11 Best Chess Books For Intermediate Players

Chess is one of those games that utilizes the player’s mind to the fullest and forces them to think and analyze the game. A good chess player has patience, strategic thinking, and knowledge.

No player is perfect right from the beginning! They have to go through a lot of studies and an ample amount of practice to reach a certain height.

There are different chess books available from which chess knowledge can be gained. In this article, I’m going to share with you the 11 best chess books for intermediate players.

Keep reading to know more about what those books contain, and select your favorite one out of them! (If you are a beginner then check out my article on the best chess books for beginners.)

Now let’s start!

Here are the 11 best chess books for intermediate players:

1. Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess

The book ‘BOBBY FISCHER TEACHES CHESS’ is a phenomenal book written by Bobby Fischer himself in 1966. It is one of the most in-demand chess books of all time. Bobby Fischer is one of the milestones of the chess community.

The reason this book is titled one of the best is because of its internal structure. You have to think about your current situation on the board in order to understand the next teaching. The technique of self-assessment is used here to help you master chess.

Learning from the best is always what you want. The grandmaster himself wrote this book and his way of conveying and teaching is unique, as you have to repeat the steps until you get the correct move as instructed. He has offered the best lessons about how to attack the opponent with an efficient method of learning.

Features:

• Programmed learning process
• Self-analytical
• Easily understandable language

2. CHESS: The Ultimate Chess Tactics Strategies

This book contains top-notch tips and tricks for improving your game. If you want to master the game of chess, you must know such easy but tactical moves written in it.

This book teaches the reader some ultimate strategies that you can implement in your game in order to win the board easily. All the tricks are at your fingertips. This book offers your collection of some important insights into the grandmasters. Apart from practical knowledge, this book contains some supportive tricks for blunders.

This is one of the top five preferences because it teaches you from your mistakes. One of the best features of this book is, it uses all the theoretical and practical instances to teach you the importance of sacrificing pieces to win your board.

Features:

• Teaches Piece sacrifice winning
• Uses both theoretical and practical knowledge
• Gives insight and ideas of the grandmasters

3. Chess!: Lessons From A Grandmaster

This is a book created by Yury Schulman, a Belarusian American, and his student Rishi Sethi together. This duo created an incredible masterpiece as it contains both the idea of a student and a grandmaster. It contains an entire set of cases and board games that can help each mind that understands chess.

To begin with, this book offers you to read and know the importance of chess and the tactical moves and how they help a person grow in real life.

The best quality about this book is, that it reaches the root level to make you understand chess. What influences chess, and what an opponent can think by looking at your moves is analyzed clearly, so that you do not miss out on an opportunity to checkmate. It contains a bunch of tasks at three different levels to enhance your gameplay and thinking capacity.

Features:

• Teaches chess at the root level
• Point of view of both student and teacher

4. Chess Strategy For Club Players

The book ‘CHESS STRATEGY FOR CLUB PLAYER’ is written by Herman Grooten. it masters you in positional advantage at the end of it. With a huge advantage of experience, he penned down the importance and advantages of a piece of positioning.

The positioning of even a pawn is essential from the first move itself. Your positioning will determine whether you will decide the came of the opponent or you are going to lose it. This book teaches all levels of players how to analyze the situation of the game and what to position next in order to gain an advantage in the upcoming moves.

After learning the basics of chess, it becomes very important to know the board and position properly, as it helps in pre-planning the game. One who has read it and excelled in the analysis of the position will remain at an advantage in every single game he plays.

Features:

• Excels you in positioning
• Guidance from a grandmaster

5. Ruy Lopez Tactics

This book is framed by Tim Sawyer, who trains you to deeper levels of chess. This book offers you chess opening combinations and checkmates.

In order to win a game, the very first important thing is the opening. This book teaches and explains why it is important and how to put your best foot forward. Also, as an addition, you are taught about the algebraic expressions and notations that are very essential if you are playing a famous opening game or forced checkmates.

