![]() Now you will be ready for some fun, by which I mean tactics! With tactics you will begin to appreciate the creativity of a good player, and with a basic knowledge of tactics you can understand when it is beneficial to sacrifice your pieces and come out ahead! There are lots of good texts on tactics, generally written by acknowledged chess masters. You will get introduced to Silman’s important notion of imbalances, and the importance of understanding imbalances. Chances are, you will make similar errors, and Silman will sound as if he is speaking to you. His clever book “The Amateur’s Mind” explores actual remarks from his own beginning students about a position and their choice of move, going on to explain where their errors are. With the previous book you will be in a good position to better understand the wondrous teachings of the best contemporary chess author (at least for beginners/novices) – Jeremy Silman. Pandolfini called “Weapons of Chess”, which is organized alphabetically and will introduce you to important concepts like bad bishops, pawn structure, passed pawns, positional play, and so forth. Now that you’ve had some exposure to basic ideas, you are ready to expand your chess knowledge. Ever feel baffled by some non-descript pawn move in a master game you’ve looked at? Chernev will clarify the mystery for you.Ĥ. Chernev walks you through 33 complete actual master-level games and explains every single move in every single game. Make sure you get that edition so you don’t suffer the annoying English descriptive notation that I had to endure in the 1957 edition by Simon & Schuster. ![]() There is a new edition of this text in algebraic notation. Chernev is, in my oh-so-humble opinion, the best of the classic chess authors of the 20th century. “Logical Chess: Move by Move” by Irving Chernev. The one highly irritating thing about this book for me is the fact that they never conclude to an emotionally satisfying mate the game that covers 23 moves in over 300 pages! Fireside Books, 2003.ģ. (Read that too, by the way, just for fun.) PUGtC is written as a hypothetical dialogue between a student and a chess instructor, and covers a single game, move by move with the omniscient teacher explaining a multitude of chess concepts to the beginning patzer. “Pandolfini’s Ultimate Guide to Chess” by Bruce Pandolfini, the personal trainer of Josh Waitzkin, the child chess prodigy and subject of the wonderful chess film “Searching for Bobby Fischer”, after the book by the same name. You can find it in all bookstores in the games section.Ģ. While programmed instruction is not found much these days, it remains a fine instructional format. ![]() ![]() The book is a bit odd since it uses what is called ‘programmed instruction’, rather than a normal prose book. BFTC will introduce you to the basic patterns of mating, and, as if by educational osmosis, it will also begin to instill a sense of tactics into your game. This may seem odd, but many people advocate learning the end game first. This is a good beginners book and spends most of its time on the end game, rather than the opening or the middle game. “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess” by, strangely enough, Bobby Fischer, the first and only official American World Chess Champion, co-authored by S. So let’s get to the list, and I’ll explain the reasons for these choices as we go along.ġ. I will present them in the order that I wish I had read them, since some would have prepared me to understand others more effectively. I will preface this column by saying that I have read (or am in the process of reading, as noted) all of the books on this list. The first is science, and the second engineering. So I have opted for the most efficient way, which is a combination of study and over-the-board play. ) But the best way to learn is not necessarily the most efficient, and I personally don’t have enough time left on this earth to imbibe the complexities of chess by self-discovery. (The second best way to learn something is to teach it, by the way. The best way to learn something is to get battered by doing it wrong, then do it again with the wisdom of your bruises. In any case, we share the desire to improve our game. You might just play it because you enjoy beating the hell out of some loser. We play chess because it seduces our intellect, is an analogue to life itself, and represents the ever-elusive quest for mental and emotional elegance.Īt least that’s why I play chess.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |