Which chess books did you intensively study and gave you clear chess improvement in the long run ?

It's a rather extensive list but here goes' !??!!?! ... Logical Chess Move by Move by Chernev (Probably helped me to get to 1255 My first Rating I had . My Best Games by Alexander Alekhine (Shows how to Punish Mistakes) ... Capablanca's Best Chess endings (In 60 Complete Games) Modern chess Strategy by l Pachman My 60 memorable games by Fischer/Evans , The Art Of Defense In Chess by A Soltis ( A real game changer thinking book) Play like A GM Kotov Plan Like a GM A Suetin ( a rare book that has games under 26 moves mostly but explains a lot) Three Steps To Chess Mastery by A Suetin ... Endgame strategy by M Sherevesky , @achja There were other books as well Many in fact like Smyslov's 125 selected Games hardbound 7 I was reading Online Gelfand's book Positional Decision Making In Chess 7 recently Rock Solid Chess (2023) by Sergey Tivikov I also was watching raemish video & his book on calculation that won 2022 book of the year & There is a new book by sherevesky called The Method that includes Endgame strategy also as a bonus

@Sarg0n said in #5:
> „Move First Think Later“ explains why books don’t work the way they promise.

I have not read the book, but I tend to agree with this point. There are two main reasons in my opinion why books don't work that much - First, most people learn superficially, and not actively, since active learning is hard work. This is the case in many domains, like sciences. You have to solve or work on hard problems to improve. Second, beyond a point there are not many new ideas, but you must improve your calculation and analysis skills A LOT. Again hard work.

PANDOLFINI'S ENDGAME COURSE by Bruce Pandolfini
A Guide To Chess Improvement by Dan Heiseman

When I was a kid, the best book I've read was ABCs of Chess by Pandolfini. It made me think of the game as a whole instead of just a series of mindless trappy moves.

Now, what gave me the most improvement is Dan Heisman's youtube videos. Made me realize that all the books I've read is all about chess knowledge, when my issues are with my poor chess skills.

Since then, I've tailored my exercises to improve my very basic skills and habits. I've set aside studying chess knowledge for a while. And voila, I've made my breakthrough and hit 2k on all time controls.

@Sarg0n said in #5:
> „Move First Think Later“ explains why books don’t work the way they promise.
>
> Do this was my eye-opener. Alas, you don’t become much better by a single book. If you read MFTL you know at least why.

When I read it, I thought that everything said makes sense for those who learn as a child but not those who learn as an adult.

different books by Jacob Aagaard, these are my first chess books, as I said before, it took me time to understand the exceptional intellectual value of the first book, it allowed me to play in a more thinking, thinking about candidate moves and working on my openings, so I have other Aagaard books, maybe I have more autonomy from chess books now, I don't agree 100% on certain points of the book, but it made me progress HUGE and that's the best thing!

@CSKA_Moscou said in #17:
> different books by Jacob Aagaard, these are my first chess books, as I said before, it took me time to understand the exceptional intellectual value of the first book, it allowed me to play in a more thinking, thinking about candidate moves and working on my openings, so I have other Aagaard books, maybe I have more autonomy from chess books now, I don't agree 100% on certain points of the book, but it made me progress HUGE and that's the best thing!

Nice. Thanks for the reminder about GM Jacob Aagaard books. In the future I'd like to study with those books.

John Nunn's Understanding Chess Move by Move (only Vol 1)
Kasparov's On my Great Predecessors (except Vol 1 on Murphy)
John Watson: Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy
Mark Dworetsky: Endgame University

I read some of them in german, hope I re-translated correctly.

@Volker-Racho said in #19:
> John Nunn's Understanding Chess Move by Move (only Vol 1)
> Kasparov's On my Great Predecessors (except Vol 1 on Murphy)
> John Watson: Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy
> Mark Dworetsky: Endgame University

Thanks.

> I read some of them in german, hope I re-translated correctly.

Yes, it is clear.

And this reminds me, I did enjoy reading the My great predecessors part about Bobby Fischer.