annotated game books for below 1500 players

Just my opinion. When I looked at it in my students years, I just couldn't understand anything. It looked like Nimzo was trying to get his rooks on closed files and I couldn't make any sense of his manoeuvers.

Maybe it's a great book and I just couldn't make any sense of it ?

Suggest a book not on your list: "100 Soviet Chess Miniatures" by P.H.Clarke. It's an old book, published in the early 60s, and the copy I have is in English Descriptive notation. No game lasts longer than 25 moves. Lots of clever tactics and sacrifices, in a variety of openings. The annotations are clear and concise. The book is well organized into twelve sections, a couple of examples are 'king's side attacks' & 'queen sacrifices'. When I bought it many decades ago, I was awestruck and inspired.

+ "200 Open Games " by David Bronstein

re: '100 Soviet Chess Miniatures':  I forgot to mention - the games were FUN!!!

I don't have that book, but Clarke is a great writer.  He explains the ideas behind moves, rather than just giving a list of variations, as many modern writers do.  His books on Petrosian and Tal are also very good.

Sounds like we are talking teens? How much are you willing to spend and on how many books?

Update:

I have read and played through every annotated game book on Heisman's list up to and including Neil McDonald's Chess Success: Planning After the Opening once. I also went ahead and read Masters of The Chessboard by Reti and Best Lessons of a Chess Coach by Sunil Weeramantry, and then through several of Seirawan's Winning Chess Series. I started reading Grooten's book and was highly impressed, but after the first few chapters, I thought it was better served for me after much more tactics training.

In retrospect, I probably should have stopped after the first four books on that list (including the del Rosario Morphy book), and maybe also read Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics, Winning Chess Strategy, and Silmans' The Amateur's Mind, all while training tactics and going through some of the lower-level Chess Mentor courses.

Why did I read those books when I knew full well that "tactics and endgames" are the way to go, especially at my level? I was getting tired of not having any plan when I didn't see checkmate or material gain on the board, and I was disappointed in the instructional books on strategy and attack which were either way too advanced for me or simply didn't make sense with multiple example positions out of context of the previous moves that led to the position.

I now think well-annotated game books do a better job teaching opening principles, strategy/positional play, mini-plans, exploiting weaknesses, pawn-gaining tactics, attack, and practical endgames than purely instructional books (with positions out of the context of a real game) do for the lower-level club player.  

Thanks for everyone's comments. Hope to hear more if anyone has any additional insights or recommendations.

I suggest you also try reading Winning Chess Brilliancies by Seirawan.

Thanks for the input. Just two questions

Did you play the games ussing a real board, or using a PC?

Which was the effect of studying all this books on your real playing strength?

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708111347/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review771.pdf

https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/most-instructive-games-of-chess-ever-played/

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708092945/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review269.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708234047/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review684.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708103902/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/sovietchess.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708233425/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review775.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708233827/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/road.txt

You might find a book of interest in this list.  Books on tactics, strategy and more for players who don't yet have "Master" in their title.  Several annotated games books are given at the bottom of the list.  

Be sure to check out Judit Polgar's books (the first volume of her trilogy is one of my favorites).

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/good-chess-books-for-beginners-and-beyond

Thanks for the additional comments everyone.

To silvester78, if the question was addressed to me...

I played all of the annotated games on my phone rather than on a board or a computer, given the portability and flexibility of the phone with work/family obligations.

As far as my playing strength and how that has been affected by these books:

Objectively, I do not know... I have not played a rated chess tournament in roughly 3 years (around USCF 900 level)... difficult to escape for an entire weekend, though my family is supportive of the chess habit.

Subjectively, basic tactics and endgames are improved some (though I have trained these also, and not just done annotated games). Annotated games have helped me become more aware/appreciative of basic positional concepts such as pawn breaks, weaknesses, sacrificing to open lines/expose the king, etc., but I do not understand these concepts in OTB play, evidenced by the way I beat weaker players... I make many mistakes, they make bigger blunders and fall for unsound sacrifices.

