I'm currently working through a book recommended by Jamesge1 called How to Reassess Your Chess (3rd Edition) by Jeremy Silman: http://www.amazon.com/How-Reassess-Your-Chess-Chess-Mas...id=1181024282&sr=8-1
The principles it teaches are indeed invaluable and may be eye-opening for the intermediate and even good player. However, it's quite time-consuming, and I'm still ambivalent about whether or not the massive amounts of annotated games and examples do more harm than good. I find the majority of the games he lists are only slightly and/or temporarily relevant to the themes he teaches at any moment. It's been two weeks since I started reading, and I'm only about half-way through. Nonetheless, a good, solid book.

Although I've absolutely no intentions of entering into the professional world of chess, it is a hobby and skill I would like to cultivate for many years down the road by playing the game, working strictly on tactics for a few hours a week and reading AT LEAST one book a year. With that said, I thought I'd start a thread on chess books - your reviews and recommendations. I believe this could be a good source to sift through the countless number of chess literature out there (if we all contribute) to separate the good from the not so good. After all, how many times have you come across a book that you thought would really help your game, but in the end, didn't do anything for you at all?

For starters, I'm wondering if anyone has anything to say about the Winning Chess... series by Yasser Seirawan. I believe there are over a half-dozen in total, covering strategy, tactics, openings, endgames and other useful whatnots. So, for those of you whom might have read a few of them, are they worth the time and effort?

I also can't stop hearing about Vukovic's Art of Attack in Chess. I read this like 5 years ago, and it went way over my head. Definitely written for high rankers, IMO.

Personally I prefer to go through games in a database and investigate how certain positions are played from certain openings. I occasionally buy books that interest me; probably my favourite is my 60 memorable games by Fischer. I find these sort of books best. Also I like the magazine New in Chess, which is not often very instructive, but is interesting, and if something is interesting you will be inclined to read it and hence learn from it. I purchased fundamental chess endings with the intention of improving this aspect of my play but it simply is not very interesting and I have barely gotten anything from it over 2 years.

I find Susan Polgars book World Champions Guide and her Chess Tactics guide to be an easy read but if you are an advanced player it wont be for you. Right now I am still probably under Class B or Class A. I never played in any formal stages so that is why I think if I go through her books I will pick up something. It seems like Pandolfini's book may fall into the category of easy read but I will be fair to say I did not really go through his books in its entirety.

It definately seems like not every chess book is an easy read. A good chess author is not always one of the worlds best player and vice versa.

I liked going through the Complete Idiots Guide to Chess. It seems to show you the materials that masters and Grandmasters use but some of this recommendations like if you get the book Practical Chess Endings and know it than you will have an endgame compared to a Grandmaster does not sound completely right. So, I would take a few things with a grain of salt. I am sure with Endings there are better tools and books after Practical Chess Endings book came out. That is an old book.

I will always remember Irving Chernev's Chess Traps book. When I have more time I will go through that. One of the traps I remember came in handy in my play.

For me I prefer software.

Parag

Currently, I'm working through the following books in on a rotational basis, depending on what I'm in the mood for:

Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games by Laszlo Polgar
Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman
Jeremy Silman's Complete Endgame Course
Imagination in Chess by Paata Gaprindashvili
The Tao of Chess by Peter Kurzdorfer

It sounds like a lot, but bear with me.

Polgar's book is a tome, weighing in at more than 1,000 pages. It does indeed contain 5334 problems; 306 mates in one, 3,411 mates in two, 743 mates in three, 600 miniature games with diagrams at the critical move leading to the finishing combination, 143 endgame positions, and 126 positions from the Polgar sisters' games illustrating combination attacks. My copy's battered, dirty, coffee-stained and dog-eared; it's a great resource for if you have just a quick ten minutes and want a position or two to tackle; it's short on text, rather reinforcing the reader's own critical thinking. This is my tactics book at the moment.

Reassess Your Chess is a bit text-heavy in comparison, and I haven't really cracked it that much, but what I have read has been enlightening, and once I get a good chunk of time to really sit down and absorb it, I plan to. I'd love to recommend it, but I really haven't explored it that well; however, I have used it as an occasional themes reference and it's worked out nicely. There's also a Reassess Your Chess Workbook on the shelves, and I've thumbed through it a bit at the bookstore; these probably do deserve a little more attention. Again, this is my themes book at the moment.

Silman's Complete Endgame Course, however, is exceptional. I've agreed with most people that most endgame books, especially those with "Complete" in the title, are overloaded with ideas that I, frankly, do not need to know (yet). Silman avoids this problem by dividing the material into ratings categories, with different endgame themes presented for each class of player; in effect, saying "Frankly, you don't need to know this (yet)." As a result, I'm actually learning a great deal in an area where my game has, in the past, been very weak. I have to highly recommend this one as a proper endgames resource.

Now, Imagination in Chess is an odd one, but actually something I've been looking for for a while; positions I can analyze, calculate, and study at leisure, before really giving in and looking at the analysis solution (which is presented quite nicely; 700 diagrams interspersed with around 30 pages of text dealing with basic thinking schemes, followed by 120 pages of solutions, including alternate false analyses). I've been using this primarily to practice the ideas behind the thinking technique Silman gives in Reassess Your Chess, and it's been working quite nicely; the first few gave me headaches, but now I'm rolling along pretty decently. This is my analysis book.

