Chess Improvement Plan Without Books? I’ve Got An Idea!
Bad news – as mentioned in my earlier post, I’ve lost all of my chess books that I’ve held close to my heart. I was clueless how to start a chess improvement plan. I’ve relied on these books for honing my skills – thinking method, tactical eye, strategic thinking, etc.
The good news is that I’ve got it all figured out now!
I just remembered that I was once a member of a chess membership site where they offer games annotated by Romanian FIDE Masters, International Masters, and Grandmasters. Fortunately, I can still remember my log-in information.
And after keying in my username and password…VIOLA! I now have 83 heavily annotated and analyzed master games, with quizzes in between the moves, at my disposal. The only question to be answered now is how I am going to use them…what chess improvement and training plan will I use that will get the most out of these annotated games?
I’m yet to figure out, but discovering these annotated games is definitely a good start!
BAD NEWS! My Chess Books Are Missing!
Now unlike many of you, I don’t have myriads of chess books in my library. I don’t have compendiums of opening manuals that cover every variation of the Sicilian Defense, Ruy Lopez, or French Defense. Matter of fact, I don’t have any opening book or manual!
HOWEVER, I can proudly say that the chess books I’ve chosen are of great quality and they provide hours of priceless chess instruction to the serious and improving player.
Re-Assess Your Chess Workbook – Written by world-famous International Master Jeremy Silman, this book will teach you Silman’s well-known imbalance-based way of thinking in chess.
After all, it’s a thinking game. Knowing how to make decisions and think right will make you a far stronger player than reading reams of opening theory.
How To Be A Deadly Chess Tactician – This one is written by a non-master but very strong tournament player David LeMoir. This one has helped me view a chess game and spot tactics and combinations like I haven’t before.
Attack With Tal – Tal has a special place in every chess player’s heart – master or amateur. This guy showed how to play daring, exciting, and speculative chess with his ‘unsound’ sacrifices which dismantled even the almighty Botvinnik! This is your chance to learn how to play and attack like Tal.
I can still remember reading through the games and the corresponding analysis and annotations without a board. It really strengthened my tactical vision and calculation skills.
How Good Is Your Chess & Test Your Chess – In my opinion, these 2 books focusing on move-prediction written by Grandmaster Daniel King go hand-in-hand with Silman’s workbook. These books will challenge you to predict the moves made by the likes of Kramnik, Kasparov, Korchnoi, Svidler, and others masters.
I went through the challenges of this book after getting used to Silman’s way of thinking. It helped me get about 80% of the moves and an overall increase in my playing strength!
These 5 books are all that I have in my VERY small chess library…and they’re all lost now unfortunately. How will I train and improve in chess now that my chess books are gone without a trace? That’s the BIGGEST question.
Chess Instruction Books - What’s In Your Chess Library?
Chess instruction books are all the rage these days! Just check out any online bookstore and you’re sure to find new chess book releases that will teach you…
- How to play the Sicilian
- A sharp opening repertoire for White
- A rock-solid defensive repertoire for Black
- Game collections of Tal, Fischer, Kasparov, and other masters
And the list goes on!
With almost every chess book promising you hours and hours of learning (and sometimes other books even claim to make you a better player in no time!), it’s hard for the average chess player to pick the chess instruction book that would suit him.
That’s especially true if you don’t have…say a personal chess trainer to guide you and find your achilles hills so to speak. So how do you choose your first set of chess instruction books that will help you improve the most?
Unfortunately, there is no definite answer…different chess players have different needs. Some may be fine attackers when they get a wide open and tactical position…but the very same players may be lagging behind the ’strategic’ play department.
Alternatively, you’ll find chess players who can smother you like Karpov…but loses the thread when they’re against someone who sacrifices like a maniac.
However, knowing your strengths and weaknesses as a chess player will surely help you in choosing the right chess instruction books for you. And that means you need to examine 15-20 of your games…in-depth and have someone stronger to look over them to pinpoint your strong and weakpoints.
Looking at my games and the thoughts that were running on my mind while playing them, I found that I’m a chess player who loves a lot of piece activity, loves dictating the tempo of the game even at the cost of a pawn or an exchange.
On the other hand, I hate and don’t know what to do when the position closes. Usually, I ran out of time thinking of a plan to follow…and there are times that I go nuts and sacrifice even if there is no sufficient compensation.
Yeah, I love pretending to be Tal! 
Knowing my strengths and weaknesses helped me pick my first chess books which are:
- Re-Assess Your Chess By Jeremy Silman (As mentioned earlier, I’m having a hard time thinking of a move or plan when there are no tactics around. This book helped me have a concrete thinking method which often times work for me.)
- Attack With Tal (Did I mention I love pretending to be Tal? If I had more time to spend on Chess I would’ve bought Vukovic’s attacking manual. This books introduces you to nice attacking concepts with annotated games to show you how chess masters do it.)
- How To Become A Deadly Chess Tactician (Another book on tactics! If you’re someone who knows how to spot tactics when they are on the board…but don’t know how to create opportunities and positions that support that tactical eye, this book will definitely help you.)
I coupled this with Nigel Davies’ Gambitteer 1 (For White) and 1.e4 For The Creative Attacker.
What about you? What’s in your chess library?
thewanderingpen
