List of the books for the lazy: Worth its weight in gold: How to beat your dad at chess - Murray Chandler Alexander Alekhine's Best Games - Alexander Alekhine, John Nunn Silman's Complete Endgame Course: From Beginner to Master - Jeremy Silman Best Lessons of a Chess Coach - Sunil Weeramantry *** Endgame Strategy - Mikhail Shereshevsky (This book Andras scrubbed from this list in next video as being way too hard for beginers 1700+) The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions Into Chess Mastery - Jeremy Silman Excellent: The Road to the Top - Paul Keres Logical Chess: Move by Move - Irving Chernev 101 Chess Opening Traps - Steve Giddins Great by not yet: John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book - John Nunn Understanding Chess Move by Move - John Nunn I'm not sure where Andras would put another book he mentioned: 100 Endgames You Must Know - Jesus de la Villa
Understanding Chess Move by Move can be read at 1200 level. Almost every book in this video is excellent, but Andras should really check out Applying Logic in Chess. I think he would love it. It is the best primer I have found on chess logic, and very readable at lower levels because of the amount of text.
1:41 How To Beat Your Dad At Chess 4:50 My Road To The Top 5:16 Alekhine Selected Games 6:32 Logical Chess 9:23 101 Chess Opening Traps 10:13 Best Lessons Of A Chess Coach 11:36 John Nunn’s Chess Puzzle Book 12:46 Silman’s Endgame Course 13:42 Shereshevsky Endgame Strategy 15:10 Amateur Mind 15:53 Understanding Chess Move By Move
I bought How to Beat Your Dad at Chess for my son and actually ended up using it more than him! Really nice book. Also, A First Book of Morphy is a nice collection of games with explanation. They are pretty easy to digest and understand at lower levels too.
@@ChessCoachAndras I am a fan of studying games of great players, although you don't learn many of the popular "club" lines that way so you will still get waylaid in the opening a lot if that is your main method of improvement. Once upon a time when I was a junior in high school, I checked out a beginner's book by Fred Reinfeld and Al Horowitz from the school library plus another book that I don't remember now and taught myself to play chess over the Thanksgiving holidays. Back at school, I found a more experienced chess enthusiast (I think there were three of us in the whole school!) and we would play at lunch. He always got the better of me until I checked out a collection of grandmaster games. The first games in the book were Morphy games of course (chronological order), and after studying them I immediately started winning some games against my opponent. However, those books were published at a time when English (or "descriptive") notation was still in use and to this day when I look at a square I immediately think of its "old" name and it usually takes me a little time to "translate" it into algebraic! "King's knight 5! Uh, uh, I mean, gimme a second here..."
Very instructive. I've started to play chess 1.5 years ago. I went from 800 to 2100 reading a lot of chess books. I read: -My 60 memorable games -Play like a grandmaster -My great predecessors part I (I have the other parts as well, but I prefer to analyse the book really deeply and so I've spent over 150h just on this one book. -Mastering chess strategy -Secrets of modern chess strategy -Silman's complete endgame course -Fire on board -Pump up your rating I'm currently reading: -My great Predecessors part 2 -Dvoretsky's endgame manual -the woodpecker method -forcing chess moves -life and games of Mikhail Tal -new art of defense in chess --Mastering chess strategy Let me know if you have any questions about these books
Hi I am a kid I am starting out in chess and I want to read a book that is right for me, I have been playing chess for less than a month, maybe a few weeks, I have a game with my friend scheduled on Monday, he has beat me 3 times so I need to find a book so I can improve in chess
@@ayla2369 How serious are you about it? Are you planning to spend some time every day to practice or do you just want to learn a bit so that you could beat your friend?
@@buk1733 I honestly don’t know but for these past few weeks, I have been taking it seriously. I am practicing everyday at 7 and sometimes in the morning. I really like to read so I started on my hunt trying to find chess books, I have found some but I’m not sure if they’re for me? I am in a chess club online right now with my teacher. So honestly my seriousness for chess is in the middle, I actually really want to become a good chess player and beat my friend. So I am looking for a book that will help me improve.
