Are these good chess books?

after reading this i checked it out on Amazon - the first 80 pages of Chess Tactics for Champions are available when u click on "Look Inside" and i have to agree with the 'jam... i liked it so much i bought it... $6 USD used. 

i read further up this thread that fightingbob has 1000 books... so jst thought u guys would get a kick out of this cuz it is my first chess book...  actually, my parents gave me one for my B'day but this is the first one i eva bought :)

I like Susan Polgar's Chess Tactics for Champions.  I have nothing against chesstempo or Tactics Trainer per se, but I agree with fightingbob that when someone is just starting out, they might profit from a book with a bit more explanation, so that they can learn the basic concepts, and have a better shot at solving the puzzles.  Ward Farnsworth's book has some really nice explanation, and is well regarded for tactics.

Of the books mentioned by the original poster, I do think Silman is worthwhile.  His imbalances concept does help you set goals.

I also think reading books generally is a good thing. Also libraries can help you get books written by better authors on better quality paper without costing you anything.

As they say about your first kiss and your first love, you never forget your first chess book.  Jeez, maybe that's why I'm a bachelor at 62. 

But seriously, I hope the tactics book helps you out; keep on pluggin'.  Here is an Amazon review I wrote about my first chess book, Edward Lasker's Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood.

By the way, the 900 books mentioned in the review has well increased.  If I were married, they would have decreased markedly by now.  "Get rid of those things, they're taking over the house."  Couldn't blame her.

Thanks for your support, Mr. Thomas.  It has always been my contention that to learn something and understand it well, you learn the concepts behind what you are tackling; rote just won't do.  First, a real grounding in the elementary concepts, and as if erecting a building, using the elements to achieve a more advanced design.  Perhaps that's why I took up physics in college, but only partially successfully because of the increasingly abstract nature of mathematical physics.

Frankly, I'm not familiar with many of the tactics books mentioned in this thread.  I went through Reinfeld's 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate and 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations because those were the few tactical practice books available at the time.  Though I was reasonably successful in completing the exercises, the real breakthrough came with Test Your Tactical Ability by Yakov Neishtadt, which was highly recommended by the late Ken Smith, editor of Chess Digest and acquaintance of Bobby Fischer in the late 1960s and into the 1970s.  I purchased many chess books from Mr. Smith long before eBay existed.

For years this Batsford publication was out of print, but in 2011 it was reprinted by New in Chess and expanded by the author into Improve Your Chess Tactics: 700 Practical Lessons & Exercises.  What I liked about Test Your Tactical Ability and now its improved incarnation was the combinative themes or motifs I mentioned in Post No. 19.  I felt it not only opened up a new world of how tactical elements build upon one another, but now I could name them as constituent parts of a whole, which I found vitally important.  Perhaps because I feel that language directs thought, it helped to name a deflection here and a decoy (or attraction) into a skewer there.  For me it makes complicated tactics much easier to see because my board vision has improved by naming the motifs, knowing when a combination is "on."  The same goes for The Art of Checkmate and the patterns and unique names one is exposed to in this classic work.  Parenthetically, two other books that help with board vision are Chess Mazes and Chess Mazes 2 by the late Bruce Albertson.

Anyway, that was my tactical journey.  I stand in good stead with how and what I learned, but there is always room for improvement.

Best,
Bob

Perhaps that's the best way to look at it, but I have no respect for any publisher who insists on paper one step away from the daily news.  RHM's paperback books were printed on very good paper, but the glued binding rarely held up.  On the other hand, I have to give it to Dover, their books have glued and sown signatures and last forever.

I own Reinfeld's The development of a chess genius: 100 instructive games of Alekhine and Hypermodern Chess: As Developed in the Games of Its Greatest Exponent, Aron Nimzovich, two Dover paperbacks purchase in 1968, when I was 15.  They have held up remarkably well in form if not always in content.

I have the Arco Complete Games of Keres book.  Despite the bad paper, it is still in one piece.  My Simon and Schuster My 60 Memorable Games by Fischer and RHM The Art of Chess Analysis by Timman have long since broken up into sheets of paper.  I think in general, the more I consult a book, the shorter its lifespan.

My Dover and Chess Informant books are all still in one piece.  Some of my Batsford books have seen better days.  Hardcover clearly last longer than softcover.  These days I read a lot of ebooks where you don't have to worry about them falling apart.

Just one last word about quality books.  There was a period in the 1980s when Batsford's paper was not acid free and aged horribly.  Talk about yellowing, both of Speelman's valuable books, Analysing the Endgame and Endgame Preparation, appear much older than their years.  I'm not sure what's worse, Arco where you know what you're getting or Batsford where you only find out later.

The highest quality chess books using paper with a high clay content is no surprise, Jacob Aagaard's Quality Chess publishing firm.  Nice to know a fellow Dane takes quality seriously.

I don't even use paper anymore.

I just bought Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual in chessbase format (you can buy it in this electronic download format direct from Chessbase), and after going through the oodles of variations (all of which are critical!) I can't imagine wasting the hundreds of hours of manual entry time or manual replaying the positions over a board. 

I've strongly favored buying electronic database-compatible formats whenever possible for time savings, and this is a good example of it. It would take me over 100 hours just to enter the moves accurately, and it's a mind-numbing exercise in futility, at that. (I started doing it for Fundamental Chess Endings, and once it got to Dvoretsky-level complexity examples, which is pretty fast, it was awful - wayyyy too easy to make entry errors in those positions where a single tricky pawn move makes all the difference.)

The Mammoth Book Of Chess: Never heard of it.

Weapons of Chess: Never heard of it.

5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games: Excellent book!

Basic EndGame Strategy: Never read it.

How To Reassess Your Chess: Never read it.  Thumbed through it, and seems like a very good book.

Winning with Reverse Strategy: Never heard of it.

To each his own, but I feel too much reliance on ChessBase and other tools where you can always see the position in front of you may be great for board vision but detracts from the practice of visualization, namely seeing future position in your minds eye.  If you are disciplined with ChessBase and stop along the way to ask questions about the position, that is better.

I was a programmer/analyst before I retired and realize this is the future for chess study, but to paraphrase a line from Gone With the Wind, "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn."

Truth be told, tools are great, but only when used properly.  As for myself, I got stronger when I didn't move the pieces around on the screen or on the board, not that I've achieved anything like mastery yet.