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Good pdf books for beginners?

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Kapparonian

Hello and good evening to all.


I started playing chess like two weeks ago and i'm really excited about this game. Yes, right now i'm a total disaster but i have been reading and watching some videos to learn about, openings, middle game and doing some puzzles. I want to become strong at this game or at least "good". I'm 27 years old and yes its is late to start but i don't care at all. So, can you recommend me a couple of good books for beginners? The best of them? All i have for now is My system - Nimzovich and My best 50 games from Karpov.

CalyTDF

Hola, hay mucho material, te recomendaria los tomos de Grau, jugador argentino. Son muy didacticos cubren todas las fases de la partida.

kindaspongey

Possibly of interest:

Simple Attacking Plans by Fred Wilson (2012)https://web.archive.org/web/20140708090402/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review874.pdf
http://dev.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Simple-Attacking-Plans-77p3731.htm
Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev (1957)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708104437/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/logichess.pdf
The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played by Irving Chernev (1965)
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/most-instructive-games-of-chess-ever-played/
Winning Chess by Irving Chernev and Fred Reinfeld (1948)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708093415/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review919.pdf
Back to Basics: Tactics by Dan Heisman (2007)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708233537/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review585.pdf
https://www.chess.com/article/view/book-review-back-to-basics-tactics
Discovering Chess Openings by GM John Emms (2006)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627114655/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen91.pdf
Openings for Amateurs by Pete Tamburro (2014)
http://kenilworthian.blogspot.com/2014/05/review-of-pete-tamburros-openings-for.html
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/openings-for-amateurs/
https://www.mongoosepress.com/catalog/excerpts/openings_amateurs.pdf
Chess Endgames for Kids by Karsten Müller (2015)
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/chess-endgames-for-kids/
http://www.gambitbooks.com/pdfs/Chess_Endgames_for_Kids.pdf
A Guide to Chess Improvement by Dan Heisman (2010)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708105628/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review781.pdf
Studying Chess Made Easy by Andrew Soltis
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708090448/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review750.pdf
Seirawan stuff:
http://seagaard.dk/review/eng/bo_beginner/ev_winning_chess.asp?KATID=BO&ID=BO-Beginner
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708092617/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review560.pdf
https://www.chess.com/article/view/book-review-winning-chess-endings
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627132508/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen173.pdf
http://www.nystar.com/tamarkin/review1.htm

Niveyn12

please send the link of under the surface book

hermanjohnell

The Soviet Chess Primer

Tamimi12345

Is 1000 elo in 4 months good rating!

TRAvghan

That's quite a good list. Thank you for sharing @kindaspongey

sharath_dt

You can use this app to print chess puzzles as PDF. They can be sorted by difficulty.

Chess Puzzles Printable PDF
Chess Puzzles Printable PDF
MrCheckmate2025

I believe for a beginner it's important to focus on checkmate patterns, here the manual:

https://youtu.be/-E0wDgp9Ebw?si=s3T6xFn3qNJuTZf1

MrCheckmate2025

Then one should follow with a good array of patterns like the one in this book:

https://youtu.be/HhbU8XgdznY?si=A5SJ-KRCinoCORxg

TRAvghan

Looks like some interesting options here by @MrCheckmate2025. Thanks for sharing

Laurentiu-Cristofor

A few extra recommendations:
Purdy's "Guide to Good Chess"
Lasker's "Common Sense in Chess"
Renaud and Kahn's "The Art of Checkmate"

I should add that, in my experience, most of these classics deserve new editions revised using computer analysis, as they miss many opportunities and can give the wrong idea of what happened in a game. So, if you can analyze the games on a computer while playing them, that would be the best way to learn from them.
EDIT: I forgot that the OP request was specifically for PDFs.

For Common Sense in Chess there is: https://ia600902.us.archive.org/33/items/commonsenseinche00laskrich/commonsenseinche00laskrich.pdf. Google Books has another edition available here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Common_Sense_in_Chess/8c0KAQAAMAAJ.

hermanjohnell

Lasker´s Common Sense was one of the first chess books in english that I read. I guess that the selection in our municipal library was somewhat limited. This was in Falun in the early seventies. A happier time in chess, long before Deep Blue and War Games. An era when only humans played at chess.

I reread Lasker´s work quite recently and it is still a worthwhile read.

Chess_Polimac
Tamimi12345 wrote:

Is 1000 elo in 4 months good rating!

Hello, it's good, of course, but now you will need some coaching.

hermanjohnell

It´s already been mentioned but since it is the book that did the most for my understanding of the game, here it is again: Logical Chess . Move by Move by the late great Irving Chernev. Whenever my game deteriorates I revisit it. My worn (paper, not pdf) copy is in the old, descriptive, notation. in my humble opinion it is the best chess book ever written.

TRAvghan

Revisited this thread and found some new suggestions here that feel like worth trying. Thank you chess geeks for the inputs