Learn Chess Fast! by Sammy Reshevsky

IN THIS remarkable book, a great master and a great teacher have collaborated to produce what is probably the clearest and simplest guide to the game ever written. Containing more than 300 diagrams, Learn Chess Fast! Has been specially designed and streamlined to impart a knowledge of chess in an entertaining and effortless manner. This book is attractively produced to introduce many thousands of Americans to the delight of the Royal Game. Learn Chess Fast is a basic chess beginners book written in a rare collaboration between the strongest chess player in America and possibly the world at that time and the best and prolific writer about the game of chess. This book teaches the legal moves of chess plus it explains the descriptive notation by which chess games were recorded. After that, it explains the basic principles of the game and shows some tricks and traps. It concludes with some examples of grandmaster play. Although being in descriptive notation is a negative, there are positives. This is a beginners book and beginning players usually find descriptive notation easier. Also, this book teaches descriptive notation and this explanation is not often to be found in modern books. These older books really teach chess better, at least in my opinion. The newer books are often compilations based on computer printouts from databases containing millions of master games. I do not believe that the newer books are equal to the older books in pure instructional value. Even I have learned something from reading this book. On page 46, it presents an opening trap I had never seen before. It goes like this: 1. P-K4 P-K4, 2. Kt-KB3 Kt-QB3 3. B-Kt5 Kt-B3 4. P-Q3 Kt-K2 Here Black has set a trap and White falls right into it: 5. KtxP P-QB3 6. Kt-B4 PxB 7. Kt-Q6 checkmate! White set a counter trap and Black fell into it. However, if Black had made a simple defensive move, 6. ?. Kt-Kt3 there would have followed 7. B-R4 P-QKt4 and Black's pawn would have forked White's bishop and knight, thereby winning a piece and the game. Exactly the same moves, in modern Algebraic notation, would be as follows: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. d3 Ne7 5. Nxe5 c6 6. Nc4 cxb5 7. Nd6# As can be seen, Algebraic Notation is more efficient and more computer friendly, but the older Descriptive Notation is more ?user friendly?.