Here's a question emailed to me a couple of days ago:
Mr. Monokroussos,
What, in your opinion, is the best openings book for a player in the 1500-1600 range? Also, I would be very interested to know which chess books you consider to be indispensable.
Thanks very much, Sincerely, [NN]
I expect this is a question of general interest, so here, with very minor modifications, is what I wrote back:
1. There's no such thing as the best openings book. I think Boris Avrukh has just written a fantastic repertoire book (1.d4, Volume 1) for strong players (master through grandmaster, I'd say), but if someone isn't going to use or face those openings, then it doesn't matter how great a job he has done. Going down the food chain to the average club player - the rating range you've specified - doesn't change the story. Speaking generally, a club player should look for opening books that are long on explanation, explaining why the pieces go where they do in a given opening, what the key plans are, and so on. But the most important thing for a 1500-1600 player is to improve their skills, and mastering openings is the least valuable and time-effective aspect of chess self-improvement. (Unless you're getting mated in 10-15 moves on a regular basis. Then you definitely need to know a bit more about the opening!) Work on tactics and endgames.
2. There are no indispensable chess books; if there were, then their authors couldn't have gotten good enough to write them in the first place. There are some great chess books out there, but there's no magic secret strong chess players know that's responsible for their success. Play strong players, analyze games, practice challenging tactics, etc., and you'll get where you want to be.
If you're just looking for book recommendations in general, I can give some, but there are so many excellent chess books you'll go broke buying them all. Generally speaking, I'm a big fan of game collections about a great player when they are by the player himself. (Examples: Tal's The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal, Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games, Alekhine's My Best Games of Chess 1908-1937.) On chess strategy, there's Nimzowitsch's classic My System, and more recently Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess is a rightly praised favorite among club players. He's coming out with an apparently very new 4th edition later this year, so while I don't think there's anything wrong with picking up the 3rd edition now, you might want to wait for the new one. Endgames: Silman's book (Silman's Complete Endgame Course) is okay for club players. A more comprehensive (and necessarily drier - the book would be about 5000 pages long if it were as "talky" as Silman's) sort of work is Müller and Lamprecht's Fundamental Chess Endings. For 2000+ players, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual is about as close to indispensable as a chess book is going to get.
If you have an annotated database like ChessBase's Mega2009, there's an awful lot you can do with that, too. But ultimately, it's work in, results out.
Myself, I can also recommend Gelfand's "My most memorable games" and Shirov's "Fire on the Board" Parts I+II. I would say it is no problem that the given analyses are arguably too detailed to digest for a 1500-1600 player (or a 1900-2000 player as I am).
Disclaimer: There is MUCH more on the market ... .
Thomas: Sure, I'm a fan of the books you mentioned, but I wasn't "singling out" books based on people being living or dead or anything of the sort. I was giving examples only - coincidentally, this is why I wrote "For example".
As for the two books you mentioned, which I actually thought about when writing my reply, it's as you say: they are great books with analyses that are indigestible for most club players. Maybe that's not a problem - such players can enjoy the books without going through reams of analysis. But the guy was asking a pedagogical question, so I gave an answer intended for his rating range. The books I mention give high level games, with lots of talk and notes practically any tournament player can absorb reasonably well.
Guest account 12: Correct, I didn't answer it in the way he probably expected for a reason: I didn't think it was useful to answer it in that way. The only way to guarantee a specific answer would have been to list every single good opening book I can think of suitable for a player of that rating range, and that could have involved hundreds of books without any guarantee of thoroughness. I don't know what openings he likes, is neutral about and hates; or what openings he'll see at his local club. And that's true even of books that are long on explanation, etc.
I don't have Collins' book, so while I've seen some positive reviews of it, I can't speak to it from firsthand experience. Soltis's Pawn Structure Chess is a book I've recommended fairly frequently, and Watson's Mastering the Chess Openings series is broadly in that genre as well. Such books are useful, and although I'd probably classify them as meta-opening books rather than opening books per se, I should have mentioned them in my reply.
Interesting question. Here are my thoughts. Ironically, the best opening book I ever had was Soltis' pamphlet "White opening system with 1 P-QB4". I bought it when I was in in HS and rated ~1600. The reason that is was so valuable was
1. It was NOT too much information and I could absorb the whole book.
2. It was a comprehensive system built around an easily understood structure.
I would venture that a good opening book does NOT give too much theory, just conveys the overarching principles so the player feels comfortable in the resulting middlegame positions.
- Bob