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Top 14 Chess Books for Beginners/Novices

kurtgodden
Nov 25, 2007, 8:15 PM | c 21

We play chess because it seduces our intellect, is an analogue to life itself, and represents the
ever-elusive quest for mental and emotional elegance.

At least that’s why I play chess.  You might just play it because you enjoy beating the hell out of
some loser.  In any case, we share the desire to improve our game.

The best way to learn something is to get battered by doing it wrong, then do it again with the
wisdom of your bruises.  (The second best way to learn something is to teach it, by the way. ) 
But the best way to learn is not necessarily the most efficient, and I personally don’t have
enough time left on this earth to imbibe the complexities of chess by self-discovery.  So I have
opted for the most efficient way, which is a combination of study and over-the-board play.  The
first is science, and the second engineering. 

I will preface this column by saying that I have read (or am in the process of reading, as noted)
all of the books on this list.  I will present them in the order that I wish I had read them, since
some would have prepared me to understand others more effectively.  So let’s get to the list,
and I’ll explain the reasons for these choices as we go along.

1. “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess” by, strangely enough, Bobby Fischer, the first and only official
American World Chess Champion, co-authored by S. Margulies and D. Mosenfelder.  This is a
good beginners book and spends most of its time on the end game, rather than the opening or
the middle game.  This may seem odd, but many people advocate learning the end game first. 
BFTC will introduce you to the basic patterns of mating, and, as if by educational osmosis, it will
also begin to instill a sense of tactics into your game.  The book is a bit odd since it uses what is

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called ‘programmed instruction’, rather than a normal prose book.   While programmed
instruction is not found much these days, it remains a fine instructional format.  Bantam Books,
1972.  You can find it in all bookstores in the games section.

2. “Pandolfini’s Ultimate Guide to Chess” by Bruce Pandolfini, the personal trainer of Josh
Waitzkin, the child chess prodigy and subject of the wonderful chess film “Searching for Bobby
Fischer”, after the book by the same name.  (Read that too, by the way, just for fun.)  PUGtC is
written as a hypothetical dialogue between a student and a chess instructor, and covers a single
game, move by move with the omniscient teacher explaining a multitude of chess concepts to
the beginning patzer.  It includes some fun appendices.  The one highly irritating thing about
this book for me is the fact that they never conclude to an emotionally satisfying mate the game
that covers 23 moves in over 300 pages!  Fireside Books, 2003.

3. “Logical Chess: Move by Move” by Irving Chernev.  Chernev is, in my oh-so-humble opinion,
the best of the classic chess authors of the 20th century.  There is a new edition of this text in
algebraic notation.  Make sure you get that edition so you don’t suffer the annoying English
descriptive notation that I had to endure in the 1957 edition by Simon & Schuster.  Chernev
walks you through 33 complete actual master-level games and explains every single move in
every single game.  Ever feel baffled by some non-descript pawn move in a master game you’ve
looked at?  Chernev will clarify the mystery for you.

4. Now that you’ve had some exposure to basic ideas, you are ready to expand your chess
knowledge.  I recommend another book by B. Pandolfini called “Weapons of Chess”, which is
organized alphabetically and will introduce you to important concepts like bad bishops, pawn
structure, passed pawns, positional play, and so forth.  Fireside, 1989.

5. With the previous book you will be in a good position to better understand the wondrous
teachings of the best contemporary chess author (at least for beginners/novices) – Jeremy
Silman.  His clever book “The Amateur’s Mind” explores actual remarks from his own beginning
students about a position and their choice of move, going on to explain where their errors are. 

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Chances are, you will make similar errors, and Silman will sound as if he is speaking to you. 
You will get introduced to Silman’s important notion of imbalances, and the importance of
understanding imbalances.  2nd edition, Siles Press, 1999.

6. Now you will be ready for some fun, by which I mean tactics!  With tactics you will begin to
appreciate the creativity of a good player, and with a basic knowledge of tactics you can
understand when it is beneficial to sacrifice your pieces and come out ahead!  There are lots of
good texts on tactics, generally written by acknowledged chess masters.  One such text is the
classic “Winning Chess” by Chernev and Fred Reinfeld.  I read an old, yellowing copy published
in 1948 by Simon & Schuster, but you can still get it new at Amazon.  Puzzle books are also
mainly tactical in nature, and an old classic that you can still pick up in bookstores is “1001
Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations” by Fred Reinfeld (same guy as previous book). 
Sterling [my middle name] Publishing, 1955.  I’m still in the process of going through these
puzzles.  Some are easy, and some are damned hard.  However, as good as these books are, the
BEST BOOK on tactics was NOT written by a master.  I am referring to “Predator at the Chess
Board: a Field Guide to Chess Tactics” by Ward Farnsworth, a law professor at Boston
University.  It is available in two volumes (http://www.lulu.com/content/632810) or you can
access it online in HTML format at http://www.chesstactics.org/.  It is very long, but there
is a diagram for every page, and it is extraordinarily easy to read.  I love this book.  It should be
on everyone’s list.

