Chess Books - From Beginner to Expert

Here's my list of best books I think would get any adult learner from beginner to expert. Skip to the bottom of the article for the list of books I recommend in bullet form.

Introductory Books

First up is what I think is the best introductory book on the market: Play Winning Chess by Yasser Seirawan. This book does cover the basic rules in the first chapter, but so do countless other books on "how to play chess." What makes this book different is that despite being a beginner book, it presents chess strategy through the framework of Force, Time, Space, and Pawn Structure (which maps roughly onto the more commonly referred to MTQ - Material Time Quality framework) rather than jumping straight into tactics, endgames, basic openings, etc., as most beginner books do. It's important for beginners to be exposed to the idea that positional chess is not just about winning material, promoting a pawn, and checkmating your opponent, but rather about making all the elements of a position fit into your overall plan. This book is the only one I know of that does this on a level that is accessible to an absolute beginner.

To balance Seirawan's high-level approach (Force, Time, Space, and Pawn Structure), I next recommend Jeff Coakley's Chess Strategy for Kids for a detailed and comprehensive introduction to all the basic chess concepts you need to get you to an intermediate level. It covers endgames, tactics, openings, and more and is written in a very fun and accessible manner. The book is organized as a series of "lessons" (covering such things as basic strategy, endgames, openings strategy, etc.) interspersed with fun features on the basic tactics, chess lingo, and more. 

Basic Tactics

Once you've familiarized yourself with the basics and have a good overview of all the parts of the game, as covered in Play Winning Chess and Winning Chess Strategy for Kids, it is time to delve into specific aspects. Many coaches agree that at the beginner to intermediate level, the first thing to focus on is tactics and mating patterns.

There are many good books that teach the basic tactical motifs and mating patterns, but one that I really like because it is filled with inspirational stories is Josh Waitzkin's Attacking Chess. This book will familiarize you with some of the basic tactical motifs like Forks, Pins, Discovered Attacks, etc., and shows these motifs in the context of his own games, backed up by the stories behind those games. It is a fun and inspiring way to learn about these ideas. 

As I've said, there are many introductory tactics books, so it's not necessary that you pick this one in particular (and truth be told, Coakley's Winning Chess Strategy for Kids covers basic tactics as well, so at this point, you can really skip to the puzzle books mentioned in the next section), but I chose this one because I found the stories inspirational and entertaining.

Tactics Puzzle Books

At this point, it's a good idea to get some easy tactics puzzle books to practice the tactical motifs shown in Waitzkin's Attacking Chess or similar instructive book.

An easy first puzzle book is Chess School 1 The Manual of Chess Combinations by Sergey Ivashchenko. This book is also available in two volumes titled Chess School 1a and 1b. The first chapter (which the book calls "stages") is very easy, but they gradually become harder.

Jeff Coakley's series (which begins with Winning Chess Strategy for Kids mentioned above) also has two volumes called Winning Chess Puzzles for Kids Volume 1 and Volume 2, which have fairly easy exercises of the basic tactics but are also filled with other fun features like "Switcheroos" (switch two pieces to make it checkmate) and "Who's the Goof" (figure out what's wrong about a position) that makes the book a little less monotonous. 

Another great puzzle book that is a little bit harder is Chess Tactics for Champions by Suan Polgar and Paul Truong. Each chapter introduces a few examples of the basic tactical motifs and an example or two from Susan's own games, followed by a good number of exercises to practice. The Polgars are strong advocates of training yourself to quickly recognize tactics by doing many puzzles.

Two more books I highly recommend are Murray Chandler's Chess Tactics for Kids and How to Beat Your Dad at Chess. These books take a bit of a different approach from that of Polgar. Instead of presenting a large number of puzzles to practice with, they each show 50 different patterns that come up often and give a few examples that illustrate each. Thus, instead of giving 25 puzzles with pins, it presents several common configurations in which pins often come up (bishop on b4 pinning the knight on c3, rook on e1 pinning the enemy queen to the kind in the center of the board, etc.) and three or four exercises for each. How to Beat Your Dad at Chess does the same for mating patterns (Anastasia's Mate, Arabian Mate, Smothered Mate, etc.).

Another book that is filled with a large number of basic patterns that are worth learning is The Game of Chess by Siegbert Tarrasch. This book is actually a primer on the entire game, covering endgames, middlegames, and openings, but I'm recommending this book for the middlegame chapter alone for the large number of tactical positions it covers. I love the sections on the basic attacking plans - the attack on the g file, the attack on g7, on h7, etc. The section on the opening is also a good survey, though I don't recommend focusing on openings until later. This book is available in algebraic notation from Lou Hays publishing if you can find it.

Basic Strategy and Game Collections

At this stage, once you've mastered the basic tactics (and of course, you should continue to do tactics puzzles regularly to stay sharp and train yourself to notice tactics quickly in your games), you must learn basic strategy. 

A great way to learn chess strategy and understand better how it's applied is by studying the games of masters. Yasser Seirawan's series mentioned earlier has another book, Winning Chess Brilliancies, which covers twelve master games with each move explained in detail. 

