h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm a beginner. I don't want to play on-line, but I would like to find a good book on chess. I know the basic moves, but I'm not very good at putting a game together. I appreciate that I need practice, but I also feel that a good book would give me some pointers. Please note that I am not looking to become a grand master, or even play at club level. I'd just like to be able to beat my chess programme from time to time. Recommendations, anybody?

uhhh, well you may not need a book.. what chess program do you have? Chessmaster6000 is a good one and it can teach you a bit, I enjoy it because it was cheap to get, a great buy really because I can play it while I'm talkin to people online , and it has a bunch of different actual people's personaities built into the game that you can choose from. It was like $10 for 2 discs and it's great. I have one book, I made it about 30 pages into it and stopped because it was just too involved, it's called Winning Chess Tactics. But really, I think Chessmaster 6000 has got to be one of the best chess games I've ever played.

Sounds like the book you went for is not the kind of thing I'd want. I know the basic moves, I just need something - book, software, who knows? - that will help me with thinking ahead and planning my moves. The snag with software, as far as I'm concerned, is that it means I need my computer on to play. I'd rather have a chess set that I can take anywhere, or maybe one of those chess computers. But even with one of those, I'd still need help. So my request for a good beginner's book stands!

I am definitely no expert on the subject of chess. I quite enjoy playing it, and like you I don't always want to learn about it using a computer.

So for what its worth, I recently bought two chess books that I'm currently learning from.

1. 'Teach Yourself Better Chess' by Bill Hartston, published by Hodder & Stoughton (ISBN 0-340-67040-1) paperback £6.99. It is aimed at helping you 'think' like a good chess player - planning ahead etc. It's going to take me a while getting through it, but I think its a good book.

2. 'The Mammoth Book of Chess' by Graham Burgess, published by Robinson (ISBN 1-85487-509-4)paperback £7.99. Loads of information, styles of games, puzzles to test what you've learned, plenty of reference material. This book will probably last me a lifetime.

Hope this helps.

Sister Bluebird

If you are still looking for books here's a suggestion
get into Amazon or some other book sellar and search by author for
Bruce Pandolfini or Jeremy Silman.
The book I'm using now is "How to Reassess you Chess
(the complete course to chess mastery)" by Silman.
I don't know if it is still in print.
Another possibility is "Beginning Chess" By Pandolphini.
My rating is very low(class E) so you can see the books didn't do me much good but then I didn't spend much time on them. Good Luck

Another way to find great info to improve your game is at a website started by a FORMER WORLD CHAMPION. One of the more ingenious members of the h2g2 community started a page for external links
and I have put the link to this chess site there. It is number seven in his table of links. Or you could use a search engine for Kasparov.