Author: P. Massie
Date: 09:01:19 07/11/03
Go up one level in this thread
With the caveat this is just my opinion, and may not match anyone else's very well... My experience has been that books are of very limited usefulness one you reach a playing strength of 16-1800. By that time you've generally read and understood all the rules, and reading more rules never seems to help. I've known a lot of players stuck at that level for a very long time (as I was myself) who keep on reading more books and never seem to be able to get better. I would recommend a good endgame book, largely for reference. My favorite is Mueller's Comprehensive Chess Endings, but there are others. You need an decent opening reference, whether that be a book like ECO/NCO or a database. At the 1700 level I would suggest the NCO/ECO type books, rather than the more detailed ones. Next you need to decide what your opening repertoire should be. Are you primarily positional or tactical? Do you enjoy learning theory? Do you want to minimize opening theory? Based around these decisions you can get 1-2 more repertoire opening books that match your desired repertoire. And then you just need to spend a lot of time studying games, preferably games in your selected repertoire, and preferably annotated games. You can get these from various books of games, or through a subscription to ChessBase Magazine, or things like that. Chess has some general rules, and a lot of exceptions. Being able to apply the rules requires a high level of technical ability that you don't get from reading books. Only by carefully studying a lot of games, preferably in your selected opening family, do you really learn those things. You mention you can't form a plan. If you frequently play, for example, the Closed Ruy Lopez, then after you've studied a large number of games in that opening you'll suddenly be able to form plans in those openings. It's not magic, but it is a lot of hard work. Unless you're a genius, there's no book that will make you a master. It just takes a lot of focused, hard work. Paul
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