Quote:
Originally Posted by Sugar Nut
If you enjoy studying endgames, by all means go for it. If you enjoy playing over master games, especially from a book that's widely recognized as very good and instructional, by all means go for it. Both are very beneficial (especially endgames), and you do not have to concentrate on one study area exclusively, but you can't ever neglect tactics. I recommend easy ones, because you need to drill very basic patterns and hardwire them into your brain. Those will provide the building blocks for more complicated tactics.
I also recommend a tactics primer. Believe it or not, Wikipedia can do a decent job here. The articles on the major tactical motifs (pin, skewer, double attack, etc) are very good. Other than that I can recommend John Nunn's book "Learn Chess Tactics". It explains all the motifs very well and has a bunch of exercises too.
Great post, thanks. The problem with Chess books is that its difficult to know if the material is appropriate for my level. Everyone recommends Yasser Seirawan's Tactics book, but unclear if its too advanced. Also, John Bartholomew consistently recommends 'Tune your Chess Tactics Antenna' but again unclear if he's speaking to intermediate ~14-1600 level players. But you would go with John Nunn's book at my level?
Edit: Also whoever recommended signing up for Chesstempo premium, thank you. I created a 1000 and under problem set and a mate in 2 problem set and instantly realized I have major holes in my fundamental pattern recognition (I'm just under 1400 standard on CT).