This style of game collection in which every move is explained simply at a beginner level was actually done first, and perhaps best by Irving Chernev in his book Logical Chess: Move by Move. This book is an all-time classic. Although Chernev's comments start to get repetitive, the real value of this book is the superbly curated collection of games. Many players point to this book as their first real introduction to some of the most beautiful classics of the master of the past. I consider this book a must-read!

Seirawan's Winning Chess Strategies delves deeper into more specific concepts, like how to win once you have a material advantage, how to stop counterplay, how to place your pieces on superior squares, etc. This book also ends with a chapter with annotated master games that illustrate the concepts. Later, I recommend other books on chess strategy, but this one is special in that it fills a gap in chess literature for books on strategy that is accessible to lower-intermediate players. It might be a little advanced at this point (especially since many of the examples he uses are from more positional games that beginners would not understand), but it's one of the only good books on positional concepts that are written for lower-rated players. The entire series from Yasser Seirawan is made up of seven books (the others being Tactics, Endgames, Openings, and Combinations), but the three I've recommended in this article are, in my opinion, the most essential (the other topics being adequately covered elsewhere).

Intermediate Puzzle Collections

By this point, some of the tactics puzzle books I recommend earlier will start to become too easy. It is important to not only reinforce tactical patterns with easier puzzles that you should start to be able to solve in less than a minute but also to stretch your ability to see more complex tactical combinations. I recommend the following puzzle books.

Winning Chess Exercises by Jeff Coakley completes the set I introduced above. The puzzles in this book are not super hard but are somewhat harder than those in Winning Chess Puzzles.

1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners by Franco Masetti & Roberto Messa, despite the name, can be a bit more challenging for pure beginners. This series from New In Chess also has two more volumes - 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players and 1001 Chess Exercises for Advanced Club Players by Frank Erwich, but these are even more challenging, and at this stage, I think the puzzles in this book are sufficiently difficult.

Also worthwhile is the next volume in Sergey Ivashchenko's series - Chess School 2 The Manual of Chess Combinations. This book has also been released in two volumes - Chess School 2a and 2b. This book also starts easier and gets progressively harder as it moves up through the "stages." The sections with endgame puzzles can be challenging, especially if you haven't yet learned about some basic endgame strategies. In the next section, I'll recommend a good book on endgames, so it might be worthwhile to save this book until after you've started with that.

All the puzzle books I've listed can be used to do daily warmups (5 or 10 puzzles a day) and be worked through on the side while reading through the strategy and game collections I recommend.

Endgames

I saved my recommendations for endgame books until now because many beginners might find endgames intimidating, and basic tactics and strategy are something that comes up more than endgames. But many chess coaches through the years have said that studying endgames is one of the best ways to train your calculation ability and should be done early in your chess learning journey.

There are many good introductory endgame books - one that is recommended a lot (and I mean A LOT, justifiably) is Jeremy Silman's Complete Endgame Course. What's nice about this one is that the chapters are organized by rating level, and you only have to read up to the chapter that applies to you (and if you'd like, one chapter further). Silman is really smart about introducing only the most essential concepts that are necessary at each level and not intimidating as is so common with other books, especially those organized by number and types of pieces rather than difficulty. Sure, the Bishop+Knight mate has far fewer pieces than an endgame with kings and pawns, but Silman is wise to hold off on this mate for a few chapters.

Another endgame book that I think is very well structured and covers all the basics in very comprehensive detail is The Russian Endgame Handbook by Ilya Rabinovich. This book is a bit more comprehensive than Silman's and gives more and better examples, and in my opinion easier to follow if you're going to read it from cover to cover. The choice of first endgame book is a bit of a tossup between Silman and Rabinovich, but I like Rabinovich a little better for beginners wanting a comprehensive course that covers all the basics in fairly deep detail.

Game Collections

I've recommended a couple of game collections earlier, but here are a few more that I highly recommend. Game collections are a fun way to learn strategy while at the same time immersing yourself in chess history and culture.

The first one is a classic - The Art of Checkmate by Georges Renaud & Victor Kahn. Look for the 21st Century Edition from Russell Enterprises if you like to read it in algebraic notation. This book covers mating patterns, like Murray Chandler's How to Beat Your Dad at Chess, with a large collection of classic games.

The next recommendation, Simple Chess by Michael Stean, isn't strictly a game collection as many of the examples use positions taken from the middle of games. Still, the majority of examples do include complete games. This book is a great first book on intermediate strategy - it is a gentler introduction than Silman's widely recommended Reassess Your Chess, which will be mentioned later, and if fairly short, and extremely well written. This book might better be included in the section on "Intermediate Strategy," but it reads much like a game collection and is perfectly appropriate for this stage of your chess education if you're following the order of this list.

Also structured as a game collection, but really is an introduction to intermediate chess strategy (pre-Silman) is Sunil Weeramantry's Best Lessons of a Chess Coach. I highly recommend this book! It walks you through some of the author's (and some masters of old's) games, explaining each move and using the games as the basis to teach fundamental concepts like outposts and dynamics. The concepts covered verge on advanced-intermediate but are presented in a "lesson" format that intermediate players can easily understand. It is almost like getting a private lesson from the author.