@@ayla2369 all right. This subject of chess improvement is so vast that it’s hard to explain in a youtube comment. I suggest you add me on discord so that I could perhaps give you a lesson (free). If not then here’s my advise: According to the Soviet chess school, the best foundation for a good chess improvement is to study endgames before anything else, in order to get a feel for the pieces and how they interact. For this I would suggest ‘Silman’s complete endgame course’. This is the most valuable thing you can do for your chess in the long run. However if you feel like studying endgames will only discourage you to study chess, then you should take a different approach. The way I improved was by going through a book where the level of difficulty was higher than my current level. It was hard, but once I really understood the concepts the books presented, I improved much faster then everyone around me. If you feel like this approach is right for you, you should read ‘Think like a grandmaster’ or ‘Play like a grandmaster’ -books by Kotov. This will give you an overall understanding of chess. If neither of these methods seem convincing for you and you would like something very easy for beginners, then I would recommend ‘Bobby Fischer teaches chess’. It will be good enough to quickly give you confidence when you play chess, but you won’t improve as much in the long run. My discord: Maks Markuszewski#0676
I also love Predator at the Chessboard for tactics, especially if you learn more efficiently via written word. It's free but I liked it so much I bought the two physical copies.
There is also the very long Predator at the Chessboard playlist which is very simply but excellent. It's just the problems, and reasonable but short explanations for each. 50 hours but since it pauses for a minute or 2 after presenting each puzzle each video is an hour. Not the way to watch it of course. Simply hit pause when you hear "X to Move", solve and fast forward until the board changes, back up a bit to listen to the explanation. Computer reading (large) portions but the voice is quite good and in no way obnoxious to me.
Simple chess by Michael Stean is the book that made chess ‘click’ for me. I read it when I was rated 1900, after reading the book twice and playing the positions with a physical chess board, I am now 2240! It’s great for positional understanding and understanding chess in general!
I started reading logical chess move by move book after your chessable course and now my play style has changed completely. When you said the first books you read shape the player you grow to be I had to get some of the books here. Good stuff.
Great vid. I have a few of these books and they're excellent. Pity there was none in the "looks good on a bookshelf" category. Would love to see you call out the lemons in the chess publishing world!
thank you so much, such great content. You should start a book club and do a chapter a week with us. This will help with that particular book and help train us how to use these book properly.
Best lessons of a chess coach, excellent book. I really liked the games that featured the gran prix attack. It gave me insight when playing and facing this line.
Have you had a chance to look at "Amateur to IM - proven training methods"? It describes itself as a progression of endgame lessons with calculation methods and strategy/technique taught along the way. It would be convenient to have something similar to the Shereshevsky and Silman endgame combo in one book.
Great selection. I agree with Alekhine's Selected Games, but I think Keres' book should also be in the first row. About Logical Chess, it has always been heard that Irving Chernev was a weak chess player and that you should avoid his books, but I think his book is very good for learning basic chess. I think if you learn these books you mention you should raise your level to 2200 at least :)
Chernev was about 2200 strength, fully qualified to write books for club players. I actually think GMs are sometimes the worst to write books for beginner-to-intermediate players because many tend to overcomplicate their analysis.
If you have the modern chess opening or MCO book it is like 900 pages. But it is only about 120 pages of text style reading. So really it is a short overview book combined with 700 to 800 pages of detailed tables with variations. So a quick read through this might be worth it as it is probably only 8 hours worth of reading if you skip the variations pages. But more importantly the format of this book would make it easy to build an opening repertoire and to essentially use as a note card system for remembering key opening ideas based on the games collections your reading. So if you read cherning’s logical chess move by move you would be reading the analysis from the author and then using the tabbed variation pages from the MCO essentially like a note card system in order to capture the moves that align with the main line vatiaons and make a note off to the side in the margin when there is an early deviation and why. You would also want to write down the game, players, book, page. with a couple of the main ideas the author stresses are important in the position converted into your own words. This process will help you remember what your reading and save time by converting the knowledge from a multitude of books into an organized system. your reading into your own words. And at the same time you will be essentially building a repertoire based on master level game analysis instead of a pre made opening repertoire book. I would recommend Lev Alburt’s tactics for the Chess tactics for the tournament player, King in Jeopardy, Chess strategy for the tournament player, and the end game book from the same series called just the facts. I am finishing these Alburt boobs first before going to game collections. But I then going to tab them out to essentially use them like note cards as well. There is a lot of white space in Alburt’s books to take notes. So if I read logical chess or my system or art if the attack I can quickly go to that section of the tabbed out lev Alburt books to jot down the idea in the section on two bishops or opening files or attacking f7 motifs or what have you. I am going to reference the page in the book I am reading and make a note of the game. Using the MCO and the Alburt books as a tool to capture and organize my notes from what I am reading ensures that I retain more, but that it will be much easier to reread through every at least a couple times a year. I would recommend Lev Alburt’s just the facts end game book over 100 end games you must know or Silman if you are only going to buy one. It is formatted by topic and has not just the simple I inherited all three plus the devorsky and Rubin fine end game manuals. Just for facts is essentially an abridged devorsky manual. The two authors use to work together training players and developing end game studies. Many of the examples are the same in both books. By inLev Alburt’s just the facts and they are in devorsky, But he only gives a line or two of notation to get the point across for some problems that devorsky wrote two pages of small two column notation. But if you get 100 end game you must know I would turn them into flash cars.
