Here's my top ten:

1. 500 Master Games of Chess. The absolute best book for helping a
beginner understand how the best players play.

2. ECO. The ultimate opening weapon.

3. ECM. The ultimate middlegame weapon. Tactical themes broken down and
analyzed very thoroughly.

4. Alekhine's Best Games 1907-1945 (title?). The collection annotated by
Alekhine himself shows the mind of one of the greatest players of all time.

5. Najdorf For The Tournament Player, by John Nunn. Excellent format for
the booked-up player, and indispensable for anyone who would try the opening
from either side in a tournament game.

6. Domination In 2,545 Endgame Studies. This book shows how to trap pieces
by "dominating" the lines on which they move.

7. Pawn Power In Chess, by Hans Kmoch. Another brilliantly innovative book
that will help you understand pawn play.

8. My 60 Memorable Games, by Bobby Fischer. The legendary chess genius
reveals the thoughts behind his brilliant moves.

9. Zurich 1953: Lessons From The Candidates' Matches, by David Bronstein.
One of the strongest players never to become champion details one of the
strongest tournaments of the 20th century. The book could also have been
subtitled "How World Championship Candidates Play The King's Indian
Defense." One-third of the games in the matches were KIDs.

10. My System, by Aron Nimzovich. The father of hypermodern positional
play lays the groundwork for the most popular style of chess in the 21st
Century.


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"Mike McG." wrote in message
om...
Here's a subject which everyone may say has been done to death, but it
really hasn't been 'done' in the past few years. So everyone belly-up
to the bar and give us your opinion of the ten best chess books ever
written (or in your collection at least)...

Here's mine, starting with the best, #1:

1) "The Test of Time", Garry Kasparov. A superb book, a collection of
Kasparov's best games, annotated and then later updated with more
"mature" analysis. English copyright is 1986 -- this must be the last
time the greatest player ever gave an honest assessment of his chess
games.

2) "Smyslov's 125 Selected Games", Vasily Smyslov. Covers the period
1935-1981. Smyslov won the 1953 Candidates tournament in Zurich to
earn the right to battle Botvinnik for the championship... and then in
1984 he made it to the finals of the Candidates Tournament only to be
defeated by Kasparov. Smyslov provides excellent notes to 125 of his
games, showing why he was one of the best ever. Spassky was given the
title of the "universal chess player", but he may have claimed that
trophy from Smyslov...

3) "One Hundred Selected Games", Mikhail Botvinnik. Many say his
games were all about scientific, iron logic chess -- I can only say
his games were beautiful. If you want to see how f7 can become a
deadly weakness in the Queen's Gambit you need not look further than
this book.

4) "Guide to the Chess Openings", Leonard Barden & Tim Harding (1976).
A delightful book with insightful coverage of the major openings.
Generally including an attacking and positional response to each
opening, the authors create a masterpiece which the study of will do
most players miles more good than memorizing dizzying lines and
variations. Barden and Harding try to include some solid lines off
the beaten track so the reader can slide a game into their own
territory.

5) "Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953", David Bronstein.
Well, what can I say about this? It's the first chess book I ever
bought, and you can guess it -- the first opening I ever played on a
regular basis was the King's Indian! A true labour of love, and
unfortunately(?), 100 times better than Bronstein's work on his own
selected games "The Sorceror's Apprentice". Nonetheless, so many
different types of games and ideas occur during Zurich 1953, and in
this book they are all wonderfully revealed and disected.

6) "My Best Games of Chess 1908-1937", Alexander Alekhine. An
enourmous work by the incredible Alekhine. Bobby Fischer describes
Alekhine by saying "He played gigantic conceptions, full of outrageous
and unprecedented ideas" and certainly those outrageous conceptions
and ideas are all contained in this 550+ page monster. Certainly an
appropiate subtitle would be "What You Never Saw Coming".

7) "San Antonio 72", by the players and Bent Larsen and David Levy.
This was Karpov's first appearence in the US, and he tied for first in
this strong tournament with Petrosian and Portisch. At 271 pages, a
lot of exciting and interesting chess is packed into this book. There
are 118 games and 31 are Sicilians(!) in what was surely a fertile
time for the opening. An added bonus is the interesting games of the
young Henrique Mecking.

8) "How Karpov Wins", Edmar Mednis. Perhaps Mednis' greatest book,
certainly much better than Karpov's own "My Best Games". This book
contains brilliantly annotated games of every Karpov win starting in
1971 and finshing with the Candidates tournmament in 1974. The
greatest plus is that as all his wins in this period are given, and
many of these games are your average tournmant wins -- not every game
is the recipiant of a brilliancy prize. This is helpful to the chess
player who wants to learn, as he is not going to enter a tournament
and play a "brillancy prize" game in every game. Nonetheless, an
argument could me made that every Karpov win is brilliant!

9)"Rubenstein's Chess Masterpieces", Hans Kmoch. In my opinion
Rubenstein was the player who most defined the term "chess artist".
His games are simply beautiful and crystal clear -- even more so than
Capablanca. It is true this book may be sparing in times with
annotations, but this is not a problem as Rubenstein's plans are so
logical and evident that one does not need to be told what is
occuring. Rubenstein gets my nod as the strongest player never to
become world champion.

10) "Uncompromising Chess", Alexander Belyavsky. Of all the recent
books from top notch players (including Kramink, Anand, and Shirov)
this is easily the best. OK, so Belyavsky is no longer among the
elite, but his book is head and shoulders above the rest. The games
are wonderfully annotated, with special emphasis being given to the
openings. In practically every game he searches out the latest try or
two in the opening and gives detailed analysis. And the games are
wonderful too -- many times Belyavsky is up a pawn or two with the
better position and I am certain his next move will be to offer a
trade of queens etc to go into an ending... but no! he offers to sac
pawns or pieces to continue on with his initiative! If you want a
book on modern chess, this is the one to get.