Finally, the Tao of Chess. This is my recreational book, and in an incredibly simple and profound way, it does something that the other books create a huge need for at times: it reminds me of why I play the game. It's short, simple, presented in easily-digestible bite-size chunks and really makes for an interesting read. When I'm just too tired to work on an endgame, or analyze a position, or rip through some tactical combination diagrams, this is the little book I turn to.

Now, I'm not "reading all of these at once"; two of them are purely diagrammatic, one is very specific in scope, and one is just for when I have a headache. If anything else, they're all supplementary to one another, and give me a little variety when I sit down at a practice board... "Now, what do I want to work on tonight?"

Of all of these, and having ranted for a while now, I really must recommend Silman's Complete Endgame Course if for no other reason than that it's far from the first endgame book I've tried to read, and easily the first one I've actually enjoyed reading. Polgar's book (Laszlo's, that is) is also a high recommendation. The rest? Reassess Your Chess is great, but that may be because I enjoy Silman's writing style more than some other middlegame theme books I've read; honestly, it's a bit more fun than Pandolfini's "Weapons in Chess", but the general content seems essentially the same.

Has anybody gone through the trouble of tackling Kasparov's history series? I've thumbed through those, and they look nice, but is it instructional or just purely aesthetic?

Wow, thanks for the great assessment of your books, Entropy. Very detailed!

I've a friend who offered to lend me his copy of 5334 Problems. I took one look at its size... and declined without a second thought. Even if you only have time for a few problems a night, it'd take you years to chomp through that.

Now, I am almost finished with Silman's Reassess Your Chess so I think I can give a knowledgeable impression of this work. Again, the principles Silman teaches are very enlightening. Some are well known and some would never be thought of by the amateur. However, there are a number of things I do not like about it.

The biggest problem to me is that it fails as an instructional guide in that I feel it's incomplete in many of its teachings. For example, Silman emphasizes the importance of controlling or occupying weak squares, putting your Rooks on open files and applying pressure to the kingside pawns. However, he could've done a much better job of teaching what to do once that's accomplished. "Okay, my Knight's on the e5 support point. Now what?" "Okay, I have an Alekhine's Gun pointed at the g7 pawn in front of his King. Now what? That pawn's defended by 4 other pieces!" You understand what I mean?

The second problem, like you said, is that it's quite long-winded. Related to this is that Silman lists a huge collection of examples for all the themes he teaches. However, going through them is too time consuming for their own good, especially because the point he stresses is only temporarily or peripherally touched by them. The majority of these examples are from real games, and I feel he could've been more straight and to the point by using hypothetical positions and playing only a few moves to demonstrate the point instead of making the reader play a couple of 30 to 40-move games.

A final complaint is about one of the most important features of this book: Silman's Thinking Technique. He devotes a few pages describing it and hardly touches it again. He should have made the rest of the themes he teaches more relevant to the thinking technique.

With all that said, I believe this is one of the most quintessential books for the 1200-1700 level player.

And, I will look into his Endgame book.

Thanks!

I think one of the biggest problems confronting a lot of people who look to buy chess books is that they don't know what they're looking for. The basic questions are:

- What information do I need to improve my current game?
- Will this book help me master that information?
- Is the price right?

I've worded these questions very specifically. Generally, the problems with most chess books boil down to answers to these questions:

- This book has great information, but it's a little advanced for my current playing level.
- This book gives me the basic themes I'm looking for, but doesn't show me how to utilize these themes in practical play.
- This book helped me improve my play a little, but I finished it after only a couple months and spent quite a deal of money on it.

In fact, that was a breaking point for me early on as I was learning to play chess as a kid... I'd buy books that looked great and covered a wealth of information, I'd take them home and pull out my chess set, ready to learn everything the book had to offer, and find that the ideas went way over my head. I'd struggle trying to figure out WHY that particular move was given !!, and eventually give up and file the book away in the "when I get better" box. After a few experiences like this, I eventually renamed it the "money down the drain" box.

As a result, I've learned to be very wary of chess books that cover general themes rather than specific ideas. Of the books I listed, the only general theme book is Reassess Your Chess, and I think your summation is right on the money; it seems doomed for the "money down the drain" box.

In fact, the only theme book I've ever read that hasn't found itself in that box is Nimzovich's My System. Nimzovich loves giving basic chess ideas context in non-chess-related analogy, which makes them very easy to read, understand, and apply; beyond this, I learned more about the ideas and principles behind prophylactic moves than any other book, and it probably did more than any other to improve my play beyond the most basic level.

But I'd reconsider Polgar's book. It's not as daunting as it seems; you're right, you may never actually FINISH it, but that's a testament to its overall value. It's one of those rare chess books that's so simple, basic, and specific in what it's giving you that you'll find yourself coming back to it over and over. Going back through it now, I'm seeing patterns and ideas in the earlier diagrams that are almost second-nature to me now. And at $12.21 on Amazon here, it's an incredible value for your money.

I believe you broken down the guidelines for chess book shopping quite accurately. It's a shame that eager students waste time, money and a whole lot of living space stocking their libraries full of books they'll never need.

For all the books you've mentioned, would you mind categorizing its suitability based on a range of ratings for reference purposes?

I've been reading references to Nimzovich's My System everywhere! I was thinking about getting it myself, but a lot of people say his ideas are a bit out-dated. The book itself is like, what, 70 years old now?

Well, I'm now officially finished with Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess. Definitely a keeper! Think I'll take a week off from reading before starting his Workbook. It'd be nice to see chess theory and practice working in harmony, because as I already mentioned, Reassess Your Chess itself could've done a better job!