Chess books?

[davebwell]

I'll try to provide more information about myself and my ambitions.

I am 36 years old and am about 1/2 a paper away from earning a PhD in economics from Texas A&M University. I live in off campus housing that is primarily graduate/professional students and highly ambitious upperclassmen. Several of us get together a few times a week and play chess several hours. Out of 10 of us that play regularly, 8 are easily much better than I am. I have made progress against most of them and can occasionally beat all of them. The best of the group, I have won against twice in maybe 80 matches. The sixth best of the group maybe 9 out of 70-80 matches. They have shown me some opening moves, defenses, etc but I have no formal knowledge of names of different techniques, etc.

If you told me you watched me play and I executed the XXXX defense perfectly my response would be what is the XXXX defense? More than likely I had no idea what the defense was, the player I was up against had nailed me with the same play repeatedly and I sat up some night trying to figure out how to exploit his tendency and by dumbluck reinvented the wheel.

My ambition is to get good enough by the end of this upcoming school year that the money I make off this group at the poker table doesn't get completely recycled and then some when we play chess. For the next year, I will have plenty of time to study. I should complete writing my dissertation by the end of August and defend it in September. I am teaching one three hour course to a 140 student section in the Fall and have an unknown teaching assignment in the Spring. The Fall course I have taught 6 times previously and have thorough notes, powerpoint slides, and supplemental materials already completed. I have no ambition to be a grand master. I just want to be more than competent and to be proficient enough with the game and its terminology to speak intelligently with others who can offer strategy advise.