7. If you liked the Silman book recommended above (#5), you will swear by his other book
“How to Reassess Your Chess”.  This is a magnificent middle-game book and will go into much
more depth on the topics introduced by book #4 with much insightful commentary.  Silman
goes into his ideas of imbalances in great detail here, but it is surprisingly easy to read.  3rd
edition, Siles Press, 1993.

8. Next is a book I’m currently reading, but I wish I had discovered earlier.  It is “How to Choose
a  Chess Move” by Andrew Soltis.  Don’t look for an algorithm that you can follow, but do look
for sound advice that will ring true to the concepts you’ve read about in Silman and others. 
Batsford, 2005.

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9. If you’ve made it this far, then you are already a serious student of chess.  I congratulate you
and offer my condolences to your significant other.  My next recommendation is the classic “My
System” by Aron Nimzowitsch.  Make sure you get the so-called “21st Century Edition”, which
was actually published by Hays in the 20th century.  Go figure.  Since1925, this book has been
the classic reference for positional play, a concept that revolutionized chess thinking over the
past century or so.  It is still easily accessible to the beginner/novice and will give you more
depth on some topics covered by Silman, such as overprotection and isolated d-pawns. 

10. And speaking of Silman (I just was), the next book is yet another of his.  “The Complete Book
of Chess Strategy”, Siles Press, 1998, is another text organized alphabetically within four
organizing sections that cover the Opening, the Middle Game, the End Game and a final section
on Practical Matters that discusses tournament play.  The openings section covers no less than
45 different openings, albeit in abbreviated form.  Don’t try to memorize these.  You are smarter
than that.  Work your way through them, and try to internalize the concepts in the light of your
previous studies.  Then when you encounter them in your games, you’ll be equipped to reason
your way through them, even if you don’t have them memorized.

11. By this point you have read 10 fine texts, and have laid the groundwork for more advanced
study.  But first, why not another classic by Irving Chernev?  “The Most Instructive Games of
Chess Ever Played” is another one of those books that I’m currently reading, and which explains
every move of 62 highly instructive games.  Why he chose 62 games and not 64 is one of the
great, unsolved mysteries of chess literature.  Published by Dover in 1965, but I think there’s a
newer version in algebraic format that would be easier to read.  If you search, you can find all 62
games on the web.  Just download them and view in your favorite chess game engine as you
read. 

12. Once you are at this point in your chess studies, you are probably actually making it to the
endgame, as opposed to getting mated in the middle game, or even (embarrassing though it
may be) the opening.  So you need to firm up your end game knowledge, and for this there are
many good books.  I recently saw a new endgame book by Silman, which I expect is quite good,
but I have not read it.  I am in the middle of studying “Pandolfini’s Endgame Course”, mainly
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during my lunch breaks since each little mini-lesson occupies just a single page and can be
digested concurrently with my sandwich.  You really do need to understand the diagonal of the
pawn, the notion of kingly opposition and the Lucena position if you want to beat the other
woodpushers at the club.  Fireside Chess, 1988.

13. The book I recommend for the lucky 13th spot is no less than the highly-regarded reference
“Modern Chess Openings”, 14th edition, commonly referred to as MCO-14 by Nick de Firmian. 
If you are old enough, you had better take a double shot of bourbon before opening it up at the
local Borders bookstore because it is not for the faint of heart.  It consists of over 700 pages
densely packed with hundreds of tables of openings variations with almost no commentary. 
Just lists of moves. To be more precise, I have counted and/or estimated that MCO-14 contains
no less than 265  tables, containing about 1,590 opening variations of perhaps a dozen moves
each (for each side), or roughly 30,000 individual moves in total.  And if that weren’t enough,
each of the 265 tables contains a page or more of dense footnotes to the variations that list
additional lines of play. As I said, make the bourbon a double before you crack this tome open.  I
once read a biography of Bobby Fischer, who remarked, in response to a question about what
he would teach a student if he were ever to give chess lessons, that for the first lesson he would
tell his student to study every variation of every opening in MCO, including footnotes.  And for
lesson two he would tell them to repeat the exercise.  After the initial impulse to laugh, I could
only admire him for that response, because I realized that, in all likelihood, he had done exactly
that himself.  MCO-14, McKay Chess Library, 1999.

14. After you finish learning MCO and are ready for some lighter fare, go track down a copy of
“The Oxford Companion to Chess” by David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, if you can find it. 
Published by Oxford University Press in 1984, this is a marvelous reference work, and includes
brief biographies of all the great chess masters, summaries of openings, history of the game,
descriptions of chess variants, origins of the moves, and all manner of esoterica, such as the
estimate that there are more distinct 40-move games of chess (25 x 10^115) than there are
electrons in the universe (10^79).  Enjoy the book while relaxing with a bourbon.  You earned it.

Addendum added on Dec 7, 2007:  A good friend of mine (who's MUCH better than me, also
mentioned that a very good series of books for beginners is the group of "Winning Chess"
books written by Yasser Seirawan.  I have not read them, but I have heard that they are very
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good from others, too.  I see that I'm starting to get several people reading this blog, so please
let me know if you have any requests for topics.  I'm not an expert, but I do have a lot to say to
beginners and novices.  -KG

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