Foundation

I highly recommend, as a foundation for everything else, Ben Johnson’s book Perpetual Chess Improvement (he has an excellent, OG, chess-related podcast too), which isn’t chess instruction, but instead a guide to best practices for adult improvement based on his own experience and putting together what has been shared by players, coaches, and trainers on his pod.

Tactics

Applications/Platforms

Then, for me, it’s all about tactics training. Lichess and chess.com puzzle systems aren’t bad. The rush modes don’t fit into my plans, but I often, randomly use the regular and Survival/Streak options there. But, there are two systems/apps that are head-and-shoulders above either (and suited to everyone from pure beginner to at least high-level club players):

  1. Chess Tempo. Its extensive features for custom sets using very detailed criteria and, if you choose, spaced repetition, looping, and more is unmatched. It has web and mobile apps.

  2. A Chess King combo package (any collection that contains the legendary CT-ART and some items lower than that, such as beginning and/or thematic tactics, endgames, etc. CT-ART’s idea of beginner is higher than one might expect). CT-ART is not only time-tested in terms of selection and sequence, but it uses some interesting methods beyond simple hints for assisting, without giving away the solution to, failed attempts using graphics and magnified views to reinforce specific principles. The license allows you to run Chess King on synchronized web and mobile apps.

Importantly, the positions in these two systems are a cut above chess.com or lichess. CT-ART and other Chess King problems are mostly, if not all, curated by hand from real games. ChessTempo problems are mostly curated by computer evaluation but also from real games, with the benefit of being rated, tagged, and discussed by the solving community, which increases quality and provides even more hooks for building custom sets. At my level, at least, both seem to implement more defensive/quiet-move/non-mate problems into the default/sets too.

Routine

At the moment, I am only using Chess Tempo for every day (at least that’s the plan) tactics training. At some point I will switch back to Chess King or mix both. Variety is the spice of life and all that. Thus, my current regimen:

Drilling Tactics for Pattern Recognition (Chess Tempo)

I was using sets based on themes and mate-types, but now that I have a reasonable grasp of most, I use a standard set with this configuration:

  • Problem Rating: 300-400 points below my standard tactics rating on Chess Tempo
  • Problem Type: Winning problems
  • Outcome: 75 percent mates in 1-2 moves and 25 percent non-mates
  • Color to Move: Any/Either
  • Number of Pieces on the Board: 1-32
  • Community Rating of Problem: 4-5 stars
  • Filter by Time: 15 seconds or less
  • Rating Adjustment Type: Blitz (so the time is calculated)
  • Treat loss of rating points due to time as wrong: True (so even if I solve in less than 15-seconds, particularly easy problems need a shorter time)

This resulted in an initial set of around 1200 problems. As I work through the set, it drops problems I solve in under 15 seconds (since this is for pattern recognition and I don’t play blitz or bullet, this seemed a reasonable choice). I may or may not loop through the set until they are all dropped, but at some point I will adjust the rating higher and start fresh, or look at my stats to determine themes I am particularly poor at and create a custom set for those.

Intentional Standard Tactics Training (Chess Tempo)

By this, I mean doing standard tactics (Chess Tempo offers standard, mixed, and blitz tactics sets, with solving time factoring into rating adjustment in the latter two) training in a methodical way. For each problem:

  1. I write down my proposed solution—no guessing the first move and figuring it out from there, which I am prone to do.
  2. Try my answer.
  3. If correct, move to the next problem. If my solution is wrong, proceed to Step 5.
  4. If an unexpected response comes up in a multipart solution, even if my own move is correct, I intentionally end the problem so it is marked wrong.
  5. Repeat Steps 1-2 until I figure it out, then replay the solution three times to help commit it to memory.

I also loosely follow a teacher’s advice I read somewhere to stop the standard training after I’ve erred and corrected 3-6 times (they recommend 3, but I think at my level of solutions I can take in a bit more), so I don’t spend time trying to train more than I will remember the next day.

Books

If you prefer, or want additional tactics in the form of, books, then these are ones I dip into based on my experience with them and how often they are recommended by teachers I trust. I overestimated my level and found/find working through the earliest entries to be pretty valuable, but YMMV. To be clear, I have not finished all of these, but I have enough familiarity order them roughly by difficulty. Some of these exist on Chessable, too, if you want a digital platform.

