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
How To Pick Your Chess Openings
Long before a chess player heads to the chessboard, he is faced with truckloads of problems and questions that he must successfully answer.
“How do I pick my chess openings? What opening strategy or moves should I adapt?” These questions about chess openings are some of the reasons why wood-pushers spend sleepless nights…whether professional or amateur.
If you’re at a loss at how you should go about picking and forming your chess opening repertoire, then you definitely want to read on! Just like you, I was facing the same set of questions back in my early days of chess-playing. Fortunately, I was able to settle down with a chess opening repertoire that has served me well for years now.
Let’s take a look at the questions I asked for forming and choosing my repertoire:
Know Thyself
Looking through games of club-level and non-master chess players, it’s easy to see that majority of them try to ape the openings of great masters like Kasparov, Anand, Karpov, etc.
The result?
Sadly, many of their games are decided not by their choice of opening moves but by simple forks, skewers, pins, and other tactical devices. And worse, these grandmaster-wannabes are on the receiving end of those tactical blows!
Why?
Mainly because they don’t have the understanding necessary to use these chess openings (Sicilian Defense, French Defense, Ruy Lopez, etc.) to their full potential. Much worse, many of these openings don’t suit their style!
Yes, your play-style matters a lot in picking opening moves! True, there are chess players who could play the Sicilian Defense just as well as they could play the Caro Kann Defense. But such players are rare and oftentimes, they’re at the master-level.
Here’s what you should do – take a look at the last 15-20 games you played. And ask the following questions:
What openings did you play as White and as Black?
Did you play 1.e4 or 1.d4 as White?
How did you defend against the King and Queen’s pawn opening as black?
And more importantly, how did you feel about the positions that came up after both sides have developed? Are you jumping for joy when the position is full of tactics? Or do you feel at ease with closed positions where wisely maneuvering your pieces are the main priority?
As for the games you won, how did you win them? Is it by ripping open the position and launching a blistering attack against the enemy king? Or is it by out-maneuvering your opponent and strangling him slowly?
On the other hand, how did you lose the rest of the games? Is it because the position is too open and you can’t cope up with the tactics on the board? Or is it because the position is so closed and you were smothered?
Answering these questions will help you determine what kind of player you are. Roughly, there are 2 types of chess-players. Those who thrive on tactics and those who prefer a more strategic and slow approach.
If you think you’re a tactical player, choosing 1.e4 as White (and perhaps incorporating gambits and sharp openings like King’s Gambit, Max Lange Attack, Goring Gambit, etc.) is in order. True, there are sharp openings that arise from 1.d4 but usually, they result to closed games which are strategic in general.
As for defenses as Black, picking something along the lines of Sicilian Defense, Schliemann Counter-Gambit (against the Ruy Lopez), French Defense, and other counter-attacking openings is the priority.
Here are some recommendations for strategic players who prefer a slow-paced chess game:
White:
- Queen’s Gambit
- King’s Indian Attack (primarily against the French Defense but also works well against the Sicilian, Caro Kann, etc.)
- Ruy Lopez (against 1…e5)
Black:
- Caro Kann (against 1.e4)
- King’s Indian Defense (against 1.d4)
- Ruy Lopez (against 1.e4)
And that’s just to name a few!
Personally, I prefer tactical openings and gambits like:
- King’s Gambit
- Smith-Morra Gambit and Wing Gambit against the Sicilian
- Caro Kann Fantasy Variation (where White would sac the e4-pawn)
- French Wing Gambit
- Sicilian Defense (I almost always go for the …c5, …Nc6, …g6, and …Bg7 setup)
- Scandinavian Defense (I usually follow up the e4xd5 capture with …Nf6 and …c6 sacrificing a pawn)
