Reddit reviews How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course, Expanded 3rd Edition

Don't worry about openings for now. You can have perfect opening knowledge and still get killed by weak players with a basic grasp of tactics and an ability to find threats. Those areas are the starting point.

To that end, assuming you know the rules already, and can read chess notation, start with a VERY simple book on tactics. Go through "Simple Checkmates" by A. J. Gilliam (Amazon link) seriously at least seven times--preferably about 10 to 20 times--until you can instantly see the right move in each diagram.

Learning chess is all about building up your knowledge of basic patterns, and I've yet to find a book that gives such a good grounding in the most fundamental and important of these basic patterns.

More advanced (but still cheap) books that are good for learning to see patters in chess would be 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate, by Fred Reinfeld (ignore any books of his that don't consist of just diagrams, though) and the excellent Chess Training Pocket Book: 300 Most Important Positions, by Lev Alburt.

I found Winning Chess Strategies, by Yasser Seirawan helpful as an introduction to strategy when I first started out, but some people think his writing style is more suitable for kids.

How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course, by Jeremy Silman or The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery, also by Silman are big touchstones for chess learners in the late-beginner phase. A less-known author that I highly recommend is C. J. S. Purdy. He wrote quite a while ago, but he's incredibly insightful in teaching amateurs to break bad chess habits and generally understand how to think in chess. Here's an Amazon search result for his books. (By the way, I don't necessarily endorse Amazon as the best place to buy chess books, but the links are convenient.)

Main thing is, get the basics down. Build up the basic patterns. Go over the simpler diagrams over and over until you know them cold. Then move on to strategy, more advanced tactics and endgames, then worry about openings.

I'm on the same road. I'm not really good, but I'm working on it.

Read books such as Reassess Your Chess. Watch/listen to some great commentary at [Killegar Chess on YouTube](
http://www.youtube.com/user/SeanGGodley). Play different people frequently (online chess is great for this).

If you're aiming to compete, try doing all of the following if you can:
 

1- Find a chess teacher. A rating above 2000 is preferred
 

2- Get Chess books that teach the basics of tactics, strategy, and endgame.
 

3- Make an account on Chesstempo.com and start solving tactics
 

4- Play many rapid games online. Chess.com allows you to play for free
 

5-For book recommendations : Endgame/
Middlegame
-As for opening, you really need a mentor to guide you in choosing the best opening for you. If you want to learn some opening, this is a good basic book

How to Reassess Your Chess - If you can only read one book this is the one to read. Third edition is insanely cheap, but if you want to fork over the extra 20 get the 4th edition.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Reassess-Your-Chess-Chess-Mastery/dp/1890085006/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483020174&sr=1-2&keywords=how+to+reassess+your+chess

Chess and the Art of War is a fun read. Easy and precise.
https://www.amazon.com/Chess-Art-War-Ancient-Wisdom/dp/0785832815

I'm surprised no one has mentioned How to Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman yet. I've linked to the previous edition, which is much cheaper (since you mentioned you didn't want to spend a lot more money). I found this book tremendously helpful in figuring out what to be thinking about when faced with a position on the board that doesn't have an obvious tactic or hanging piece.

Essentially, if you really want to get better at planning, there is simply no substitute for playing and analysing several games (as others have said). Chess is exceedingly difficult and requires significant effort; there's no way around it.

The Chessmaster program is indeed awesome. Fritz is better for serious play, or so I've been told, but there is all sorts of helpful stuff on Chessmaster for beginning/intermediate players.

My personal favorite chess book is Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman. You won't find any "White to move and mate in 3" business. You won't find a bunch of sparsely annotated GM games, either. Instead, it gets into good depth on the tactics and strategy of the middle game. I really suggest it, it offers very useful methods of understanding the foundations of chess, recognizing imbalances, creating plans to exploit those imbalances, that kind of stuff. Fair warning, though, beginners might find it useful but I've found you need to have your feet a little wet to get the most out of the book.

The best book ever How to Reassess Your Chess. This is the best book to learn or refine your chess. Order the workbook too and when you're done you'll be able to compete at a much higher level.

I heartily recommend Silman's Reassess Your Chess - it focuses on recognizing and imbalances and making plans to create or take advantage of them.

In general, if your opponent reacts during the opening in a way you didn't expect, you should spend some time figuring out why their move was 'wrong' - what imbalance it introduces, and why it is not part of the book.