Reddit mentions of The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery

You can improve quickly. Well...it depends upon what you think "Quick" is. Try doing what i tell you, i mean hell, you think you haven't improved for months, so what harm is there in doing what I say?

Step 1. Study all of this information first I don't care if you feel that you know it, or if you DO know it. Look at it long and hard. Read every word and go through the examples, process all of it, be honest with yourself if any of the tactics surprise you or were not immediately apparent to you. (Some won't be)

[http://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-tactics--definitions-and-examples]

Step 2. Do 5-10 (no more than that) Chess puzzles on Chesstempo.com (with a free account). Do this every day.
[Warning Do NOT guess what move is correct. Do the "standard" puzzles, because they are not timed. Calculate the entire sequence of moves until you think you've got it correct. Don't move unless you have a clear tactical sequence in mind and have fully thought out your opponent's replies and your moves.

Step 3. Study this entire page. I highly recommend buying Jeremy Silman's "amateur's mind." I will give a link to the book, this webpage is basically an overview of it. Study this webpage very thoroughly and it should open your eyes to the positional considerations that you should be making when assessing a position and coming up with a plan.

Website: [http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/chess/planning.html]

Jeremy Silman's Book: [http://www.amazon.com/Amateurs-Mind-Turning-Misconceptions-Mastery/dp/1890085022/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1418959354&sr=8-3&keywords=silman]

Step 4. This is just general information I'd look over to understand what you're really dealing with as far as chess is concerned. You don't need to memorize all of this, but it should point you in the right direction.

Typical Pawn Structures and the themes associated with those structures: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_structure]

A general guide to endgames: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_endgame#General_considerations]

A few openings are on Wikipedia, mainly popular mainlines, don't waste too much time trying to memorize them, but don't ignore them, people really downplay opening studying: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_opening#Open_games:_1.e4_e5] if you click the names of the openings, like "Ruy Lopez" and "scotch" there are entire pages dedicated to them. I'd learn at least the basic idea and a few moves. at your level deviations will happen quite quickly, but you need to learn the idea and what you're trying to accomplish.

Finally one final tip from myself. Go to www.chessgames.com and go through a game without moving the "next arrow" just look at the notation and when you run out of the ability to hold it in your mind, be it 2 moves or 6 or 10 moves. Push the arrows and update the position, then, try to go from there in your head and keep going. This exercise will dramatically increase your vision.--- Another way to do this would be to have an annotated chess book and try to read all the moves between the diagrammed positions, and really stretch your mind. you have to puuuushh to the point where you really can't hold the position any more and try a few more moves still. then go and correct it. This exercise helps TONS. it's very stressful and difficult to do, so you won't want to do it, but the hard-work is rewarded quickly. only 1 or 2 weeks of this daily training at ...10-20 minute intervals and your visualization will improve dramatically.

I might suggest some reading material that may help out your chess thinking process.

Silman's The Amateur's Mind and How to Reassess your Chess are both great for any beginner to moderate strength player, as they focus on understandable concepts and fixing common problems in many people's game.

You've got to get yourself some good books and devour them. I have unconventional advice, but if whatever you've been doing isn't working, give it a shot.

My beginners routine
---

• Do 10 tactics puzzles a day (use a free chesstempo account)
  
  
• Get your hands on a copy of Silman's Amateur's Mind [Go through the book cover to cover] I usually follow along with a program instead of a real board b/c I can log in variations and whatnot.
  
  
• Play one 15-minute game a day, if you can't find people who want 15-minutes, go to something like 10minutes or 10min+2seconds. Then, analyze your game. If you go to lichess you can make a free account and they have computer analysis. If you're playing on chess.com you can just take the pgn (game notation) and put it into the lichess computer and they'll analyze it for you. You can move the pieces around and bounce some ideas off the computer on there as well.
  
  
• Develop an opening repertoire. This is not supposed to be the way a grandmaster does it.... not yet. You need to play the same thing because you can't learn and figure out mistakes if you're always switching openings, because the positions you get change too much. If you're playing random openings you'll get: Isolated queen pawn positions, French structure positions, caro-kann positions, central pawn structure vs c5/e5 pawn pushes, fianchetto positions that require h4-5-6 to attack etc.
  
  You need a consistent motif; so, if you want to play 1.e4 try to stick to that. For black choose 2 defenses: one against 1.e4 and one against 1.d4
  
  What you need to do here is learn the first few moves of the opening just so you can get yourself inside that structure... maybe the first 5 moves or so. And you're going to feel lost I promise you, but just do it, ok. When you win/lose, whatever, a part of your analysis is going to be to go to www.chessgames.com >set the year to >=2000 or 1980 something like that>set the openings to the opening you played or enter the ECO code>click search and you can watch Grandmasters play your opening. This will give you a good idea of what kind of moves are made and where you play on the board. You may even be able to extract some plans out of it.
  
