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@Arka Mukherjee, I find most players under 2100 weak tactically, so at 1200, you are certainly weaker than you understand you are. I do not say that to be mean, but just as a very logical person, who has been a reasonably strong player for over 30 years.
At your level, memorizing theory is mostly a waste of time. In 40 years of playing, I cannot tell you ...
33
Mihail Marin simply missed that 1.Ng6 is winning, even faster than 1.Qg6. During opening analysis, and even during a game, sometimes when you find a satisfying continuation you forget to follow Lasker's advice and look for an even stronger one.
This is a slight mistake in his analysis, but his evaluation of the variation remains correct (White is winning, ...
26
Basically, no.
It was co-authored by Stuart Margulies and Don Mosenfelder, and while Fischer may have contributed a little, it is generally accepted that he just lent his name to the project.
Soltis, Andrew (2003). Bobby Fischer Rediscovered. B.T. Batsford Ltd. p. 10. ISBN 0-7134-8846-8.
21
There is not opening that usually paves the way for a queen trade. There are plenty of specific lines that allow for it, but it takes cooperation from your opponent.
The first line that comes to mind is hugely popular at the GM level: The Berlin in the Ruy Lopez.
[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. d4 Nd6 6. Bxc6 dxc6 7. dxe5 Nf5 8. ...
19
This is not a book review, nor is it an opinionated account of the method. I've never really used this method per se, but have read/heard about it,
so hopefully my rough summary here doesn't do disservice to the merits of the method.
The Dorfman method is a two-fold scheme for finding good moves.
The static elements
The first fold is the static elements ...
17
This depends on a lot of things, but most importantly: your playing level and the topic.
For example, if it is an opening book, it heavily depends on the opening. Some opening variations which are main stream today, didn't even exist in the seventies, or were rarely used (like the Berlin Wall in Ruy Lopez). Others haven't seen that much development (QGD, ...
13
There are two excellent modern surveys of openings: Sam Collins' Understanding the Chess Openings and Paul van der Sterren's Fundamental Chess Openings. They both cover every major opening, demonstrating the main ideas and variations. I would start with Collins, since it is shorter and easier to read through in its entirety, but both are highly recommended.
12
The International Chess Congress, St. Petersburg, 1909 is a classic by World Champion Emanuel Lasker was written in 1910 and is in the public domain.
[EDIT] ISBN: 1888690097, can be viewed online or downloaded in PDF at http://archive.org/details/internationalche00lask
12
First of all, there is no method that will just make you half an Elo point stronger each and every day. Chess improvement usually happens in leaps and bounds with long phases of seeming stagnation in between.
The reason you feel overwhelmed is that you focus on the result instead of the process. And you realise that between the desired result and your ...
12
I think there are number of reasons why these are so popular:
It is easy to start learning openings. You can read about ideas and memorize some lines. It is not so easy to learn middle game or end game in similar fashion.
A lot of players want to get an edge from the start- hence the focus on openings.
People enjoy reading them
They are easier to write than ...
12
Your first task should be to get better at tactics. It's one thing to understand what a pin is and why it works, for example, but it's quite another to be able to spot the circumstances under which it's advantageous for you to use it.
So my first advice to you would be to work out solutions to tactical puzzles found in books or software. There's a series of ...
11
A book often recommended to beginners is Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev. It contains 33 games with text explanations for every single move.
Dan Heisman also recommends other books in his web site, here are a few:
Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking - Neil McDonald
A First Book of Morphy by del Rosario
Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever ...
11
Since you are a 1400, Silman's book is the way to go. His book will give you the solid endgame foundation that you need. Only once you read his book up to "Endgames for Class A" should you get the other book.
11
You might be looking for two separate, but related types of books.
First, and I have an extensive library, I could find no books that do not organize the openings somewhat by sub-variation. The problem is that the ideas between various sub-variations of a specific opening, like the French, are just too different to lump into one chapter, so the answer to ...
11
"The Method in Chess" is a regressive scale of factors that you can use to evaluate a position. Here they are in order:
King safety, which is more important than all the others combined.
Material, and various material correlations, like Q+N vs. Q+B. He also goes into a new one B+B+N vs. B+N+N, and which pieces you should aim to trade off.
Who has the better ...