  • Polgar: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games (this mammoth book gets progressively more difficult and could be placed on this list in multiple places)
  • Giannatos: Everyone’s First Chess Workbook (mostly organized by theme + some mixed)
  • Heisman: Back to Basics: Tactics (great explanations. If this is in the right vein but too easy, Heisman recommends Nunn’s Learn Chess Tactics)
  • Seirawan (and Silman): Winning Chess Tactics (this is the 2nd book in an excellent series that covers all major parts of the game and then some)
  • Bain: Chess Tactics for Students
  • Cheng: Practical Chess Exercises

These cover my level and far enough beyond that the following, more advanced books, are just based on a cursory look and/or recommendations from others:

  • Weteschnik: Chess Tactics From Scratch
  • Smith: Woodpecker Method (I’m not in a place to comment on the actual method, but the problem sets are legit, and even the “easy” set is challenging.)
  • Grooten: Attacking Chess for Club Players

Openings

I barely look at openings, but these are notable for emphasizing theory and ideas over memorizing lines:

  • Seirawan & Silman: Winning Chess Openings (the whole series is great!)
  • Emms: Discovering Chess Openings
  • Hellsten: Mastering Opening Strategy
  • van der Sterren: Fundamental Chess Openings

Strategy & Middlegame

Though I’m mostly spending training time on tactics, I’m hopefully reaching a point where I’m getting through the opening and can more often consider strategy concretely. Books I find helpful (again, some are available in online/digital formats):

  • Seirawan & SIlman: Winning Chess Strategies
  • Seirawan & SIlman: Winning Chess Combinations (tactics+strategy. I wish I knew of more books like this.)
  • Hellsten: Mastering Chess Strategy

Endgames

I basically don’t study endgames yet, prioritizing tactics and strategy, but these are widely recommended:

  • Silman: Complete Endgame Course
  • Seirawan & Silman: Winning Chess Endings

Game Collections

I’m emphasizing annotated games that are understandable for beginner-intermediate (though some go well beyond that) and attempting a rough order by depth and/or difficulty.

  • Seirawan & Silman: Winning Chess Brilliancies
  • del Rosario: A First Book of Morphy (an interesting book focused on educating the player on 30 principles by Reuben Fine through a collection of Morphy’s games along with Morphy’s story and such)
  • Franco: Morphy: Move by Move (Morphy’s games make more sense to me than most, and Franco is a great annotator)
  • Chernev: Logical Chess: Move by Move (the classic, but perhaps eclipsed by the next two)
  • Nunn: Understanding Chess Move by Move (Nunn wasn’t a fan of Chernev, so set out to write something of the same kind, but better…and more advanced)
  • McDonald: Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking: From the First Move to the Last (I sort of think of this as a blend of the previous two approaches)
  • Ataman: Instructive Chess Miniatures (fun!)
  • Wilson: Simple Attacking Plans (titles says it all)
  • Fischer: My 60 Memorable Games (really stands up and I love Fischer’s style)
  • Giddins: 50 Essential Chess Lessons (50 annotated games, each demonstrating a lesson)

There are so many good collections that each have their appeal for different reasons. Marshall, Lasker, Keres are often recommended because they are relatively understandable. Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur is just what it says on the spine. And on and on it goes.

More Books

The rest of this long page may be of no interest to you whatsoever, but I love chess history, stories, and lore—Maybe even more than training or playing, or at least without the attendant frustration :)—so I took this opportunity to record some thoughts accrued over many years. Even this just reminds me how much more there is I should capture before I forget it all!

Biography

Straight-Up (Relatively Few or No Games)

  • Edmonds: Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time
  • Brady: Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy
  • Brady: Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall (Brady’s two books comprise a remarkable duo)
  • Voloj & Willian: Black & White: The Rise and Fall of Bobby Fischer (a graphic biography!)
  • Kosteniuk: Diary of a Chess Queen
  • Korchnoi: Chess Is My Life: Autobiography and Games (An abrupt, divisive, amazing man)
  • Sosonko: Any! He is perhaps the best writer of history and essays, especially given his experience in and with the later part of the Soviet chess era
  • Pachman: Checkmate in Prague: The Memoirs of a Grandmaster
  • Crothers: The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl’s Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster (Truly inspiring. I haven’t seen the movie.)
  • Shahade: Chess Queens: The True Story of a Chess Champion and the Greatest Female Players of All Time (An improved edition of an already excellent book. We need more books that focus on women in chess)
  • van der Sterren: Mindful Chess: The Spiritual Journey of a Professional Chess Player (World Champion Candidate meets mindfulness in a meaningful way)
  • van der Sterren: In Black and White: The Chess Autobiography of a World Champion Candidate (not sure why this hasn’t gotten more attention. Engaging and well written memoir of a modern master)
  • Landsberger: William Steinitz, Chess Champion: A Biography of the Bohemian Caesar (Too often forgotten, Steinitz was a genius who birthed the modern game through his own play, which he intentionally transformed from the Romantic attacking style to what we now consider the modern, strategic/positional approach.)

