Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess

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Summary: Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess
Review: Fabulous book. The diagrams are unusual and sharp, altogether extremely nice. The book is extraordinarily specific, yet manages to find space for a humongous amount of information ranging from opening principles to the comparing of pieces to quotes related to chess. Having been in the chess world for a few years, I have seen many chess "instruction manuals", but this one stands head and shoulders above them all.

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Summary: Yet another great book from Pandolfini
Review: I assumed that this book would be about 4 of his others squished together. Actually, this is a brand new book.

Pandolfini uses the socratic method to show an improving player (but not a complete novice) how to become a decent player.

The book is very similar to Best Lessons of a Chess Coach (for which Pandolfini wrote the foreword) but at a lower level. I'd say this one is suited to E and D class players, around 1150-1350 USCF (whereas Best Lessons is for more like 1350+ or so).

I think that you would improve quicker with Pandolfini's other, more visual books (and I STILL use those for drilling) but this book is painless and fairly entertaining -- and very inexpensive for its size.

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Summary: Good Introduction
Review: I have only recently been interested in chess. This is my first book. I thought it was pretty well done. The introduction to the pieces was painful, but I already knew how they moved. I feel this book introduced several key concepts that have improved my chess game. I was looking for a book to start with, and I think this worked out pretty well. The diagrams were great. I didn't need to follow along with a chess board. In some of the lectures, the student skews away from the subject. However, it was very informative overall.

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Summary: I have learned
Review: I have spent my money on my last Pandolfini Book - he seems to come out with a new one every few months. I have now learned after buying about 5 of his books that some of them repeat the same things. Why not write a few good books instead of trying to write dozens of books that repeat the same things? I give this book one star because it repeats itself a lot from former things written by the same author.

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Summary: Searching for Phantom Pages & Diagrams
Review: This book is "pretty" good, especially for beginning chess players; but it won't achieve "classic" status. I give it 3 stars, however, for several reasons: the wording is not always crystal clear (to beginners especially) in the sense that sometimes it's difficult to tell if the author is referring to Black or White; the so-called Socratic method isn't purely Socratic in that the "student" asks more questions than the "teacher"; the book begins as if the student were brand new to the world of chess--but very early on, a reader can't help but wonder if the student is already familiar with tomes like Alekhine's _My Best Games of Chess, 1924-1937_ and Harding's _The Leningrad Dutch_; and finally the weiderst thing, my biggest caveat to potential emptors: Pages 117 through 148 (along with Diagrams 138 through 169) of this 383-page book are nowhere to be found...at least in the copy I purchased. (Makes me want to give the book 1 or 2 stars, though I think my copy is an honest printing fluke--but why me? Think I better get a refund, right?) I would NOT call the book an "ultimate guide." There are better beginner books. Still, the lessons [the ones appearing in MY copy :-) ] are okay and easy to follow for the most part, even when Pandolfini introduces intermediate concepts. He covers a good deal in the 350 or so pages of the "Reader's Digest" version I got at my local bookstore. If you buy it, just make sure your copy has all the pages. Duh. And use your chess board. That should help you understand the book's concepts better, in spite of a large number of diagrams. And if you are an intermediate or advanced player, there's no great need to add this to your already large and fine collection of 1,900 chess books...unless you aspire to be a chess teacher and need a handful of teaching tips.

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Summary: Searching for Phantom Pages & Diagrams
Review: This is a really nice chess book for beginners. Basically the book is a conversation between a teacher and student. Each chapter is a lesson. It starts at the beginning with how the pieces move, and basically goes through an entire game from beginning to end showing different options at each move.

There are a lot of nice things about this book. For one you do not have to have a chess set near by to read it. I really appreciated this, and wish more chess books would take this approach. Especially when you are looking for something to read on a bus or airplane, both of which I did with this book. There is a diagram after almost every move. This book does a really good job of stressing the fundamentals of chess. I found the idea about "free moves" to be one I had not seen before, and quite a good one to consider.

The quality of the paper is quite low. Looks like a newspaper basically. But this helps keep the cost down I guess. There are not a lot of mistakes, especially compared to some books by Eric Schiller which have a mistake on almost every page. Page 214 has a diagram which is wrong, but this is not a big deal. Pandolfini has sort of an odd sense of humor (imho), and likes to show off his large vocabulary, even when more simple words would suffice.

The one phrase that is repeated over and over is "It depends". For example the student says something like "Should I castle early?" Teacher: "It depends". Of course this is true, but the joke got old after about 200 pages. Pandolfini tries to not be dogmattic about chess "rules" like develop knights before bishops, but sometimes makes the point in an annoying manner.

But overall this is a great book for players under 1400 or anyone who wants some light reading about chess. It is thick, and a good price. I have not seen many other chess books like it, and is a nice effort.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for beginners
Review: This is a really nice chess book for beginners. Basically the book is a conversation between a teacher and student. Each chapter is a lesson. It starts at the beginning with how the pieces move, and basically goes through an entire game from beginning to end showing different options at each move.

There are a lot of nice things about this book. For one you do not have to have a chess set near by to read it. I really appreciated this, and wish more chess books would take this approach. Especially when you are looking for something to read on a bus or airplane, both of which I did with this book. There is a diagram after almost every move. This book does a really good job of stressing the fundamentals of chess. I found the idea about "free moves" to be one I had not seen before, and quite a good one to consider.

The quality of the paper is quite low. Looks like a newspaper basically. But this helps keep the cost down I guess. There are not a lot of mistakes, especially compared to some books by Eric Schiller which have a mistake on almost every page. Page 214 has a diagram which is wrong, but this is not a big deal. Pandolfini has sort of an odd sense of humor (imho), and likes to show off his large vocabulary, even when more simple words would suffice.

The one phrase that is repeated over and over is "It depends". For example the student says something like "Should I castle early?" Teacher: "It depends". Of course this is true, but the joke got old after about 200 pages. Pandolfini tries to not be dogmattic about chess "rules" like develop knights before bishops, but sometimes makes the point in an annoying manner.

But overall this is a great book for players under 1400 or anyone who wants some light reading about chess. It is thick, and a good price. I have not seen many other chess books like it, and is a nice effort.