The Soviet Chess Primer (Chess Classics)

No words are enough. If you never played chess but you feel you can make a difference just buy it and study it. Your game will undoubtedly improve. Cheers.

Really excellent book, found it useful after coming back to chess after a break, interspersed with key ideas and principles for all parts of your game. I think most people who play at club level or below , will find this book super useful. Written in an easy to read humorous style and not dry like some books on chess. The fun excercises are also instructive. My advice - get this book if you like chess!

There is a lot of material in here, but it is one of the better well-rounded texts for adult beginners, I believe.

Very good, you will definitely improve!

I put off buying this book for a while because of the word ‘Soviet’ in the title…It’s original title was simply ‘Chess’.Kasparov and Karpov have said positive things about this book and in the end I thought there’s information in this book that could improve my ability to play chess and I decided to buy it. The content is amazing and I can see it being extremely beneficial to my learning.The reason I changed my mind…If Governments are doing business with Russia whilst Russia is attacking Ukrainian people and these Governments have a clear conscience then I can buy a book from Amazon and improve my knowledge.

This book is amazing, well thought out, and exercises as well

Simplemente perfecto, me encantó, y la calidad de las impresiones impecable.

This should be everybody's *second* primer or it's title should be 'The Soviet Chess *Handbook*If you have a national chess federation ELO rating of 1300-1599 I highly recommend this fantastic book.If you are absolutely new to chess or under 1300 rating this may be a little advanced for you in which case I would recommend one of these three classic primers first: Siegbert Tarrasch's 'Game of Chess', Capablanca's 'Chess Fundamentals' or Lasker's 'Manual of Chess'.Lasker wrote the forward to the original Russian edition and the famous coach and author Mark Dvoretsky has written the new one for this English translation, it's his favorite chessbook of all time. Garry Kasparov and Anatoli Karpov (former legendary world champions) have both praised it having learned from it when they were schoolboys.The author presents the material in an engaging and concise manner and includes practical examples after the theory, and exams at the end of each chapter. To get maximum value out of the book I suggest you use a chessboard and take the time necessary to work out the moves and write out your answers as they can get quite tricky and the practice of doing this is similar to over the board play where you must do the same in your mind. I'm currently halfway through the book and plan to run through it again for any chapters that I score less than 80% correctly.Another neat feature is that new concepts are in many cases are introduced and the author then cites the diagram numbers from previous sections to point out that the new concepts exists in *those* positions as well. This is a great instructional technique as the student sees firsthand with positions they've gained familiarity with earlier that any given chess position will have multiple themes in it.5 stars, I have had many chess books but this is one of the few I will never willingly part with!

Até agora esse foi o melhor livro para iniciantes que já li. Ele cobre desde o movimento das peças até as três fases do jogo (abertura, meio jogo e finais), passando pelos elementos mais importantes (tática, estratégia e cálculo). Tudo isso de forma extremamente didática. Só ressalto um detalhe: apesar de ser fácil acompanhar os primeiros capítulos, logo o livro fica bem difícil! Por isso, para aproveitar melhor o conteúdo da obra, é recomendável ter pelo menos 1000 de rating. Os exercícios também são muito difíceis desde o início, mas não são impossíveis, e ajudam muito a melhorar o cálculo.

I wish I got that book years ago (many years ago). The style is typical for old (but good) school of teaching - goes from 0 to 60 quickly (or 0 to 100, if you are using metric system :)). No unnecessary fluf - if something requires deep discussion (pawn endings) it does it in a comprehensive way, but otherwise explains many core concepts quickly, with many examples on why those are important. It should give a very solid foundation on what one should work on.Some people aim books based on their Elo rating. Not certain that's the correct approach but I'd say if one wants to really excell in the beautiful game of chess (and not just win with a few friends) this book shows many areas one should be working on to become a well rounded player. Then you know "why" you need to work on something.I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the paper in the book. It's soft cover but print and paper are superb. I pick up the book with pleasure and think the game of chess receives the treatment it deserves :)I read it every day, just for pleasure. Definitely "a must" on every chess player's list of books to have.

Buon libro