Just a suggestion: You should also make a tier list of openings. I know you already did something similar with Amateur's Mind #3 but a tier list where the openings were ranked would be great too.
Where would you have put "100 Endgames You Must Know?" It's the only endgame book I have, and I'm wondering if I'm set for now, or if I should get another one of the recommended endgame books. I'm around 1800 on Lichess rapid by the way. And great video! Looking forward to the next set of recommendations.
Thanks for the book suggestions, I will definitely be checking some of these books out. One book that is always mentioned by others to beginners-1700 is Silman's Reassess your chess as well. Maybe you can cover some common controversial books too, such as My System by Nimzowitsch, Think like a Grandmaster by Kotov, Bobby Fischer teaches chess.
Agree - would be good to know where some of those fit in this list, since they get recommended quite a lot. Similarly maybe Stean's Simple Chess and the various Chess Structures / Pawn Structure Chess / Pawn Power in Chess type things? And maybe Seirawan and Yusupov's respective series? Enjoyed the video, btw - glad to see that the two endgame books that I've got are the recommended picks!
What do you think of "My System"? I know a lot of people who are gung ho on the book, and a lot of people including myself who think it's kinda terrible. Would like to get your input about it.
Coach Andras - Thanks for the video! Could you please do something like this for Chessable courses? As an adult beginner/improver, I would like to know what you recommend. The only crossover that I see from the physical books in this video is "100 Endgames You Must Know". It may also be an opportunity for you to promote your own work. I own all of the courses that you have been involved with, including the latest installment, "Master Your Chess with Judit Polgar - Part 2", which I just purchased today. You are my new favorite chess coach! Keep up the great work!
I have several of those books. The Paul Keres Road to the Top was/is out of print and I wanted the hard copy. I was able to get a good hardcopy but cost a little more than suggested retail price. I have both Paul Keres game collection books which complement each other. The Silman and some of the Nunn books are pure gold. I have some of them as well in hard print. I'm very proud of my book collection and I plan to add more - primarily game collections by the old champs and some of the more renowned masters.
Hey Andras, your videos are always extremely useful and instructional, I really like you approach. What about making a video on how to read/study game collections book (or even chess books in general)? As a beginner/intermediate around 1500 I'm struggling to find the best way to get the most out of game collections such as Chernev's Logical Chess etc.. Should I just read game? Guess the move? Should I memorize the games? ecc. Thanks!
I disagree that one cannot learn from unannotated games. What I used to do when I was learning the game was to cover up the next move and try to figure out what it would be, and when I saw a move that I just didn't understand I would proceed no farther until I figured it out. (One exception I still remember: in a game between Capa and Alekhine, Capa at one point played "Nk5?" (I don't remember who had which color now, so I won't try to convert that into algebraic - it's either Ne5 or Ne4) I think in a QGD and I spent a lot of time wracking my brain as I tried to figure out why the annotator had given it a question mark. I finally had to give up because at my level of understanding then it was too subtle for me to understand what was wrong with it! But in spite of that, I think you can learn a lot even from games without any explanation. BTW, from time to time I saw Botvinnik's summary of certain positions quoted and I was amazed at his ability to verbally sum up what was going on. He should have been a chess writer!
Found "How to Beat Your Dad at Chess" book at a thrift store in the children's book section for less than a dollar. I couldn't beat the price. Best bang for the >buck. Silman's Endgame Course was purchased with Cyber Monday 30% off sale, another book worth its weight.
Andras: your work on The Amateurs Mind on Chessable was released today. I’ve been waiting for it since it was announced in their “coming soon” materials. I went and got it. Thanks for your opinion on the material on this list.