Intermediate Strategy

Although the two books just mentioned are the best way to get introduced to intermediate strategic concepts like minor pieces, open files, space, strong squares, etc. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Jeremy Silman's Reassess Your Chess. This book teaches you how to think about positional imbalances and how to make a plan based on the dictates of the position. Many of the concepts in this book will already be familiar if you've read the previous two, but Silman gives a much more complete treatment and offers many more examples. The newest edition is the 4th and is significantly expanded from earlier editions to the point that it is essentially an entirely new book.

Advanced Tactics

Although, at this point, you should be deep into chess strategy, it is important not to forget about tactics. I've recommended some easy and intermediate tactics puzzle books earlier, but at this stage of many chess players' education, they start to realize that the ability to calculate difficult tactics involves more than just a matter of reinforcing pattern recognition.

To become really good at tactical play, it is important to understand your thought process. Alexander Kotov's Think Like a Grandmaster was one of the first to argue this, and since then, several other books have been written about how to calculate. You can seek those out - one I recommend is Jonathan Tisdall's Improve Your Chess now, and many people are fans of  Willy Hendriks's More First, Think Later - but every player will face different challenges and will find that different books will hit on the points that impact each most strongly.

But ultimately, the best way to train calculation is to do puzzles that are sufficiently hard that they stretch your imagination and force you to hone your thought process. The following recommendations are tactics books that are a little more advanced than those recommended earlier.

Martin Weteschnik's Chess Tactics From Scratch rehashes some of the basics covered earlier but slightly more conceptually than in most of the beginner books mentioned earlier. I wouldn't say it is much more difficult than some of those, but it adds many nuances that beginner players might find confusing.

Yakov Neishtadt's Improve Your Chess Tactics covers tactical motifs that go beyond forks, pins, and the other basic ones you learn about at first. It is a good introduction to deflection, decoy, clearance, interference, etc. It is presented as an exercise book and is packed with many examples and exercises.

Emmanuel Neiman's Tune Your Chess Tactics Antenna teaches you how to recognize that a tactical opportunity is present. 

Charles Hertan's Forcing Chess Moves is, for the most part, a tactics exercise collection, but he also tries (only semi-successfully, in my opinion) to frame it within a method for through process. I recommend taking Hertan's talk of "computer eyes," which seems a bit gimmicky, with a grain of salt, but as a puzzle collection, it is an excellent set of fairly advanced tactics that will push you beyond the basics.

Strategy

There are many other strategy books beyond Silman's Reassess Your Chess, but one that I could not leave out is Modern Chess Strategy by Luděk Pachman. He covers essentially the same concepts as Silman, but I find his explanations very easy to follow, and the examples he chooses are excellent. Whether or not Silman's Reassess is enough for you, I highly recommend this one in addition.

There are many other great books on more advanced chess strategy - a few examples that come to mind are Herman Grooten's Chess Strategy for Club Players, Johan Hellsten's Mastering Chess Strategy, and Max Euwe's two-part series The Middlegame - but the ones listed should occupy you for plenty of time, and together with some of the classic game collections of the greats - Morphy, Rubinstein, Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Tal, Keres, Bronstein, Petrosian, Fischer, Karpov, and others should get you to expert level.

In short, go heavy on the tactics puzzle books and game collections (with some of those strategy books to introduce the concepts to you), and you should go far! 

Happy reading!

Summing up, here is my list in bullet form:

• Play Winning Chess by Yasser Seirawan
• Winning Chess Strategy for Kids by Jeff Coakley
• Attacking Chess by Josh Waitskin
• Chess School 1 The Manual of Chess Combinations by Sergey Ivashchenko
• Winning Chess Puzzles for Kids by Jeff Coakley
• Winning Chess Puzzles for Kids Volume 2 by Jeff Coakley
• Chess Tactics for Kids by Murray Chandler
• How to Beat Your Dad at Chess by Murray Chandler
• Chess Tactics for Champions by Susan Polgar and Paul Truong
• The Game of Chess by Siegbert Tarrasch
• Winning Chess Brilliancies by Yasser Seirawan
• Logical Chess Move by Move by Irving Chernev
• Winning Chess Strategies by Yasser Seirawan
• Winning Chess Exercises for Kids by Jeff Coakley
• 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners by Franco Masetti & Roberto Messa
• Chess School 2 The Manual of Chess Combinations by Sergey Ivashchenko
• Silman's Complete Endgame Course by Jeremy Silman
• The Russian Endgame Handbook by Ilya Rabinovich
• The Art of Checkmate by Georges Renaud & Victor Kahn
• Simple Chess by Michael Stean
• Best Lessons of a Chess Coach by Sunil Weeramantry and Edward Eusebi
• How to Reassess Your Chess 4th Edition by Jeremy Silman
• Improve Your Chess Tactics
• Chess Tactics from Scratch by Martin Weteschnik
• Tune Your Chess Tactics Antenna by Emmanuel Neiman
• Forcing Chess Moves by Charles Hertan
• Modern Chess Strategy by Luděk Pachman