Beginning Chess: Over 300 Elementary Problems for Players New to the Game

This can be your 2nd or third book after learning the basic fundamentals of the game like the board, pieces, movements, tactics, and strategy. This is a Chess Training Course and one of the best written for beginners and intermediates I have ever used from cover to cover. I started with everyone’s First Chess Workbook by Peter Giannatos, then Elliot Neff’s Chess School’s 15 Workbooks, and this Beginning Chess Course that I should have used second or first instead of third. I then started John Nunn’s Chess Course that was a waste of money since it was not a chess course, but was a boring wordy book for any level player to never read it cover to cover. I changed my initial purchase rating to 4 stars since I went through every page. The answers to his 300 tests had only three (3) errors that I found. This book only goes up to no more than 3 moves ahead, where Elliot’s Neff’s Chess Workbooks go from beginning to Advanced Player exceeding thinking more than 2 and 3 moves ahead. I hope this review helps all my peers and especially those who are just starting to learn chess or the old timers needing a review after being away. I am a retired engineer in my late 60s and took chess back up as a hobby to improve my cognitive abilities. I am also a serious player who learns from winning and loosing and enjoy this game. Mostly every famous player author teacher had obvious errors in the answer sections that varied from no such pieces on the board, or them being on the wrong rank or file or square etc… I recommend Pandolfini’s Checkmate as a follow on to this book. As you can see I have an extensive book collection as well as chess boards and pieces. I am in the process of making chess boards for my grandchildren out of exotic hard woods like Walnut and White Ash Squares on a one inch thick Teak Wood and framed using red Oak. For the beginners, I recommend using a Chess Board when the study puzzles get into three and more moves, or you will lose perception of the board progress, just my opinion. Critics of the books are usually by those who expect simplicity, remember Einstein said, things should be kept as simple as possible, but not to simple. Treat the game of chess like Mathematics and Physics where understanding is the most important. As a retired engineer, we started with arithmetic such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, Calculus, Logic, numerical Integration, etc…. Why folks expect all chess books to be simple when they played less than a hundred games is mind boggling. We learn from making errors, not from simplicity.Update: After reading this book I bought three more for my married children families along with Lets Play Chess. So yes, Bruce Pandolfini has the best books for teaching kids and adults this game. I have read about 60+ chess books in my lifetime and am a pretty good player still at age 68.

Just the right level of challenge for a beginner. I enjoyed it very much.

The title of this excercize book is Beginning Chess - over 300 elementary problems for players new to the game. If your are not in the target group, you will probably find it too easy.Well, there are not over 300 problems, but exactly 300.The problems have no hints, but are so simple that hints cannot be needed. There is next to no progression of difficulty. Many of the constellations look so artificial that they could probably not occur in a natural game. However, I still consider the book useful, at least for myself.In the preface I read: Each problem has only one correct idea. Now I think I have spotted two problems with two correct solutions. (Please correct me anybody, if I am wrong: Task 142 where I think Kf3 does the trick equally good as the solution given in the answers section. And task 273 where I think Qg5+ is as good as the solution in the answers. Again, please correct me if I am mistaken here.)Pandolfini puts me in the "master class level 1" according to my performance here. Such flattery is no good.I've been away from chess in many years, have never played in a club, not played many games at all and have lost many of them. Still I made not more than 20 mistakes during my first take on this book. That makes me belonging to "master class level 1" according to Pandolfini, better than "advanced", "tournament player" and "graduate student". The mistakes I made were really stupid and even after going through the book more times, I still make mistakes! The book is probably good for people at my level; in fact I think I even learned something from it. In most cases, no thinking is required, i.e. it is more about seeing (chess vision) than thinking.Frankly speaking, I think most absolute beginners will learn more from Susan Polgar's  A World Champion's Guide to Chess: Step-by-step instructions for winning chess the Polgar way , which is not much more expensive than the present book, and has much more content and even offers more progression of difficulty. Since I read Pandolfini's book first, at least three times, I learned a lot from it, and there was again the sensation of too much easiness in Polgar's book. That could of course be due to lessons I've learned for Pandolfini. Susan Polgar's more advanced book has not arrived yet. I now solve a little more complicated problems, for intermediate players, and I definitely feel that going trough this simplistic book has benefited my ability to spot the ideas.Addendum ten years after: I have taken up these exercises again, and will do so regularly. My favourite chess tactics books are by far The Manual of Chess Combinations 1a and 1b, also suitable for beginners. Many repetitions are required, however, both to improve and to stay somehow good. I am much better to calculate now, but blunders may still occur so this simplistic book is still useful. Four stars only, as this production is really cheap.

