Chess Books

Nearly 400 quick tactics puzzles. Fourth and last book in Better Chess series. (3rd is Your Move.) This one is the hardest, perhaps suited to players rated 1200-1500 USCF. If you're at the high end, these are good as quick drills.

Was very cheap as a new book, so look for it.

This book offers an entertaining way to test your skills and train yourself with 300 positions taken from actual games.

I loved this book because you don't need to have a chessboard at hand, you just try to solve the problems looking at the position diagram on the book. This alone is a good training for your brain, helping to develop the capacity to think ahead and visualize combinations in your head, after all when one is in an actual game you have to be able to analyze positions and visualize moves and combinations.

I truly believe anyone can benefit from exercising his analytical and visualization abilities.

This book offers an entertaining way to test your skills and train yourself with 300 positions taken from actual games.

I loved this book because you don't need to have a chessboard at hand, you just try to solve the problems looking at the position diagram on the book. This alone is a good training for your brain, helping to develop the capacity to think ahead and visualize combinations in your head, after all when one is in an actual game you have to be able to analyze positions and visualize moves and combinations.

I truly believe anyone can benefit from exercising his analytical and visualization abilities.

The majority of my review of "Winning Quickly With White" applies here. The main exception being that in this book, you guessed it, Black is victorious with Mate or with White resigning. That volume as well as this one contains 100 complete games. Here are the variations for this book. It's rather lengthy :)

1) Ruy Lopez: Schliemann Defence, Cozio Defence, Steinitz Defence, Classical Defence, Berlin Defence, Exchange, Steinitz Defence Deferred, Moller Defence, Rubenstein Defence 5...d6, Closed (Centre Attack) and Marshall Attack

2) Other Open Games: Giuoco Piano, Two Knights Defence, Scotch Game, Four Knights Game, Ponziani Opening, Philidor Defence, Petroff (Russian) Defence, Latvian Gambit, Centre Game, King's Gambit and Vienna Game

3) Sicilian Defence: Dragon, Richter-Rauzer, Sozin (Leonhardt), Sveshnikov, Four Knights, Taimanov, Paulsen and Closed

4) French Defence: Exchange, Advance, McCutcheon, Winawer and Tarrasch

5) Caro-Kann Defence: Tartakower-Nimzowitsch (Forgacs), Bronstein-Larsen, Panov-Botvinnik Attack, Goldman-Spielmann, and 2 unnamed variations.

6) Other Semi-Open Games: Pirc Defence (Austrian Attack and Byrne), Alekhine Defence (Balogh, 1 unknown and Scandinavian) and Scandinavian Defence

7) Queen's Gambit: Accepted, Declined (Tarrasch-Von Hennig-Schara Gambit and Tarrasch proper), Slav Defence, Semi-Slav (Marshall Gambit) and Albin-Counter Gambit

8) Indian Defences: Nimzo-Indian, Queen's Indian, Catalan Opening, Budapest Defence, King's Indian Defence and Grunfeld Defence.

9) Other Closed Games: Torre Attack, Trompowsky Attack, Dutch Defence, English Opening, Reti Opening, Bird Opening and Sokolsky Opening

I picked this book up for a few years ago as a more thorough introduction to Chess openings. 50 books later i still pull this off the shelf on occasion. All games are complete or with Black resigning with Mate soon to follow. To this day i get disappointed if an Opening Chess book doesn't have at least SOME complete games. I have a small minority that have no complete games and to me that's a shame. This book won't teach a lot of opening theory, but it will expose the beginner/novice to numerous openings. It's instructional for all concerning possible piece sacrifices and various traps. The 9 chapters are very well organized. I find it very helpful if variations or move orders are included in reviews before buying. Since there are so many variations i'll list them but won't include move orders. A good chess program should help locate them. (like Chessvision). This is rather lengthy :)

1) Ruy Lopez: Schliemann Defence, Bird Defence, Steinitz Defence, Classical Defence, Berlin Defence, Exchange, Steinitz Defence Deferred, Moller Defence, Open and Anti-Marshall 8.a4

2) Other Open Games: Giuoco Piano, Evans Gambit, Two Knights Defence, Scotch Game, Four Knights Game, Philidor Defence, Petroff (Russian) Defence, Latvian Gambit, Bishop's Opening, King's Gambit and Vienna Game

3) Sicilian Defence: Dragon, Sozin Attack, Richter-Rauzer, Najdorf, Najdorf Poisoned Pawn, Najdorf Polugayevsky, Pin (Counterattack), Nimzowitsch-Rossolimo Attack, Hyper-Accelerated Dragon (Hungarian) and Closed

4) French Defence: Advance, Rubenstein, Chatard-Alekhine Attack, McCutcheon, Winawer and Tarrasch

5) Caro-Kann Defence: Tartakower-Nimzowitsch (Forgacs), Steinitz, Panov-Botvinnik Attack, Two Knights and 2 unnamed variations.

6) Other Semi-Open Games: Pirc Defence (Austrian Attack), odd Pirc variations, Modern Defence, Alekhine Defence (Exchange, Four Pawns Attack and Scandinavian), Scandinavian Defence and Nimzowitsch Defence.

