Full name: Chess: From First Moves to Checkmate

Author: Daniel King Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Amazon Goodreads ISBNs: 9780753419304 0753419300

Chess: From First Moves to Checkmate by Daniel King (pun intended?) was an excellent book. At first I had misgivings, I'm embarrassed to admit, because of the size and shape of the book. Usually books that are thinner and larger in size are mostly made for good illustrations, which this most certainly had, but with less meaningful content. This wasn't so. For a beginner, like myself, it had great and very helpful content. It started with the basics but quickly moved to strategic moves and problem solving, with explanations for the puzzles that were wonderful because they explained the intent of each move. Along with that, it gave the history of chess, a history of the chess championships, the world champion winners, and some of the best and worst moves by those champions. This is information I had never had in any other book, and it was great, because I didn't necessarily want a whole book about it, just a few chapters to get me up to speed. It had little boxes in the margins that were labeled with "Did you know?" and contained interesting tidbits such as the fact that the bishop was sometimes called the elephant. One of the chapters was about "gamemanship" and talked about unsporting behavior such as intimidating stares and table shaking to throw a player off their game. There was information about computer chess, links to the best websites, and a competition between IBM's computer, Deep Blue, and Garry Kasparov, which practically made him have a nervous breakdown. This shorter book had a load of information packed into it that was both informative and entertaining. I think it was a good book for one of the first few chess books I've read to get me interested and to get me started. If you're in the same position (pun intended), I highly recommend it! ClassicsDefined.com