Recommended Chess Books
The books that I list below are books that I own and feel I can comment on them and recommend them because I have read them or have spent some time going over the material, I have a nice size chess book library that is growing and will update this page as I find more books that I feel are worthy to recommend, if you feel that I'm missing a book that you think is essential to the chess player I would appreciate an email from you with the details. Some books I own I bought based on a recommendation, the only problem with recommendations is the difficulty of the material presented, a person rated 1400 will find it hard if not impossible to understand material geared towards a master level player. Some of the books that I list are definitely over my head and I'll comment those books as advanced. I linked these books to Amazom.com if your interested in purchasing it.
» Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess (Paperback)
A great beginner book on the essentials of chess, if your new to chess or it's been awhile since you played this is a perfect book to go through. It starts out explaining the moves of chess for the total beginner. A really nice feature of this book is a chess set is not needed, all the examples of the book you can work through right in your head. The puzzles are listed on one page and the answer is located on the back of the page. The size of the book is small enough to fit in a coat pocket for those times when you have some time to kill. Overall a great book for the beginner.
» Attacking Chess : Aggressive Strategies and Inside Moves from the U.S. Junior Chess Champion (Fireside Chess Library) (Paperback) by Josh Waitzkin
This book is similar to Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess as far as the no chess set needed which makes it nice to keep on the nightstand for some late night reading. Speaking of Bobby Fischer, the book is written by Josh Waitzkin whose life was portrayed in the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer" and a heck of a chess player in his own right. The book focuses on the attacking side of chess, pins, skewers, discovery checks, and my favorite the knight fork, and much more, all examples are clear and easy to digest without clogging up your mind with variations. This book will improve your chess. Overall I recommend this book for all beginners and amateur players.
» The Art of the Checkmate (Paperback) by Georges Renaud and Victor Kahn
The Art of the Checkmate is a book I purchased about 10 years ago and feel this book deserves to be an essential part of any chess players library. The book focuses on checkmates (no surprise) that at some point you will face as a chess player. Don't think that these moves are just a novelty and not played in todays games, many examples in the book show GM's being defeated from these moves. With smothered mates, corridor mates, Boden's mate, pseudo-sacrifice, and double checks, as well as a host of others you will benefit from knowing these moves. The book can be purchased for less than $10 so there's no reason to skip this one. Overall I think this book is required reading by all ratings from novice to GM.
» The World's Great Chess Games (Paperback) by Reuben Fine
Seriously, I think this is one of those instant classics that all chess players should own!
This book is not your typical chess game collection. First of all the chapters are broken down into ages, for example chapter 1 is listed as "From Philidor to Morphy" and on to others such as "The Age of Lasker" and "The Age of Fisher", etc, etc. So this book covers quite a large area of chess history with a mini biography of each master which in my opinion is worth the price of this book.
The games are quite good, as you would guess and the annotations of the games are mostly short and in plain english, making it much more enjoyable to those less then masters.
The only negative thing that I could say is that the games are in descriptive format making it a little harder to play out the games but if your serious about chess this certainly won't stop you as it hasn't me. Hopefully this book will get updated at some point and fix this minor weakness of an otherwise great book.
The book is standard in size to most chess books and the font size is easy to read, the diagrams are a little hard on the eyes but just require that you study the diagrams a little more.
So there you have it. This book should be on your bookshelf or better yet next to your chess set and relive some of the best matches in chess history.
"Chess strategic thinking helps me prepare court cases effectively because the thought processes are parallel. Preparation to win includes planning, tactics and strategy, evaluating the opposition's position and power, coordination of all your forces to win throughout the game or the trial, and respect for your opponent at all times."
Walter Gerash
Denver defense attorney
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