The Top 23 Best Chess Books for Improving at Chess (Part II)
According to the you
Welcome to Say Chess! This newsletter goes out to 4,005 chess players. If you haven't joined yet, sign up now and get the ebook '100 Headachingly Hard Mate In Two Puzzles Composed By Sam Loyd' for free.
Now I don’t think I can draw out the suspense any longer. It is time to reveal which book you voted as the best chess books to read if you want to improve at chess. If you are just dropping in you can see the first part of the list here:
I think there are not too many surprises on the list, but it is very influenced by one particular chess writer who sadly recently passed away.
No. 8 - Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games by Laszlo Polgar - 5 mentions
“Because it enforces discipline early.”
”Did most of the puzzles in this book as a kid.”“Excellent for improving visualisation, creative move consideration, and staying power”
No. 8 - The Amateur’s Mind by Jeremy Silman - 5 mentions
“Very practical, not just strategic knowledge but also how to think about it in a game. Beginner, intermediate.”
”Great author, his books had great explanations. This one in particular highlighted many flaws in the student's thought process and a great strategy improver.”
”I made a lot of the same mistakes as Silman's students”
”Explained me the most important strategical concepts that helped me to see positions with different eyes.”
No. 7 - Yusupov's series (Build Up Your Chess, Boost Your Chess, etc.) - 7 mentions
“A variety of topics, very well explained”
”He covers a wide range of topics in a mixed order. Reading the books from cover to cover helped me identify holes in my chess and force myself to work on those holes (which I had to do to move on to the next chapter). It is also trainable on Chess Tempo.”
”I practiced with them and learned all the basics and fundamentals.”
”More than half of the time I spent over this book were exercises.”
No. 6 - Play Winning Chess by Yasser Seirawan - 8 mentions
“Yasser explains everything just like Jeremy Silman does”
”Because it covers the basics in a style that’s appropriate for younger audiences but doesn’t condescend to adults either.”
No. 5 - My System by Nimzovitch - 9 mentions
“Classic set of ideas; you may want to violate them but it is helpful to know what the rules are before you go about breaking them”
”Basics of positional play.”
”This book focused my attention on the positional part of chess.”
”Didn't read the whole book, but the first part where he identifies the basic "elements", such as Rooks on the 7th rank, was extremely helpful. Also very important, the ideas of "overprotection" and prophylaxis. Working on over-protection as a beginner / low intermediate leads one to coordinate the pieces and pawns. At that level, the coordination alone can be enough to get a winning advantage. Prophylaxis builds upon the idea of being aware of what the opponent is planning and threatening, and moves into preventing it. One has to be aware of what the other player is trying g to do in order to play at higher levels.”
”This book was a really great introduction to chess strategy with game examples.”
No. 4 - Logical Chess: Move By Move by Irving Chernev - 12 mentions
”Well-chosen games, often not spectacular, but super solid, especially for opening and early middlegame. Good at pointing out mistakes that are not so easy to spot for a beginner/low intermediate like me.”
”I was a beginner w/o Elo and that book was a great way to understand about the different phases of a game, create plans, etc.”
”It's a book of fully annotated games where every move has an annotation. Chess players wanting to improve should study game collections, and this game collection is aimed at the beginning player. Any errors that have been discovered with the use of computers since it's publishing are negligible to the beginning player (according to online consensus).”
”Puts everything together for thinking like a grandmaster.”
I have actually earlier written a newsletter about this book:
No. 3 - Simple Chess by Michael Stean - 13 mentions
“Succinct breakdown of a handful of strategic themes, good examples.”
”More in-depth discussion of basic strategies; builds on what is described in basic beginner books (but is still very good for beginners). A good discussion of black & white squares, pawn structures, the importance of outposts that are not often provided in basic beginner books.”
”It's a well-written guide to strategy for players who know the basics but want to learn how to play positionally.”
”This book was an early pickup for me. Since I like complex positions it showed me how to enjoy having a straight forward plan”
No. 2 - Silman's Complete Endgame Course by Jeremy Silman - 15 mentions
“This book was very well laid out with endgames listed by difficulty rather than subject. This was my endgame guide from 400 USCF all the way to 1800 USCF and has helped me grind wins out of balanced endgames”
”Studying endgames helped me to set my mind how to think on the chessboard”
”Only three rating bands in. Allowed me to make better decisions in the middle game to choose my path to the endgame by better understanding which endgames are a win (for me).”
”It covers a wide range of endgame positions, but split them in rating ranges, so the reader does not feel as he is bogged down with a lot of unpractical positions, especially for their rating level. Silman also has a chattier way of explaining that I quite like.”
”This is one endgame book you can buy that will go with you through your whole journey of chess improvement. Silman has outlined already what you need to know, and when. It's not the only endgame book I own (I have Shereshevsky, Pandolfini, and Znosko-Borovsky also waiting to be studied) but if you could only buy one book, it would be this one. Other endgame books feel like an endless list of possible endgame positions, but the curation of Silman is what makes this book different.”
No. 1 - How to Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman - 19 mentions
“Covers a broad amount of information that is directly useful to a broad audience.”
”This book helped teach me how to think about chess outside of raw tactics and calculation. I always come back to the ideas presented in this book when dealing with complex positions. I rarely feel like I have no idea how to proceed in a position because of my understanding of imbalances that I gained from reading Reassess.”
”It helps with using word to describe the position, the plans and typical methods to use knights/bishops/space etc.”“Silman is a great author who explains everything very clearly.”
”Taught me how to play proper chess, before this I didn't really know how to do anything that wasn't directly tactical.”
”Literally teaches you strategic principles.”
That was the list. I very much agree with the number one pick. A book that also made a big impact on my own thinking about chess. A thing I'm wondering about is the age of these books. Are we being nostalgic about the past, because as far as I know our understanding of the game has improved tremendously in recent years partly because of the evolution of engines. But maybe we still haven't figured out to communicate this knowledge yet?
What do you think about this list? And what modern book needs a spot?
/Martin
Although it's not surprising that Silman is up there in terms of improvement, I wonder if the improvement is similar to the early gains that people have when weight-lifting. Often early on it's easy to make gains because there is so much that needs improvement that a solid guide makes a lot of difference.
I think Silman's books guide people from poor understanding of the game to competence. And that's a world of difference. And once you're at that level it becomes much harder to generalize advice to help people improve. Which is why some books for one person will be a revelation and for others will just be ho-hum.
The Amateur's Mind was the first book I read. I had just finished a period in my life with a lot of online games and I wanted a guide on being one of the best in my area. I learned a lot but came away disappointed because it wasn't a complete step by step guide to becoming a master. (Though the "Steps" series might be similar to what I was looking for it wasn't on my radar)
I don't think a single book can make a person a complete chess player but the right books at the right times can make a world of difference.
A book left out is Reuben Fine's Chess the Easy Way. A lot of players in the past who studied it got results with it and Chess Coaches always ask publishers to reprint. A Chess book doesn't have to be the size of a medical or law book. It will show the way, but the rest is up to the student to put the effort into doing.