Maybe a few books on the thinking process such as "Search for Chess Perfection" or "Chess for Zebras"? A collection of annotated Mastergames is always usefull.
Please recommend resources to help ME
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If you "own nothing to do with chess" the obvious first step is to buy a chess set. Then buy books. Under no circumstance buy either:
- A book by Eric Schiller. His prose will wither your soul.
- An opening book. This will ruin your creativity (fortunately these are often the same so you get a double warning.
I would also recommend modern books over old ones with my preferred authors being Rowson, Seirawan and Silman. Any book that is not an opening book may be acceptable however so the best way to pick up a book is to go to a tournament and browse the book stall. Good luck!
Hello all,
I currently own NOTHING to do with chess. I have about 200$ left in amazon gift cards and am considering using them to purchase chess resources to improve my game. Let me tell you a bit about my game:
I am about a 1600 - 1800 player in correspondence, but I aim more to improve my TIMED games, those where each player gets at least 35 minutes to play; in that area I am scored 1500 - 1600 (OTB). I lose these games more because I struggle in (A) concentration, (B) it takes me a long time to VISUALIZE the lines that I am considering, causing me to run out of time, especially in closed positions and (C) because I flat out miss tactics (not basic stuff like forks, but longer range tactics).
If you are going to recommend BOOKS, I believe I could gain much more from endgame, mid-game, etc., books than from books that work on opening repertoire, because those books in my opinion ruin the creativity of the game. However, feel free to name books that work on opening if you believe they are really good. I would consider books that focus on ONE opening, such as the Caro Cann defense the best, as opposed to books that give summaries on a wide variety of openings. The openings that I favour are those that aren't even IN chess books, though perhaps similar.
I have NO idea how chess COMPUTERS work, but if they analyze your games like the one on here does, then that would be very helpful.
If you feel I can get to 1800 in LIVE chess WITHOUT books / computer / whatever else there is using Chess.com resources alone, feel free to say that! However, I believe I am at the point where it is going to take deliberate practice to improve.
Finally, let me stress the fact that I believe chess books to RUIN creativity in chess. I don't want that to happen to me. What I do NOT want is to learn how to COPY well-treaded openings. That yields boring games. What I want is to learn how to think about the game differently, learn what I am doing WRONG. Therefore it is probably best if I can find some resource that goes through my games and tells me what I'm doing WRONG and how to fix it. Also I believe I need to work at end games in LIVE, TIMED chess (not those with a rook + k v king or 2 bishops v k, but those with pawns, minor pieces involved).
From that information please list some resources I should consider getting. This may include computers (name specific computers), books (name specific books), or chess.com membership, or anything else you can think of. I think that looking through master's annotated games is a great means to improve.
THANKS.