Learn Chess: A Complete Course

Rating:
Summary: Efficient and tremendously clear
Review: A classic: the best A-to-Z course in chess I've ever seen; ideal for teaching smart kids to play. It's very, very efficient, which means that it can cover everything from the basics to more complicated material in just 170 pages. The elegance of the presentation makes its points easy to hold in your head when you're playing.

The real glory of this book is the middle sections: the chapters on double attack, forks, pins and skewers, and the like are great. It's easy to explain the basics of chess and some of the advanced student subjects like openings; but the middle game subjects can be hard to explain logically (rather than through endless examples). This book does a great job of that.

The same text used to come in two very attractively bound slim volumes.

Rating:
Summary: Excelente libro introductorio
Review: Es un grandioso libro que explica muy bien, y de forma muy sencilla, los principales topicos del juego de ajedrez. Es un libro excelente para principiantes.

Rating:
Summary: All the basics in one book
Review: This is a very good book on the basics of chess. I would recommend it for anyone who wants to learn to play chess, or who already knows but would like to improve.

This book was originally published in 2 volumes. Now they have been combined into one. Volume explains the rules, and the most basic info about the opening, ending, and how one wins a chess game.

Volume 2 covers the most useful ways to win material (pins, skewers, forks). There follows a chapter on mating attacks. Then there is more info about openings and endings. The last couple of chapters give some general advice and points the reader to other sources of chess information.

Each chapter has exercises. Some of them are simple, others challenging. Don't be discouraged if you can't work them all. My advice is to do every exercise. Write down your answers before looking at the solution. If possible, work the exercises without using a set and board in order to develop the ability to look ahead. I enjoyed working the exercises. They illustrate the lessons, and some of them challenge you to think a little deeper.

The Alburt and Pelts books are also very good. Learn Chess could be used before, after, or along with the A&P books to get a couple of views of the same information.