10
Learn Chess by John Nunn. A highly respected chess author. Do not be put off by the title!
Silman's Complete Endgame Course by Jeremy Silman. A modern classic, improvement in the endgame will improve your whole game, I should recommend studying up to the Part Five then saving the rest for later.
Tactics Time! by Tim Brennan and Anthea Carson. Tactics is an ...
10
To me one move was clear -
Nxd5
But after 1...cxd5 2.Rc7, although the knight is pinned for a move, Black can easily unpin it by moving the queen to d6, d8, e6, or e8. In fact, the knight is not even fully pinned - Black could move it to c5 and force a queen trade. You've sacrificed the knight for a pawn, and get no lasting pin.
Why 1. ......
10
at 1200 I strongly believe You are wrong about all your core assumptions about your understandings; or if you really have those strategic/positional understandings you must start to do tactics - at least 1h of puzzle solving per day will make best improvement for 1200 player anyway.
and forget about spending time on theory until you are at least 1800, ...
9
I'm not familiar with the book itself, but for learning pawn structures it isn't important to memorize every single thing. The key is to understand the general ideas behind each structure. E.g.: what are the main plans, which pawns are weaknesses, what squares work well as outposts for pieces, can the structure be changed as the game goes on, etc.
Knowing ...
8
Winning Chess Strategy for Kids by Coakley is EXACTLY what you want.
Barely a few pages explaining basics. Then tons of practical content that even adults will find useful. Wastes no time in getting intermediate lessons in strategy/tactics presented in an astonishingly kid-friendly way. :)
8
Tim Harding's The Kibitzer column on Chesscafe.com recently had an article about finding old chess books online. Basically he goes to Google Books and Forgotten Books, and searches for chess. See the article for details.
In the article, he says he's found the following old chess books this way, although whether they are available to you or not depends on ...
8
Well, Aaron Nimzowitsch wrote a book called "My System" in the late 1920's, and it's still worth reading today, so just because a book is old doesn't mean it's bad.
It's hard to say whether a book has stood the test of time just knowing what year it was published, but one thing is for sure: many lines can be faulty, as computers were not used to verify ...
8
They are both great, I agree that you should get both.
Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual is perhaps more instructive since it has slightly more explanatory text and tries to organize the material around rules for reader to learn, while Fundamental Chess Endings has more examples in about the same number of total pages. They both focus on practical examples from ...
8
1939: White to Play and Win by Weaver Adams. Adams believed that 1.P-K4 (1.e4) wins by force. In this book he presents his recommendations for White against the various Black defenses. For example, against 1...e5 he recommended the Bishop's Opening 2.Bc4. He continued to revise his system and write more books, e.g., he switched from 2.Bc4 to 2.Nc3 in his ...
8
I can copy the diagram on a board or simply on my computer (and do not
move the pieces), but I wonder whether I should.
It is very much worth while setting up a board and following the game on the board. But you should go beyond just passively playing out the moves on the board. You should stop after each move and actively consider what you would play next ...
7
It's a bit old, but I cut my teeth on "Chess Fundamentals" by former world champion JR Capablanca. Moreover, it's one of the few books in the public domain, so you can access it online.
7
You can find more books at the following sites:
http://chesszone.org/lib/lib.html
http://www.chessville.com/downloads/ebooks.htm
http://www.chessmaniac.com/chess_ebooks/index.shtml
http://books.google.com/books?lr=&q=chess&as_brr=1
7
I was asking myself who else tried to use Kmoch's terminology; I never find in my books other authors using most of his terms (only some of them).
I am probably the only guy who thinks that the terminology is useful. We all are used to works like "candidates", "Luft", "Zugzwang", "passed pawns", "pawn chain". We could also say that these terms are not ...
7
I believe it helps to focus more on enjoying the game rather than learning. If you enjoy the game, you learn a lot in the process.
So, my advice would be to enjoy your chess. Find players that are roughly your skill level and play many games. Once you've played a few dozen games, you will gain some experience and then you will be ready to start learning ...
7
There are several excellent books covering the French Defense.
Unfortunately, you cannot avoid complications, despite how much you want to, there are going to be complications, just because you play this line, doesn't mean the game can't somehow explode into a tactical mess.
Also how can you be a French player if you don't want to play the critical f7-f6 ...
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