Intermediate Books

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Win at Chess! A Comprehensive Guide to Winning Chess for the Intermediate Player - Ron Curry

This is a complete book promising to improve your chess. It is divided into four sections. Section One takes a brief look at opening play. The majority of the book comprises of Section Two, the middlegame. Section Three looks at endgame technique and Section Four contains advice for practice and progress including study lesson games and solitaire chess games where you have to chose the correct move to play in a game. The middlegame section includes good advice on analyzing a position to determine the best move available, tactics, combinations and sacrifices, attacking the king etc. The advice given in this book is very good.

Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played: 62 Masterpieces of Chess Strategy by Chernev

This is an excellent book because it really emphasises the underlying positional and tactical themes of the games presented. For example the significance of the Knight on d5 as a tool for killing the opponents counterplay is vividly demonstrated by a key game whereby White sacrifices a pawn to obtain it there. Another game by Tal shows how strong the King can be in the endgame, with it marching into the enemy camp snatching pawns. The games presented are definitely as instructional as the book claims! (Reviewer:Tryfon)

Winning Chess Brilliancies by Yasser Seirawan

This is the fourth book in a series of four volumes. Yssaer Seirawan explains 12 of the most brilliant games move by move. Includes games by Fischer, Spassky, Karpov, Korchnoi, Kasparov, Nunn etc. I have made a collection of the games contained within the book for you to view.

Best Lessons of a Chess Coach (McKay Chess Library) by Sunil Weeramantry et al

This is a great book for the intermediate player. It takes the form of a series of lessons given by master chess coach Weeramantry. Each chapter looks at a complete game and by using an interactive teacher-student dialogue it's almost as if you are sitting in on the lessons. This is one chess book I couldn't put down. A great pleasure to read and very portable as there are enough diagrams illustrating the points that you do not even need a chess board to play through the games. Read this book on the train, the bus or anywhere you have a few spare minutes!

How Good is Your Chess - Daniel King

A very entertaining and instructive way to improve your chess. 20 chess games are presented and you take the place of the Grandmaster. Can you work out which moves he played in the game? You score points for guessing correctly.

Teach Yourself Better Chess - Bill Hartston

An entertaining book presented in an easy to read way for players who know how to play but want to get better. The book contains 75 lessons divided into Elementary, Advanced and Master sections. Each lesson is presented on a double page beginning with an discussion of the theme and followed by an example of the idea in practice. Themes include such things as the good and bad bishop, rook on the seventh rank, weak squares, calculation and planning and with each theme often reappearing in each section as the reader's understanding develops.

My System : 21st Century Edition by Aron Nimzowitsch

This is the all-time chess classic of Aron Nimzowitsch, now provided in algebraic notation and updated to modern understandable English. One of the three or four best selling chess books of all time. Contains 419 diagrams. Recommended by Grandmasters and masters for 75 years! Completely modernized in this 1991 edition.

Chess for Tigers by Simon Webb

I hold this book responsible for enabling me to win the Lloyds Under 18 junior national chess tournament beating 3 people 30+ points higher than me in the process. It provides very practical advice about winning. This includes using statistics to guide you in your choice of openings, and more fundamentally to find out what sort of positions you excel in, and try and steer towards these types of positions. The emphasis is clearly on winning, not necessarily improving, because playing continually to your strengths may slow down one's development as a fully rounded player. (Reviewer:Tryfon)

The Inner Game of Chess : How to Calculate and Win (McKay Chess Library) by Andy Soltis

Chess is 99 percent calculation and this book is devoted entirely to this most mysterious and essential chess technique. "The Inner Game of Chess" examines both the technical and practical aspects of how to think ahead--the selection of candidate moves, the evaluation of end positions, finding the proper move order, and the like.

Chess Praxis by Aron Nimzovich

This book is Grandmaster Aron Nimzowitsch's companion volume to MY SYSTEM. This classic is one of the best selling and most instructive chess books of all time. Thousands of satisfied customers have used this book to improve their understanding of positional chess play.

Judgment and Planning in Chess by Max Euwe

Choose the Right Move by Daniel King, Peter Dove, Chris Duncan

The Sorcerer's Apprentice by David Bronstein

Secrets of Practical Chess by John Nunn

Complete Book of Chess Strategy : Grandmaster Techniques from A to Z by Jeremy Silman

Pawn Structure Chess by Andrew Soltis

Pawn Power in Chess by Hans Kmoch

Improve Your Chess Now by Jonathan Tisdall

Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player by Lev Gm Alburt

Chess Training Pocket Book : 300 Most Important Positions and Ideas by Lev Alburt

Better Chess for Average Players by Tim Harding

Chess Fundamentals by Jose R. Capablanca

Common Sense in Chess by Emanuel Lasker

The Art of Defense in Chess by Andrew Soltis

Modern Chess Strategy by Lud-Ek Pachman, et al

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