChessTempo, I think I made myself more aware of mate threats. As for my second game, well, I played decently, although both me and my opponent made some nasty mistakes. Please take a look. I have provided my own commentary to the best of my ability, but as a player whose real rating is probably around ~1100, I don't know how much of use it is:

I hope that you take your time to look through the game, the comments, and answer these three questions:

1. Is my thought-process somewhat okay?
2. How am I compared to the average beginner?
3. Which books/websites do you recommend for me?

Avatar of Lucidish_Lux

Your thought process seems fine. You think about your moves, try to keep your pieces safe, put them in good positions where they do things, and keep his pieces passive. That's what you're supposed to do.

Chess.com has a ton of resources--some of the video lessons alone strengthened my endgames in particular by a huge amount. (King+pawn endgames, rook endgames, and some unbalanced material series as well come to mind.) Make a habit of doing ~5 tactics a day here, or you can try chesstempo for tactics.

I think the book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess would be a great place to start if you can find it. After that...Silman's Complete Endgame Course would be a good one if you decide you want to stick with chess--that can be your only endgame book for quite a while. My System is always a good choice for middlegame and opening play. Stay away from "Winning with the _____" opening books for awhile. You've just proved to yourself that middlegame play is what wins games, not knowing an opening better, at least not yet.

Avatar of spanish_innovations

I think Bobby Fischer teaches chess is too elementary for ForLoops.  I've heard good things about "How to Beat your Dad at Chess", even for adults.  I own "The Art of the Checkmate" (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Checkmate-Dover-Chess/dp/0486201066) and highly recommend it but it is in the older descriptive notation instead of algebraic.

Avatar of Lucidish_Lux

I agree that the Fischer book is pretty elementary. However, it covers the fundamentals very well. It's both thorough, and presented in a way that helps the reader immediately be able to use the knowledge given. For someone just starting out, I can't think of anything better than a firm foundation.

I don't know much about the other two you mentioned. They may contain the same material, but I don't know if it's presented in as good of a way.

Avatar of baddogno

Check out Coach Heisman's web site at danheisman.com; He has a recommended book section and a virtual treasure trove of articles on all things chess.  Don't know if you realize that the forums are archived but if you were to type in "best beginner book" in the search forum box right under the green "post new forum topic", I bet you would get dozens of previous threads and hundreds of posts.  Everyone loves to recommend books to beginners...

Avatar of ForLoops

Thanks for all suggestions. I will drop by the library tomorrow and see what I can find.