I think there are two great beginner books that helped me. I am no "great"
player, but I was about 900 this January and I'm at about 1550 right now. I
have not put crazy amounts of time into studying, but I have studied quite a
bit. The two most important books as far as I am concerned is, "Idiot's
Guide to Chess" and "Logical Chess Move by Move" by Irving Chernev. At the
club that I play at most of the players there are around 1400 to 1600.
There are a handful of experts (2000) and one FM (Fide Master) that play
there two. I asked the same advice from the expert players there in
January. They all said that "Logical Chess" was a bad book because it
showed you rules and some of the analysis was wrong.

But the FM, who is an instructor, argued that at my level I need to learn
the rules BEFORE I can break them. So I went through Chernev's book. Not
racing through it, but a couple games a day. This book ALONE probably
brought me from 900 to 1100. And as any instructor will tell you, it's not
what you read, but whether or not you have the ability to apply the
knowledge to your games. Reading something like "Reassess Your Chess" or
"The Art of Attack" at a novice's level is the equivalent of learning how to
do cliff diving before you know how to swim. This is not an exaggeration.
You just can't grasp what they're talking about unless you have a solid
foundation to build upon. That's why Idiot's Guide to Chess and Logical
Chess are such fantastic books. They build a foundation.

And as any player at 1400 or above will tell you, study tactics. Do them
over, and over, and over, and over until you're sick of them. Then do them
over again another couple times. The thing with tactics is you need to know
them by patter. It's not enough to just figure them out. You need to know
basic mating patterns, pins, skewers, simple combinations, etc. to be able
to understand anything more. I was talking to an IM who once told me that
someone could study nothing by tactics and get to 1800. So it's important
at a novice level to understand tactics.

I'm sure everyone else has different opinions. And that's fine too. If the
same thing worked for everyone then everyone would be Grandmasters already.
Just learning the basic principles of chess will get you far. And don;t
worry about openings. Nobody else at your level knows openings either. And
most stronger players will tell you that you should be spending your time
studying tactics before you study openings. At least until you get to about
1300. Then maybe learn an opening for white and a defense for black (one
for e4 one for others like d4, c4, etc.).

Hope this helps you out. Oh, and of course the BEST way to improve is to
play. Play a lot! This is better than anything a book can tell you!

Glen


"47 Ronin" wrote in message
...
I new to the game of chess, I know the rules, but very little about the
strategy of the game can anyone suggest a good book for beginners or
perhaps
even a free website?
Thank in advance for your patience and suggestion,
Dalton