Quality Chess Book

What order would be recommended for study of the followin?

http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/products/13/197/classics/

  My System by Aron Nimzowitsch

  Chess Praxis by Aron Nimzowitsch

  Questions of Modern Chess Theory by Isaac Lipnitsky

  Soviet Middlegame Technique by Peter Romanovsky

  Soviet Chess Strategy by Alexey Suetin

  The Soviet Chess Primer by Ilya Maizelis

The only one of those I read is 'My System', and I read it years before I was ready for it lol

I am concentrating almost completely on tactic problem books which is what I should have done before 'my system'. Its a great positional play book but I would have got a lot more from it if I were more versed in the chess alphabet...board, squares, files, diagonals, pins, decoys, etc.

Two of my favorite tactics books I am using for training:

'1000 Checkmate Combinations' by GM Viktor Henkin

'Improve Your Chess Tactics' by Yakov Neishtadt

When I'm done with the bread and salad maybe I will be ready for the meat and potatos ;)

@Lt_Jilli: How did you learn? You're fairly well advanced.

@SonofaBishop67: Thanks for the recommendations. I'm not going to touch My System til I get a lot better and read more basic books.

That's it? Do you analyze your games?

The Soviet Chess Primer should definitely be the first of those.  Don't know about the rest.  

@Lt_Jilli: How do you do it? I tried a few times, but don't really know what I'm doing.

@:Blotk: Yep, that much I do know. Studying it now. It begins with how the pieces move, but quickly heats up. Should not be a beginners first book, but it seems the place to start from the list above.

Correct, it is first book to be read among the books with "Soviet" in the title if the student is sticking with the Quality Chess Book publisher.

I wasn't impressed by Soviet Chess Strategy by Alexey Suetin, as my Amazon review reveals.  Suetin is a fine author, but the book is an uneven collection or articles in book form.

I am not familiar with the first book, but Neishtadt's is excellent for learning the different tactical themes from deflections to decoys.  Interestingly, Improve Your Chess Tactics is an expanded and reprinted edition of Test Your Tactical Ability published by Batsford in the early 1990s.  It is from this earlier work that I learned a great deal about tactics, and Improve Your Chess Tactics is even better.

Questions of Modern Chess Theory by Isaac Lipnitsky

This book is legendary, even the preface written by Karpov is epic. Get this book, you won't regret 

If a student is at the right stage of his understanding of the game, then Nimzowitsch's My System followed by Chess Praxis is appropriate.  Despite glowing reviews, the Quality Chess translation of My System has been questioned by the scrupulous reviewer, John Watson.  You can read the review here.  He makes a good case using quotes from the book.  It's as if the translator tried to keep the German syntactic structure in English.

For the most part, I still like the McKay or Phillip Hereford edition; it is in descriptive notation, but that makes no difference to me.  For those who prefer algebraic, the Lou Hays edition of My System and Chess Praxis is available, but the flavor of Nimzowitsch's writing is more or less lost.

These two books should be followed up by the Gambit publication, Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy: Advances since Nimzowitsch by John Watson, but also Jacob Aagaard's Quality Chess publication Excelling at Chess.  They are both award winning books that take different approaches to the modern game, namely rule independence versus deeper, more advanced theory that still has its rules.

OK, all of these (with the possible exception of Soviet Chess Strategy by Alexey Suetin) are going into my queue. I think I'll delay some of the more advanced works a bit (e.g., Aagaard) and insert more basic books ahead of less basic ones.

You seem to be caught in the trap of constantly trying to figure out what the  best books and openings are and not actually doing anything.

You seem to waste a lot of time making off-topic comments...more than most. You should use that time study chess instead...unless the comment is useful and not off-topic.

I'm curious. How do you figure that I don't actually "do anything?" Are you asking, or do you have me on camera?

Every day (almost) I do something from the chess.com Study Plan (right now that means Chess Mentor - Tactics). I do three tactics problems on another site, and one endgame study. Then I go to Tactics Trainer on this site and, with the timer and ratings off, do three more tactics problems. I review all of these tactics problems (from both sites) a few times until I can do them in my head and fully understand them. Then I analyze and make moves in games (online turn-based and vote chess). After that, I do the Daily Puzzle. I then carefully go through the youtube explanation video of an old Daily Puzzle, after first trying to solve it myself. Then I carefully study a portion of a book (right now The Soviet Chess Primer) with two boards side-by-side (one for the mainline and one for sidelines). I watch one video (or a portion online) -- for example, a ChessNetwork video.

Late at night when I am tired, like now, I feed yellow trolls with big noses. I'm starting to troll myself, now.

Does that satisfy you? I should step it up, because I just came off an 8-month chess-studying hiatus.

It is good , that you likes a Soviet Chess School, so I recommend to you to read David Bronshtein and Paul Keres books,

Yeah, I have to play some slow time control....and I would also like to join a USCF chess club and play OTB a bit. Getting my courage up (I realize 10-year-old punks will be crushing me). Going through annotated games are on my to-do list. I read in another thread that some good players to start with are Bronstein, Keres, Tarrash, and Morphy....save the Carlsen, Fischer, Alehkine, Kasparov, Karpov, etc. for when you are better and have gone through the older games..

Another thing is that I haven't been analyzing enough of my games. Need to step that up. Everyone says that is key to improvement. I'm not really sure how to go about it, correctly.

You're doing a pitiful 6 tactics a day. You're wasting your money buying a diamond membership if you are not going to do at least 20 tactics per day. 

I looked at some of your games. You often miss basic tactics, and that's because you haven't done enough of them. 

Basic Training Plan for a 1400 Player:

1. >20 Tactics Per Day (preferably ones that adjust to your skill level).

2. 5-10 Chess Mentor lessons per day. Select courses that are slightly higher than your Chess Mentor rating.

3. Go through 1-2 Grandmaster Games a day. Get a collection of a world champion's best games. Capablanca, Alekhine, and Botvinnik are all great people to study.

4. Play 1 long (45 45 preferred, anything longer than 60 0 is best) game once a week, more if you have time. 

That's a lot, Robert. ¿Estás loco? Some elite players say that chess students should spend only 30 minutes on solving tactics problems on the computer per day, because you can only absorb so many each day and you should spend more time on other things. I'm sure many agree with you, though....maybe most...not sure...

I shouldn't start with Morphy or Keres...or a collection of mixed? I have never studied annotated games.

Thanks for laying that groundwork out for me. I'll see if I can do something along those lines, without losing my job!

I'm pretty bad at tactics, I know. I have noticed some very slow improvement though. By the way, I manually adjust the range on Tactics Trainer...for example, 700-800...then when I get better, 750-850, and so on.

Thanks, jengaias. I suppose even better would be to hire a pro coach to go through your games with you and/or annotate your games.