Outside of the games I play online here, I have occasionally played (OTB) a class A player (who I never beat) and a class C player (maybe 1 out 5-7 victories for me). Both players independently (they do not know each other) independently think I am around 1200 or close to it.  A common theme in our "post-mortems" is:

Opponent: "I just don't know how great that [piece or pawn] is on [that square] on [move 7-12] of [an opening that I have no knowledge of beyond move 3-4]."

Me: <crickets chirping> ...uh, okay ... <do I learn basic concepts or do I read about that particular opening? Isn't that the trap I need to avoid...becoming a booked up fish? Being a non-booked up fish isn't much better.>

Another theme is how I am very poor at defending/compensating for weak squares/pawns, while my opponents zero in on them immediately, in fact, almost crudely yet I can't seem to stop them.

Read the best annotated game collections.The Best of the Best 1000 by Chess Informant http://www.chessinformant.org/1000-the-best-of-the-best/ It's not too early to read this book.

@ dannyhume:

Thanks for your detailed answer!

Really suitable for under 1500 rating?

I read Informants before I was 1500 and found them beneficial. Even so, I would recommend other books first. The new Informants, OTOH, have much to offer the C Class player.

http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-new-informants.html

Interesting - thanks.

To the OP:

Of all the books mentioned I have read only 1st  and 2nd and a portion of 5th. No1 is decent, No2 is great and No5 in conjunction with the first volume (My system)of that book should be excelent. I have read the "System" and despite what people are saying I benefited form it (On the pther hand not everyone is objecting this book, for example Peter Svidler has high praise for it, or back in the day Arthur Yusupov pointed that as a suggested reading material in one of his book for beginners). For the rest of the books, I don't know since I never read them. But I can also reccomend you one book that I wrote, since it is suits your rating level.

You can peak inside the first several pages of the book here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ANPQ8GG?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Hello Alexander,

your book looks interesting to a patzer like me! (currently 1600 in correspondence chess on another site - I don't play here).

My advice is to add some note about the author both in the book and on Amazon page to make yourself more credible. FIDE 2100+ is a lot for beginners and intermediates, potential readers of your book.

It is so easy to self-publish books these days, for example this gentleman:

http://www.amazon.com/Mikhail-Cugovsky/e/B007S91JDS

is rated 1500-1600. If the author says nothing about himself, then people are sceptical about buying his books. Since you have nothing to hide, I would directly write a few sentence about yourself and your chess skils.

Personally, I do not like this sentence in the book description "if we are talking about the benefit that might be derived from it , then this book is for players in the 800 -2000 Elo range, because it explains ideas and reasons behind each move and that is what players of that rating need more than long lines given by engines."

Such a wide range of rating sounds suspicious to me, if I were you I would for example add "... but the players around ???? ELO should benefit the most".

Hopefully you will earn some money from this book!

Are you going to publish the book in paperform as well, e.g. on lulu.com?

And what is the origin of your nickname "ChessLessons64"?

To Jarrasch:

Thx for all the input! 

I was planning to make the author's page on amazon, but was waiting to put more titles out. I am working on a workbook that is going to be called "Checkmate in 3", and my idea was to make that page after that book is out. (That book is almost done, since I have been working on it for a while already).

I didn't narrow the rating range further, since I really beleive that most people rated bellow 2000 will really benefit from it. BUt you just gave me an idea about altering that statement so it is more specific, like listing the benefits for each individual rating group (like what is there for people <1400 and what is there for 1400-1700 etc)

So far the there have been 12 copies sold since the book was published (jan 15).

I will offer it in paperback sometime in the future, probably on Createspace.

My nickname on this website, comes form the you tube channel I created that is called "ChessLessons", you can check it out here

Once again thx, a lot for your opinion

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVFPutmUD2FYNHiYZ5TLEcQ