best strategy book?

Neil McDonald "Planning"

Complete Book of Chess Strategy also by Mr. Silman

How did you arrive at those numbers? And how is it possible that your rating is between 1500 and 2700 (depending on the opening, and according to you), when your rating here on Chess.com is less than 1500? If your statement were true, shouldn't your Chess.com rating be somewhere in between those two numbers? Or do you mostly play games with other openings, openings in which your rating is even lower? 

Haha! 

I recommend books by Drazen Marovic and Edmar Menis

How to play chess, by Ferdinand Hess.

gbidari do you mean the art of planning?

Chess Strategy for Club Players by Herman Grooten hasn't been mentioned yet.  That's another one to consider.  It won Book of the Year 2009 from Chess Cafe.

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review696.pdf

Silman's How to reassess is not bad, though the difficulty level is swinging heavily from part to part, and I didn't find it very didactic.

The old Pachmans books are good (like everything he writes), Watson is more about exceptions than rules, Nimzo is interesting but some examples are flawed and some of his concepts haven't really stood the test of time (ie. overprotection).

There are some recent good books on strategy for intermediate players, which are not very well known yet, but look quite good :

- Grooten's book was mentioned above by Quasimorphy

- Hellsten's book looks like a serious work

- Giddins' book hasn't received much publicity, but I very much like his teaching by example method, and he covers a lot of typical middlegame structures, but it's not really a systematic textbook, unlike the two others

I read Kotov's 'Think like a Grandmaster" when I was 1900 OTB thirty years ago. At the time I thought it was good, but returning to chess a couple of years ago and reading Silman's HTRYC (4th ed) - and McDonald's "Planning" I realised how little I had known about the middle game back then.

My chess.com rating would seem to suggest this new knowledge had made little difference (why aren't I 2000+?) but perhaps the difference now is that I know why I am not very good.

hicetnunc i have you read hellstens mastering chess strategy and chess strategy for club players? cause i looked over the contents and both look like they cover good strategical elements, what rating level would you say there at and which did you think was better

I've read some bits of Grooten's book, but not Hellsten's (have only read reviews and browsed it at the bookstore).

Grooten explains lots of things with words, which is really nice, and the examples I have been through were clear enough to understand. So I guess it's fine for (ambitious) intermediate players, 1700 OTB and up.

Hellsten's book is nicely structured : it seems he spends less time on pawn structures than Grooten does, but he speaks a lot about piece play and I must say I very much like the way the book is organized. Another nice thing is that he provides lots of exercises for training. It probably aims at a slightly stronger audience (maybe 1900+), but I haven't delved enough into the book to be sure.

Here's one more suggestion.  It's another book that's been rather overlooked and appears to be aimed at somewhat lower level players than the Grooten book is. Lots of clear explanation from Beim.

Back to Basics: Strategy by Valeri Beim

http://www.russell-enterprises.com/images/btbstrategyexcerpt.pdf

Someone above mentioned Neil McDonald and I'll second him. His book "The Giants of Strategy" is excellent. It shows how Krammnik, Karpov, Petrosian, Capa, and Nimzo all approach strategic objectives like The Seventh Rank, Outposts, Pawn Majorities, Pawn Breaks, etc. I definately prefer it over Silman, but I guess everyone is different so you may have to hunt around for a bit trying different authors.

Simple Chess by Michael Stean is probably the best introduction to positional play.

im lookin for something more advance. im thinkin finishing the amatuers mind then picking through how to reasses your chess for topics that werent covered in the amatuers mind, then doing the wookbook. followed by reading the mastering chess strategy and after i finish those art of attack,play like a grandmaster &improve your chess now. hopefully after that along with daily tactics and lots of slow games i can hit 2000 by the end of next year

The art of Attack by Vikovic is a classic for attacking principles.

 VBG it might have takin you longer than that to get close to there but you dont even know me. you might be an idoit or have a lower mental ability than me, i got from never playing chess before to 1500 in 3.5 months and if i would have said something about that you probably would have commented there was now way cause you couldnt do it. im a very quick learner and most of the games i lose are on blunders due to a slight lack or consistencicy in my thought thought process which is only normal cause iv had alot less time to make it part of my normal thinking than most ppl at my level, which means once i fix that (and i am working on it)  and work on my strategy a bit along with working on my tactical vision and get practice playing against stronger opponents every day for the next year i dont see myself being too far away from 2000. bottom line just cause you couldnt do it doesnt mean i cant so theres no need to post comments like that

Drazen Marovic has a good series on positional chess.  I haven't read them but they're supposed to be really good.  They are Understanding Pawn Play, Dynamic Pawn Play, Secrets of Positional Chess and Secrets of Chess Transformations.  He's supposed to be a very good author.

Personally my favorites are Stean and Pachman.

Okay, so don't pursue your dreams...