I enjoyed Amateur's Mind when I read it many years ago but I don't think it's as informative as most chess books. If I'm a 1600, I don't need to go through the misconceptions that an 800, 1000, 1200 etc. has. I just need to see the right way to think about a position.
Always love to hear about books all the books are well known on this list and good to have for sure. I think the video would be better if you have books for al categories. Like to see which ones are stinkers or just ok :-)
I recommend Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide To Chess. Was my first chess book, actually given to me by a teacher who also played, and it was more than enough.
The "weird" English notation is descriptive notation. It was used until 1980. I prefer it to algebraic notation. Descriptive notation is more descriptive. Descriptive is only "useless" if you can't read letters.
Hey Mr. Andras, I know it's a bit off-topic but what is your policy on openings? I know you're advocating openings which follow basic principles but how would you recommend improving players (let's say 1600-1800) to actually study them? How much should they study and in what depth? I'd appreciate your answer! Ps I love your content, I went through most of your videos in past 2 months and have both Chessable courses, they're excellent. Greetings from Poland!
Hey Mikolaj, thanks, glad you are enjoying my work! I have made a video about the openings a while ago, look back. If you can't find them, let me know!
I really like the idea of reading chess books written by British authors like Steve Giddins, John Elms, and others whose names I can't presently bring to mind. I get the idea that learning from these authors books should be much easier, because they are British, and write in English too. It perhaps makes writing and expressing themselves easier.
Aljechin's book was probably first published in German as "Meine besten Partien 1908-1923, 1929" and "Auf dem Wege zur Weltmeisterschaft 1923-1927, 1932".
What do you think about 5335 Problems, Combinations and Games by Polgar? For me this book is legendary. I have had mine since 1996 and I have used it over and over though my career from beginner to my current intermediate level. Wonder on your thoughts as a higher player?
Great stuff Andras, thanks so much for the great content. You've said that Perfect Your Chess and John's Nunn's Puzzle Book are best experienced when a bithigher rated, do you happen to have a puzzle book rec for 1500-1800 range?
will you cover artur yusupov 's course? it has a bunch of awards and every chess community talks about it like it's the chess improver' s bible,is it actually worth the 180 USD?
Depending on your playing strength, I wouldn’t recommend buying all 9 or 10 of them right away. Start with the orange books. They are very good books to study.
I have one suggestion: The Chess School: Manual of Chess combinations 1. It is tactics only, no instructions, exercises only, from mates in one, via winning material, up to tre movers. Manual of chess combinations 2 starts with 4 movers and going higher up. The gradually rising level of difficulty is very appealing.
Coach Andreas: Do you have an opinion regarding the nine (9) book series by GM Arthur Yusupov about how to Build Up your chess for players over 1700? Thank you.
I have only recently found your great channe. However I am curious where did you learn such good English . I hear you say mate and reference down under are you actually residing in Australia now and ud so how long have you lived here for ???
First time i see your video…i like it….i was looking for more information about you….complete name where are you from….actual rating. Thanks and congratulations
after watching this video i ordered how to beat dad in chess, endgame strategy and best lesson of chess coach immediately, personally i wont choose these books by its cover. but it was recommended by Andras Toth, it cant be wrong.
I understand that the London is not that great if played exclusively, but is the Trompowsky that bad? It was often played by guys like Julian Hodgson and even Magnus used it in very serious games. It avoid a lot of theory, which is relevant for people like me.
Coach Andras, Thank you for the recommendations. I learn a lot from your videos and bought all your Chessable video courses. Regarding the topic, a book that had huge impact on me: "A first book of Morphy", by Frisco Del Rosario. Would love to hear your opinion. Thank you. Kind regards, G
I've been asking what books I should read on forums and getting no answers. Great timing! I've only read The Amatures Mind. I like it, but I have some trouble applying things like the bishop/knight stuff.
I've bought these books, but I need a little help in how to study them. It's not possible to memorize all these moves. I am currently 800 elo. Any thoughts on how to study them?
Thank you for this video. Good to see that I didn't waste my money picking up the Amateur's Mind. After I finish Build up Your Chess: The Fundamentals I intend to dig into it. I am curious, where would you put the Art of Attack in Chess by Vukovic?
Chess Training for Post-Beginners A Basic Course in Positional Understanding - Yaroslav Srokovski All you need strategy wise for the post beginner and adult improver.
My dad stopped playing chess with me once I defeated him, on our third game. The book I had read was Tartakower's one, of course not how to beat your dad . Red thumb.