7) Queen's Gambit: Accepted (Classical-Steinitz and Bogolyubov), Declined (Orthodox Defence-Rubinstein, Cambridge Springs and Grau-Sahovic Defence), Slav Defence (Krause Attack), Semi-Slav (Botvinnik System), Chigorin Defence and Albin-Counter Gambit

8) Indian Defences: Nimzo-Indian, Queen's Indian, Catalan Opening, Budapest Defence, King's Indian Defence and Grunfeld Defence.

9) Other Closed Games: Trompowsky Attack, Dutch Defence, English Opening, Reti Opening, Bird Opening and Sokolsky Opening

This book is a little old now for an opening manual and has been superseded by Raetsky and Chetverik's Everyman title, but it's still a better choice as an introduction. It's organized around example games, but there is a good variation index, and significant sidelines are annotated within the games in almost as much detail as the main games themselves. That said, there is a lot of room given to prose explanations of strategies and plans, which means that players new to the Catalan can appreciate the ideas even when playing slightly different move sequences. Dunnington chooses a conservative repertoire, including the infamous Bg5 drawing line loved by GMs such as Andersson. However, alternatives are frequently given, and some of the variations (e.g. against the early ...c5 by Black) are wild and hairy. Make no mistake, the Catalan really is a reversed Grunfeld. The introduction contains advice about transpositions to the Bogo-Indian and Tarrasch, but doesn't go very deep.

Ward writes with humor, yet his explanations are lucid and insightful. If you don't play the Dragon but want to, this is the book to get.

Robert Bellin is one of the best chess writers there is. Everything he has done (Test Your Positional Play, the "Mastering" opening series, etc.) is of the utmost instructional content. He never forgets that he is teaching you. This book on the Dutch is as good as his other stuff. He guides you along so that you can play the opening with confidence and understanding, cognizant of the risks, the rewards, the plans for bothe sides, and everything else you need to play an opening. The Dutch is a great, exciting opening. It was what Morphy played most against 1. d4. Get this book.

A few years ago I was struggling with my defense against 1.e4; I was playing 1...e5 and usually facing against the Ruy Lopez Chigorin variation, the Vienna game, King's Gambit, Scotch Game, etc. My results were nothing to be proud of, especially with the Ruy Lopez (Spanish), since besides losing a fair amount of games, I would end up playing defensively most of the time, and suffering slowly while getting smothered by my opponents.

That is when Silman came to my rescue. Imagine my excitement when I saw the title of this book, which promised to solve all my problems against e4. Once I started playing this opening, which by the way is the Sicilian Accelerated Dragon, most of my problems disappeared. I started finding myself in situations in which I was attacking my opponents, instead of defending all the time and my record (and consequently my rating) improved considerably.

Silman does an outstanding job in presenting the main ideas of this opening and in providing concrete lines without cluttering them with an abundance of variations. This can be done because he is writing for the player playing black, and therefore, just presents the best line for black and only variations according to what white chooses to do. There are a few cases in which he offers a couple of different alternatives for black, and the choice depends on how aggressive you want to be on a specific game. For example, at one point he says "11...Rd8 is perfect for those players who hunger for violence..." and if you are not one of those you would pick the other option, which in that case was 11...b6.

There are several reasons for choosing the Accelerated Dragon as your choice against e4. If you are an intermediate player, say between 1500 and 1800, you will see that your opponents are used to playing against the Dragon, but not against the Accelerated Variation. This means that when they try to follow the usual plans, they will get some nasty surprises. Besides that, Silman focuses on lesser known lines that provide excellent counterplay opportunities; for example, against the Maroczy Bind, he picks the Gurgenidze variation, and against the Smith-Morra Gambit, a solid line that will leave white praying to get at least some compensation for his pawn.

The main lines covered in this book are the Classical Line (7.Be2), what Silman calls the Weekend Variation (7.f3), Lines with 7.Bc4, Early Nxc6 Lines, the Maroczy Bind (when white plays 5.c4), the Rossolimo Variation (3.Bb5), Closed Lines (2.Nc3), the Alapin Variation (2.c3), the Smith-Morra Gambit (3.c3), the Grand Prix Attack (2.f4) and Other Rare Variations like the Wing Gambit or 2.g3.

It is a shame that the publisher of the book (Chess Digest) has closed for business some time after Ken Smith, the Fide Master who owned it, died. I am not sure what the other options for buying this book are, but I hope somebody comes out with a new edition soon. This can help a lot of players that are having trouble facing 1.e4 with black!

Gambit books have two titles written by correspondence players. the first claims to have analysed many queen's pawn games to a forced win for white, the other is a superbly annotated collection of dynamic games. While the first (berliner's 'the system') is a dud, the second (this book) is one of the best books gambit have published, it just avoids the eye at tournament book stalls because it is a)correspondence chess b)non-descript in appearance.

The chess is breathtaking, and like dvoretsky says (and dvoretsky you can trust on these matters) there are many useful ideas in these games, i myself returned to playing e4 after reading this book. Not only is the chess wonderful the annotations are excellent too, and the prose and stories extremely readable. one of the best game collection i own along with taimanov's best games, smyslov's 125, tal's life and games and keres road to the top (and i own about 20 collections in all).

Don't make the mistake of buying the dud, buy the masterpiece instead