I have read hundreds of chess books and none have come close to this masterpiece in my opinion. Since I have never been a part of a chess forum, I figured this would be a great place to ask. What is your favorite chess book? My hope is to find a gem or two that I have failed to purchase. All input is appreciated, whether puzzle books, chess stories, heavily annotated games, etc...

I did a search and didn't find this topic. If I simply missed it, please link it along with all the comments of how ******ed I am.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/14...ations-430973/

edit: as far as heavily annotated games, this one is one of my personal favorites: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008355

Thanks for the link. The Alekhine game is a very cool game. I've never looked at it in depth, but I will soon. I like the chessgames site. I've never paid for the premium though. Anyone have any opinion on its worth? I have a playchess membership that I'd pay 20 times the price.

I've just ordered 2 books in the thread you linked that I don't have. Several people recommend Reassess Your Chess, which I've never read. A big thanks!

Silman has a bunch of reviews up on his site:
http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_rev...k_reviews.html

A book I enjoyed was "Learn from the Legends" by Mihail Marin. He selects a few of the great players from history and illustrates an aspect of their game where they were superior to their peers. As I recall (been a couple of years, need to go back and read it again) there is a chapter on Petrosian sacrificing the exchange, a chapter on Karpov winning opposite color bishop endings, a chapter on Fischer with the two bishops, one on Tal with a rook and pawn vs two pieces and one on Capablanca's rook endings. There were other chapters too but I can't remember what they are. It was a difficult book and a lot of the stuff like the opposite colored bishops chapter went way over my head (I am probably a class B player) but it is a very good book to improve your positional play. The chapters on Tal and Petrosian alone were worth the price of the book for me.

If you like Tal, make sure you check out Peter Clarke's book "Tal's Best Games of Chess". It goes up to his win over Botvinnik in 1960 and IMO it's better than Tal's own book that you mentioned. The annotations are more detailed and Clarke is a fantastic writer.

Also, I highly recommend "Nezhmetdinov's Best Games of Chess". He was an incredible attacker, playing some ridiculously deep combinations. He is not well known as he rarely was allowed to travel outside of Russia, but he was +6 -5 =9 against World Champions, including three wins over Tal.

Also, "Leonid Stein Master of Risk Strategy" by Gufeld is another great book of attacking games. Gufeld has a reputation of writing less than stellar books, but this one is gold.

Bobby's My 60 memorable games!

more important to me was

ludek pachman - modern chess strategy

also dynamic chess (dont know who wrote, wasnt famous)

Like many modern and young players, I have ready very few chess-books. When I trained it was slightly before the wide advent of ChessBase, so I used Informant and ECO. I haven't read much else.

The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal is by far my favorite chess book. I haven't read anything as enjoyable, nothing really came close.

If you're looking for something similar, check out The Sorcerer's Apprentice by David Bronstein.
An extremely creative player, he came heartbreakingly close to winning the title from Botvinnik in 1951. One point ahead after 22 games, with two games to go, he ended up losing the 23rd game and drawing the last, thus drawing the match 12-12 and allowing Botvinnik to keep the title. To add salt to his wounds, many have questioned his resignation in the 23d game since there was still room for play and Black may have had reasonable drawing chances.

Another player whose games I like is the other Latvian tactician Alexey Shirov. He has written two books about his games, Fire on Board 1 and 2.


BTW I purchased the chessgames.com membership and I like it but it depends how much you're going to use it. I like the opening explorer feature and the game collections. It's pretty cheap for a yearly deal.

Again, just want to thank everyone for their input in this thread. I now have a lot more chess books to read and so far, I'm extremely impressed. You guys rock!

Bronsteins book on the Zurich 1953 Candidates Tournament is one of the best books ever written on chess.

+1

this is a 'must read' book

Tal was such a sick player (no pun intended). He's probably the most creative, imaginative player there's ever been. He was especially dangerous in tournaments because in the limited time control, he could set many more problems than his opponents could hope to solve over the board, even when his play was not objectively the best (though it usually was). He had a short peak but from 1957-1960 he was pretty much unstoppable.

My favorite chess book is Confessions of a Grandmaster by Andy Soltis, just because it has a lot of interesting stories about personal stuff, how he got started, why he plays certain openings, etc. Chess for mortals, sort of.

Also Brady's biography of Fischer.