Features:

• Teaches impactful openings
• Forced checkmates and pre-analyzed games are written
• Teaches algebraic notations

6. How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course

‘HOW TO REASSESS YOUR CHESS: THE COMPLETE CHESS MASTERY COURSE’ is a phenomenal book. This book contains a step-by-step procedure of games that will help improve the intermediate players immensely.

The language offered is very clear, straight, and easily understandable by all levels of players. The book confronts a particular situation and discusses it with all the theoretical and practical knowledge of the author himself. Also in addition to that, the author has demonstrated the thinking process of the opponent with his moves and how to counter the attacks.

This comes under one of the best books as it not only tells about a situation but how the move is best for a situation and which piece to use.

Features:

• Advance moves are logical and clear
• The thought process is explained
• Possible moves are demonstrated

7. Silman’s Complete Endgame Course

Silman’s complete endgame is a complete course for beginners, intermediate, and masters, written by Jeremy Silman.

Players of all the levels are instructed strictly to go through and understand the endgames correctly. As if a player is winning and doesn’t know how to finish off his game, he will definitely make a blunder out of anxiousness.

To stop such blunders and help the already winning player to stay calm, Silman created a masterpiece, as an endgame is even more important than an opening.

Also Read: The Difference Between Mistake And Blunder In Chess

An endgame requires patience, tactics, understanding, positioning, and strategies. This book is very unique as it contains a bunch of endgames and their explanations. The best part of the book is, it has a divided rating system and helps the player to make speedy reactions.

Features:

• Enlisted endgames in a huge number
• Tactics for ending the game
• Information’s are rated and divided accordingly
• Improves mental reaction of a player

8. Tactics Time! 1001 Chess Tactics from the Games of Everyday Chess Players

Tim Brennan & Anthea Carson together wrote ‘Tactics Time! 1001 chess tactics from games of everyday chess players’ is one of the best exemplar books in the chess library.

This book contains examples along with why the previous player played it. The steps of every game are followed by their explanations. Examples are the best teachers in every aspect, if you want to learn and experience practically a situation, then you must try this book.

The best feature of this book is that it doesn’t contain only the gameplays of the grandmasters. It is obvious that the thinking level of an intermediate player will not match the levels of the grandmasters, so this book offers the gameplays of amateur and gives you an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other players at your level.

Features:

• Helps grow logical skills on the spot
• Given examples of both the grandmasters and amateur players

9. Logical Chess: Move By Move

This book is written by Irving Chernev, an American chess player. The ultimate aim of this book is to teach the intermediate student about logic and why we need logical analysis in it.

Chess is a game of logic and strategy. Every move has a logic behind it. Starting from a beginner, intermediate and a grandmaster must have a logical analysis of his game to win the game.

A set of 33 games are analyzed with respect to its opening, midgame, and endgame.

Features:

• Logical analysis of each game with respect to each move is demonstrated
• Alternatives are explained

10. Chess Fundamentals

The author was a very swift thinker and mover which is quite visible in his book. Learning from our favorite players has been a dream for all the chess lovers like us. He gave the intermediates an option to learn from his games, openings, endgames, tactics, strategies, and obvious mistakes.

Books are written by the best always give the best amount of knowledge due to their experiences and way of thinking. Hence this book is one of the to-buy books for intermediate chess players.

Features:

• Provides examples of intense games
• Includes algebraic notations of a grandmaster

11. Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games

This book contains a quality amount of tasks and their solutions. Starting from basic level to hardest level, including forced moves, mate in two moves, queen sacrifice mate, two rook mate, etc. in a practical scenario of games. if you want to be an expert, you need to practice games. Practice makes a man perfect, you know!

Features:

• Well maintained structure, resulting in easy understanding
• Sets of exercises are given

Conclusion

So these were some of the best chess books for intermediate chess players.

As you read books, you start gathering theoretical knowledge and logic which is the most important factor in the game of chess.

Reading from so many varieties of books and their applications and implementing them into your chess games will help the intermediate chess player within you to flourish more and more.

I hope, now you have decided on the chess book of your choice. Thanks!

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