With, or Told Through, Games

  • Fine: The World’s Great Chess Games (mostly for the 1-2 page bios of each player)
  • Seirawan: Chess Duels: My Games with the World Champions (Yasser is a great storyteller)
  • Shirov: Fire on Board (I read it for the history more than the games, which are too advanced)
  • Kramnik: My Life and Games
  • Soltis: Soviet Chess 1917-1991 (Winter pokes various holes in the history, but it remains a worthy volume)
  • Timman: Timman’s Triumphs: My 100 Best Games (a personal approach with notable clarity in both annotations and history/narrative)
  • Kasparov: My Great Predecessors (the annotations are even further beyond me than the Shirov, but the history and stories are not)
  • Tal: Life and Games of Mikhail Tal (like the Kasparov book for the most part, though some of the wild sacrifices and combinations are delightful and Tal is in my personal pantheon. Could fit in the next section)

History

Straight Up “History History”

  • Shenk: The Immortal Game: A History of Chess (if choosing just one solid, but readable, history, this is it)
  • Murray: A History of Chess (rather scholarly; published in 1913)
  • Monte: The Classical Era of Modern Chess (more modern; even more scholarly)
  • Golombek: History of Chess (history-wise, you don’t need this if you have Murray, but the images and coverage of chess in literature and poetry is marvelous)
  • Giżycki: History of Chess (great images; concisely written historical units)

A Class of His Own

  • Winter (Edward): Any! Winter is a precise historian, punisher of authors—like Reinfeld, but many others—who base their work on hearsay, don’t document sources, etc., and literal mystery man who no one confesses to knowing in real life. He finds the most fascinating facts and historical items. His Chess Notes site, from which much in the books is drawn, is now only infrequently updated, but it’s already seemingly endless as well.

Potpourri

  • Reinfeld: Treasure of Chess Lore
  • Reinfeld & Chernev: Fireside Book of Chess (stories, cartoons, anecdotes, some of questionable historical veracity)
  • Hooper & Whyld: The Oxford Companion to Chess (an entertaining medley)
  • Fox & James: The Even More Complete Chess Addict (trivia and lore of all sorts)
  • Alexander: A Book of Chess (fascinating slices of history, quirky stories, and trivia)

Essays, Reporting, and Such

  • Reinfeld: The Human Side of Chess and the later version The Great Chess Masters and Their Games (both because the later version omits some good stuff)
  • Hallman: The Chess Artist: Genius, Obsession, and the World’s Oldest Game (history, travelogue, the only book I know that explores Kalmykia)
  • Hurst: Curse of Kirsan: Adventures in the Chess Underworld (Quite a medley of articles on history, obsession, insanity featuring a wide range of people including: Kasparov, Buddhists on the Russian Steppe, ex-Women’s World Champion Xie Jun, and the corrupt—possibly murderous—former FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov)
  • Desjarles: Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chessboard (intriguing examination of chess as addiction and obsession from an anthropological point of view)
  • Ree: The Human Comedy of Chess: A Grandmaster’s Chronicles (some book reviews, but mostly personal, insightful eye-witness essays and reporting on chess and chess players from arguable GOATs to some I’d never heard of)

Tournaments and Matches

  • Seirawan: No Regrets: Fischer-Spassky 1992 (games are interesting, the narrative is fascinating)
  • Bronstein: Zurich: 1953 (there are two other books on the same tournament, Najdorf’s argued to be better in terms of annotations, but I adore Bronstein and hope someday to understand more of his annotations)

Fiction

Another short selection from a long list…there is a lot of chess fiction out there I haven’t read:

  • Nabokov: The Luzhin Defense (Nabokov. Need I say more?)
  • Tevis: The Queen’s Gambit (An excellent novel by a fine writer that is getting the attention it deserves thanks to the TV series)
  • Canetti: Auto-Da-Fe (A graphic, violent, disturbing novel in which a reclusive, famed philologist befriends a Nazi dwarf who dreams of defrauding him in order to become the world chess champion. Let that sink in.)
  • Zweig: Chess Story (novella; a deep exploration of the psychology of chess obsession/mania)
  • Maurensig: The Luneberg Variation (The NYT subtitled its review of this dark, dense mystery, “The Holocaust as a Chessboard Pawn in a Suicide”)
  • Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Chabon is such a great writer that this is a top pick even without the chess-related part of the alt-history plot)
  • Pérez-Reverte: The Flanders Panel (a mysterious message is found beneath the surface of a Flemish painting title La partida de ajedrez - The Chess Game)
  • Neville: The Eight (an adventurous search for a chess set, that may not exist, once owned by Charlemagne)
  • Kraii: Lisa: a Chess Novel (GM pauses chess to write a novel…and not only does it, but conveys the world of chess in an unexpected way. It’s not Nabokov, but it’s worth a read.)

Art, Photography, Design

  • Llada: The Thinkers (Captivating photography of top modern chess players at the board)
  • Raabinstein: Chess in Art: A History of Chess in Paintings (800 years; 700 artists)
  • Dean: Chess Masterpieces: One Thousand Years of Extraordinary Chess Sets (far more designs than I ever dreamed of)
  • Langer: On the Collecting of Chess Sets