  
  
  
• I'm not a silman salesman but you also need to work on your endgame and I like Silman's Complete endgame course This books is divided by rating, which is really good; i worked up to the A class section and then moved on to Dvoretsky's endgame manual. Dvoretsky's is a dictionary though, and you definitely don't want that now.
  
  

Don't worry about openings for now. You can have perfect opening knowledge and still get killed by weak players with a basic grasp of tactics and an ability to find threats. Those areas are the starting point.

To that end, assuming you know the rules already, and can read chess notation, start with a VERY simple book on tactics. Go through "Simple Checkmates" by A. J. Gilliam (Amazon link) seriously at least seven times--preferably about 10 to 20 times--until you can instantly see the right move in each diagram.

Learning chess is all about building up your knowledge of basic patterns, and I've yet to find a book that gives such a good grounding in the most fundamental and important of these basic patterns.

More advanced (but still cheap) books that are good for learning to see patters in chess would be 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate, by Fred Reinfeld (ignore any books of his that don't consist of just diagrams, though) and the excellent Chess Training Pocket Book: 300 Most Important Positions, by Lev Alburt.

I found Winning Chess Strategies, by Yasser Seirawan helpful as an introduction to strategy when I first started out, but some people think his writing style is more suitable for kids.

How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course, by Jeremy Silman or The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery, also by Silman are big touchstones for chess learners in the late-beginner phase. A less-known author that I highly recommend is C. J. S. Purdy. He wrote quite a while ago, but he's incredibly insightful in teaching amateurs to break bad chess habits and generally understand how to think in chess. Here's an Amazon search result for his books. (By the way, I don't necessarily endorse Amazon as the best place to buy chess books, but the links are convenient.)

Main thing is, get the basics down. Build up the basic patterns. Go over the simpler diagrams over and over until you know them cold. Then move on to strategy, more advanced tactics and endgames, then worry about openings.

amateurs mind is very good

also you should probably get CT-ART for tactics, since all games starting out will be won though tactics

https://www.amazon.com/Amateurs-Mind-Turning-Misconceptions-Mastery/dp/1890085022/

Jeremy Silman is a good chess author. I own...

The Complete Book of Chess Strategy

The Amateurs Mind

How to Reassess your Chess

Silmans Complete Endgame Course

...all are recommended

Chess is a hard game! If you are a serious player, I recommend buying and studying The Amateur's Mind. You need to break down the game and understand the abilities and weaknesses of each piece. Silman helps explains these concepts by exposing the faulty logic in his students' analysis. (Hence, The Amateur's Mind!) It's an amazing book, and I really suggest you try it out!

i think this is what you are looking for: The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions Into Chess Mastery


i have that book but haven't read yet. it is highly recommended. i will be able to make more accurate comments about the book after i read.

I suggest you get the book the Amateur's Mind and set up the situations on any chess game and work through them. I believe it is the best book for beginners.

Start with this

I think The Amateur's Mind and How to Reassess Your Chess are staples to any chess player's book collection. Not only is Silman's language friendly, but the content in his books are incredibly thorough without any verbosity when it comes to n lines of notation and the occasional "...and White is better because of their knight on d5."

I own My System but have yet to manage to find myself at the halfway point of the book. From what I've read, it's rather dense (in language) but informative, however, I have a strong bias toward Silman's language because it's more digestible.

To put it simply: if I could employ routinely everything I've learned in How to Reassess Your Chess, I would be a much better player. There's so much content in that particular book that you could find yourself working through it for a couple years, especially if you purchase it's companion workbook.

From reading some reviews on Amazon, Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy seems to appeal to strong club players and up-- but that's not to say that the material isn't educational. You'll have to write back if you decide to pick it up and let us know.

By mastering the tactics I'm assuming you mean learn the strategy? The phrase is ambiguous because 'tactic' has a special meaning within chess.

To be honest, my first exposure with 'real chess' was with one of Jeremy Silman's books, The Amatuer's Mind. I was rated ~1200 at that point, and used to just shuffling my pieces around and hoping my opponent blundered. The Amatuer's Mind taught me about the basics of planning, and that's something I've been learning about ever since.

Annotated game collections are an amazing way to learn.

http://www.amazon.com/Amateurs-Mind-Turning-Misconceptions-Mastery/dp/1890085022/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412673445&sr=1-3&keywords=Jeremy+Silman

The Amateur's Mind

I recommend reading Jeremy Silman's "The Amateur's Mind". When your opponent makes a move the first question shouldn't be "how should I respond?", it should be "do I have to respond?" (what's the threat and how serious is it?). Chess is a battle of wills, so when one player starts following the other player's plan it's usually a sign that they are not doing so well.

16...a5 is not really threatening anything immediate so I'd either play 17.Qf4 if I were worried about my bishop being trapped or actually I'd probably really play 17.Bf4 (bringing another piece into the attack) since I'd be comfortable responding to 17...h5 with 18.Bxh5 gxh5 19.Bh6, where it looks like our short term piece investment is about to be repaid with interest.