This book contains 300 simple tactical puzzles. The solution to each puzzle is only one move long. For the great majority of these puzzles (297 out of the 300) there is only one correct idea, which is given in a separate solution section. Solutions are accompanied by the name of the tactic used as well as a short verbal explanation of the situation. Not only do the puzzles involve single move tactics, there are fewer than ten pieces on the board in each position. This should help those new to the game see the main idea and not "miss the forest for the trees".Problems are not grouped thematically. The 300 problems are divided into thirty tests, with each test containing ten problems. Many themes are represented in each test. Some recurring ideas include pins, piling up on pinned pieces, forks, skewers, checkmates, discovered attacks, and en prise captures.Many players might feel the positions given in this book are too easy, especially since en prise captures are included. The problems may be easy, but practicing these simple motifs builds "chess vision". Also, novice players often miss these moves in games. The tactics in this book are things players need to spot without thinking. The only way to get to this stage is practice.Look at some of your recent games and be honest with yourself. Did you lose any of these games because you hung a piece? Did you lose an exchange to a pin or a knight fork? Did you opponent blunder, only to escape punishment because you couldn't spot the chance to win material? If your answer was yes to any of these, seriously consider purchasing this book. More importantly, thoughtfully work through all the problems at least three times.

タイトルどおり、あくまでも入門者向けです。基本手筋が300問、次の１手形式で出題されています。チェスに関して駒の動かし方くらいしか知らない、もしくは、全く知らない状態から興味を持って、日本語で書かれた手軽に手に入る入門書を読んでみた、といった方々には、おそらく簡単に入手できる本の中では最適な一冊の一つだと思います。将棋に比べて、圧倒的に遠距離多方面攻撃型の駒が多いチェスですから、将棋をある程度指せる方が気まぐれでチェスをやってみようと思ったときに、最初に手にとる本としても良いかもしれません。この本を読んでから、ヤフーＵＳＡでの勝率が若干上がりました。でも、この本だけでは、まだまだレートは低いままです。でも、読んで良かったと思える本でした。ちなみに英語力ですが、中学生程度の読解力と辞書があれば十分です。本題たる中身はただ単に問題図があるだけです。回答の解説も、簡単な短文です。序文とチェスのルール説明、あとは駒の位置の記録方法についての説明に長文がありますが、序文以外は日本語で書かれた他の本でも内容は同じことが書いてありますから、何らかの日本語で書かれたチェスの本が手元にあるなら、それが読めなくて困ることはないです。

チェスを始めたばかりの人が戦術などを勉強するのによい本。冒頭は、チェスのルール、戦術、メイトについての説明があります。英語も平易なものですし、図が沢山あるのでわかりやすいです。その後は、一手の問題が３００問あります。メイト問題が６７問、後は戦術の問題です。項目ごとに別れているわけではないですが、最後に各問題がどのような問題なのかを分類したＩＮＤＥＸがついています。（ＦＯＲＫ・ＭＡＴＥ・ＯＶＥＲＬＯＡＤ…等）また、答えの部分に簡単な説明がのっているので、問題を楽しみながらチェスのルールが理解出来ます。小難しい事を書いた本ではないので、これからチェスを始めるという人がチェスの楽しさを知るのによい本だと思います。

ここまでシンプルな問題集とは思わなかった。簡単すぎるとはいわないが、正直買う必要なし。