"When you see a good move look for a better one."
Emanuel Lasker
"When your rooks talk you will never get checkmated"
Aaron Nimsovitch
(in other words get your pieces developed and your rooks in the game)
Middle game Books
A favorite author of mine is Jeremy Silman. He is an international master who wrote a series of books. These books illustrate how to use imbalances in a position in order to create a plan. These imbalances are created by the strong player so that the plan is generated by imbalances. Here are the four books in my library all are good but, this is my order of preference.
- How to Reassess Your Chess (4th edition)
- The Amateur's Mind (Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery)
- The Reassess Your Chess Workbook (How to Master Chess Imbalances)
- How to Reassess Your Chess (expanded 3rd edition)
Endgame books
In order to become master level in the endgame ultimately the student has to look at each theme independently. For example king and pawn vs king, bishops of the same colors with a pawn, bishop vs knight with a pawn, Rook and Pawn vs Rook and many more themes. Each of these has to be studied independently. Here are my three favorite books from my library that are not specialized. They are in a general order of my preference.
- Practical Chess Endings (Irving Chernev)
- Just the Facts! (Winning Endgame Knowledge in One Volume) By Lev Alburt and Nikolay Krogius
- Chess Endgame Lessons (Pal Benko)
Online sites
Online sites
Online sites are a great resource. You can play against other players all around the world. You can play with time limits that you choose. You can have increment, this is where time is added to your clock for each move that you and your opponent make, this way you are unlikely to run out of time. You can also control the ratings of the players you play. That is for example you can post a game request called a seek for players rated between 1200 to 1600 and with a time control for example 15 minutes with 15 second increment. The last good thing about these sites is, they have tactics and checkmate problems, videos, and other features, Here are some sites in my order of preference:
- Lichess ( free )
- Chess Tempo ( free )
- Idea chess ( free ) (tactics & mate problems you can choose 1,2,3,4 movers)
- Internet Chess Club (ICC) This is a pay site that has great video features and other benefits. The ICC is the strongest site if you want to improve this is your site)
- Chess Cube (free) mostly speed chess
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and ask your questions