Recommend a chess book for beginners.

I recently purchased Jeremy Silman's complete Endgame course and have learned a lot. I think its a good investment. It starts at a basic level covering frequent motifs and gradually increases the difficulty.

I.e. it is divided up into parts for different levels of player so you can keep coming back to it as your chess level increases.

Do the exercise books of the Steps Method (www.stappenmethode.nl/en/index.php), start with step 1 and move your way up.

To the OP:

Looked at a few of your games and your most 'obvious' failing is basic tactics. I would therefore recommended you do Puzzle Streak at least once a day along with the custom theme of mates-in-one (this may sound beneath you but you will get a firm grasp of piece deployment and opponent weakness).

As for a beginners book I would recommend "The Soviet Chess Primer". When you improve your tactics the book will become more and more important to study carefully, and will last for a very long while.

I would also recommended you 'practice' with a dedicated chess computer - this will definitely sort out any low level tactical weakness - and remove the inconsistencies of on-line multiple human opponents (set the level to give you infinite time) as well as give you a relaxed environment to develop your thinking and improvement. Pretty much any chess computer will do as even the simplest are at least >900 rating. Old second-hand chess computers are extremely cheap and many have built in training features, games and puzzle booklets. Don't buy the most powerful one you can afford as this will lead to discouragement even at very low levels!

Treat the chess computer play as your 'training time' and your on-line games as your 'entertainment time'. Find a balance that suits. I would also recommend to measure you improvement against the chess computer rather than any on-line rating - which I think are a bit dodgy/random at low levels.

@AlexiHarvey said in #13:
> To the OP:
>
> Looked at a few of your games and your most 'obvious' failing is basic tactics. I would therefore recommended you do Puzzle Streak at least once a day along with the custom theme of mates-in-one (this may sound beneath you but you will get a firm grasp of piece deployment and opponent weakness).
>
> As for a beginners book I would recommend "The Soviet Chess Primer". When you improve your tactics the book will become more and more important to study carefully, and will last for a very long while.
>
> I would also recommended you 'practice' with a dedicated chess computer - this will definitely sort out any low level tactical weakness - and remove the inconsistencies of on-line multiple human opponents (set the level to give you infinite time) as well as give you a relaxed environment to develop your thinking and improvement. Pretty much any chess computer will do as even the simplest are at least >900 rating. Old second-hand chess computers are extremely cheap and many have built in training features, games and puzzle booklets. Don't buy the most powerful one you can afford as this will lead to discouragement even at very low levels!
>
> Treat the chess computer play as your 'training time' and your on-line games as your 'entertainment time'. Find a balance that suits. I would also recommend to measure you improvement against the chess computer rather than any on-line rating - which I think are a bit dodgy/random at low levels.

Very good and well rounded advice. I dont understand the part of the chess computer, will stockfish do or will i have to get an OTB chess computer?

Steps method starting with Step 1 (www.chess-steps.com/home.php) . Also Peter Giannatos Everyone's 1st Chess Workbook is great.

"... Maizelis’ book [(The Soviet Chess Primer)] is fascinating, especially for the reader interested in chess culture and history, but it is not a primer by any stretch of the imagination.
It’s not just that the knight’s tour is used (18) to help illustrate how the knight moves. Maizelis includes outrageously difficult mate problems in the ‘fun’ section of chapter one, and his account of the theory of corresponding squares (152) belongs in an endgame tome and not here. The breakneck pace of the book and the complex examples preclude me from thinking it appropriate for the beginner. ..."
chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/the-soviet-chess-primer/
"... The title might suggest it is for beginners, but that is not the case. [The Soviet Chess Primer] does start off with some basic positions, but quickly moves on to much more advanced material including chapters on positional play and techniques of calculation." - IM John Donaldson
http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/products/2/231/the_soviet_chess_primer_by_ilya_maizelis/
www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/Soviet_Chess_Primer-extract.pdf

@kindaspongey said in #16:
>"... The title might suggest it is for beginners, but that is not the case. [The Soviet Chess Primer] does start off with some basic positions, but quickly moves on to much more advanced material including chapters on positional play and techniques of calculation." - IM John Donaldson

I'm working through the Soviet Chess Primer and in my experience, I don't think this is entirely accurate. The book is difficult, and if the student has the expectation they're going to start from not knowing the rules of the game and plow through the book, solving all the problems with ease, that expectation is not realistic. That doesn't mean that it's inappropriate for beginners to work through, in conjunction with playing games and working through other resources. Chapter 3 of the Soviet Chess Primer is entitled "Tactics and Strategy". I don't think that would be a great place to learn what "tactics" are, never having seen a knight fork before, but maybe would be good to go through after learning basic tactics from a book like Peter Giannatos's "Everyone's First Chess Workbook" at least once.

Chess books also do not have to be treated like a line to be checked off on a checklist. A student can work at a text, get what they can out of it at the present time, then come back at a later time with a deeper understanding and get more out of it. For example, the Soviet Chess Primer says at the end of chapter 4, on the last problem:

>Try this test. Once you have seen the solution of both these positions, can you work through all the variations in your head, starting from the diagram? If you don't manage to do this the first time, try again later (after six months or a year), to see whether you have begun to calculate variations better.

The first chapter of the SCP is just the rules of the game and how the pieces move. There is no reason a new player couldn't start there, and perhaps continue working through the second chapter. I do think the third chapter is a big jump in difficulty from the first two though.

Boby Fisher teaches chess is good for beginners.

@WatchMeBeBadAtChess said in #14:
> Very good and well rounded advice. I dont understand the part of the chess computer, will stockfish do or will i have to get an OTB chess computer?

It's just my advice to split your time between learning and entertainment. This is hard to do on the same platform and the idea of an old dedicated computer is merely to provide a distinct alternative - otherwise there is a danger that all you actually do is entertainment with the illusion/delusion that you are learning/improving - play to improve doesn't really work imo. Stockfish is extremely strong and it is actually very hard to weaken for beginner's as a result players can become disillusioned, give up and just play people. The old computers start off at a much lower level and can be weaken further - you really want something you can individually tune to beat with difficulty and subsequently step up when needed. At your level pretty much any old dedicated computer would do and there are plenty going for peanuts on sites like eBay etc - go for the cheapest WITH instructions.

Don't however consider a chess computer a must-have, it's just a (novel) suggestion which might appeal to you or not. I just think people have overlooked this possibly and I have seen a lot of people get nowhere by sticking on-line - including myself!

Regards books the best thing to do is get yourself into a public library or bookshop and pick the beginner's book you most like the look of - the one you would be excited to own. That way you're more likely to invest the time and effort needed.

For beginners I would recommend Logical Chess Move by Move by Irving Chernev - because he literally does explain the reasoning behind every move (even 1. e4), and explicitly stating what might seem obvious to more advanced players is absolutely vital for a beginner.