I personally only own a few basics/starting in chess books, just wondered how many books more experienced players have? There doesn't seem to be many available at my local library, so guessing the internet is the only place to find them?

Can anyone recommend a book for starting to learn some basic openings principles?

Thanks
Steven

Hi Steven, I've changed your title as asking how many books people own is rather different from asking for recommendations!

I recommend The Mammoth Book of Chess by Graham Burgess -it's a very useful book with lots of information on all aspects of the game.

Me and Wade Phillips of the Dallas Cowboys are soon going to publish a book demonstrating the opening principles to a finesse game of chess. Look for it soon on Amazon.com

In Sri Lanka the best chess book ever written is by Victor Ivon the editor cheif of RAVAYA newspaper. I gained and learned lot of chess skills from his book. I do have few Russian chess books in my home. dont remember the authors at all now.

My personal chess library contained a bit over 20,000 volumes, but we had a house fire 3 years ago. I'm not sure how few were saved. Most were destroyed.

I prefer Chess Informants over anything else currently in print.

I only have one, but I have checked some out from the library before. Always good reads.

Wade Phillips? Will it emphasize defensive play?

I personally own approximately 400 chess books. They are on all parts of the game and include some chess history types.

I thought I had too many with 25 new books of maybe 20$, 25$ each, but apparently I have very few books for a chessplayer
I only *really use* about 5 of them, *use* maybe 10 of them occasionally, and seldom looked into the other 10. I mainly have opening books and mainly use them as a reference, when preparing for opponents, or just before a chess game, to see what the theory was again. Only a few of them really taught me openings from scratch; The Scandinavian, The King's Indian Defense, The Morra Gambit and The Sicilian Dragon I learnt from the books.

Which books did you use for the King's Indian and Dragon?