Welcome to the forum. You seem to be doing all things right which will enhance your chess understanding and will make you a connoisseur. Will Gligoric and Nunn can stop you from hanging pieces in a chess game is a different question and the answer is ‘No’.

Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to dampen your spirits. An intelligent adult can understand anything, particularly if it is well explained by a teacher like GM Nunn. In fact, Dvoretsky is not as difficult to understand as he is portrayed to be. I do not know why I haven’t started a Gligoric fan club. Anybody with 1900+ points can and another 150 points by spending 100 hrs on those 30 games in Understanding Chess Move by Move.

Long and short of my blurb is this. What you are doing will most definitely impart knowledge. But they cannot, imho, impart the necessary skills to win games in ICC. It’s a sad reality. Knowledge and Skill are two different animals at the lower end of the chess spectrum.

My suggestion would be this.

1. Keep all your books in your shelf excepts the ones on tactics, combination and basic end games. Perhaps, Pachman’s Strategy books could be added to the list.

2. You might consider joining improveyourchess.com and spending at least half an hour a day there. (I’ll collect my commission from GM Kosten later  )

3. I suggest, you visit Exeter chess club page pronto. It has lot of goodies. Find your level and way, thro’ the maze there. Study what is interesting.

4. Work as much as you can with your tactics, end game and basic strategy. Keep your openings simple and I know you will not carried away by the opening discussions of the mad guys who virtually live here. (BTW, it is the best place to have meaningful discussions)

Six moths down the line, Gligoric and Nunn will be extremely useful.

Sorry for being such a spoil sport.

Hello and welcome to the forum! It`s always nice to see some new people posting! I`ll just try give a brief response, I need to go to bed .  

Because chess is so big, there is so much information you can devote your chess-time to. It`s so big you might spend a lifetime studying it. Certain things will only improve your skill at the game marginally before you reach a certain level (so in a sense it is a waste of time), certain things you don`t need to study unless you are an IM and some things you should really study from the start. You really don`t want to waste your time! You want to improve as much as possible with the time you devote to the game. Huge numbers of chess-players spend an immense amount of time studying things that really don`t make them better chess-players.  

The difficult thing is that you can "waste" your time without beeing aware that you are doing so, because you just don`t know what to study.

* So the smartest thing you do when you try to improve is to ask for advice and talk to other chess-players.  I would recommend that you check out if there are any chess-club in your area, because just beeing among other chess-players can give you a lot of input. And of course that you hang around here on the forum  
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* If you do nothing else; continue with your tactics. That can make you a better chess-player very quickly.

* If you want to spend some more time on chess; make sure that you know how to play the basic endgames well.

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It is my strong belief that the two things above will give you the most "ooomph for the money". You can get to 2000 without spending time on much else.

Just one thing I would warn you against; don`t spend unproportional amounts of time on openings. That really is a big mistake. Increase your skill at the game first of all, not your book-knowledge.

Continue to have fun with chess and please stay around on the forum!

 Hello, my very first post on a very interesting site. First off, a little bit about my experiences with the game of chess. I learned the game awile ago but never really played all that much. Nevermind,  trying to understand how the game is played. A couple of years ago I started to try to understand the game. I started to aquire numerous chess books, most of which I did not read, on openings, middlegames, endings, games collections, etc. I toyed around with some of these books picking up some bits of info on the game here and there but my game & understanding of it was very poor. So I drifted away from the game until about a year ago  when I decided to come back and revisit my chess adventures...or lack thereof.

Firstly,  I did the right thing by picking up a book, yet another  , for a novice. I read through it and I now had a firm foundation in regards to a very basic understanding of the game.  From there I started studying tactics from books I already had on this subject. I also made some basic studies of some openings. Then came the fateful day when I joined ICC. Oh man talk about getting smashed It was obvious I still did not know much about this game and if I was going to make any headway on ICC, with my game, & understanding of chess I would have to work very hard.

Currently I have put away all the opening books for now. I'M currently reading and studying Euwe's Middlegame book Vol. I. I have been doing so for about 4 weeks now. I can say that by reading this book it is amazing how little I understood about the game and how much farther I have to go! But since I started reading Euwe's work I understand the underlying principals of the various openings & the phrase "Pawns are the soul of chess" makes alot of sense now I'M also keeping up on the tactical study by solving some puzzles when I'M not heavy into Euwe. I guess after I complete Vol.I  I will move on to Vol.II which deals with more dynamic features. I guess after I'M done with Euwe's works I will study some endgames and from there I will put in the time with my openings study.

I have been enjoying working through Euwe's books! I'M just wondering from some of you more knowlegable types am I on the right track? Any of you work through Euwe's Middlegame Books? Any chapters that require special attention?Also any additional advice in regards to improving is always greatly appreciated