Cheap Logical Chess: Move By Move: Every Move Explained New Algebraic Edition (Book) (Irving Chernev) Price

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Customer Reviews of Logical Chess: Move By Move: Every Move Explained New Algebraic Edition

Good, but not the best book of its type
The idea of explaining the idea behind every move is a good. I wish that more books would do this for the Beginning and Intermediate level chessplayer. <
>There are several problems with this book; 1) The book is overly focused on the opening - it should spend more time going into the middlegame and endgame, and 2) It often would not answer the questions I had about a move or what was going on it the game, and 3) half the games are of the author, who is only a measly master. However, overall I can still recommend this book. <
>This book does not compare in quality to my favorite book, "Logical Chess, Move by Move, which just recently was updated." <
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Great for principles, not so great for move analysis
As the other reviews state, this book is a great way for beginners to learn general principles. However, I would recommend taking Chernev's alternative variation analysis, and in fact many of his tactical variations, with a large grain of salt, frequently they are not close to the best moves. Even his main line analysis is frequently quite wrong. For example, I'm going through game 19, and on move 15 black plays 15...Bd6. This is not a good move since it allows 16.c5!. But of the alternate move 15...Qd8, Chernev only writes "...does not look appetizing". In fact, 15...Qd8 stops white's 16.c5 and lets *black* play c5 in the next move or two, gaining equality. Playing ...c5 is what Chernev is beating up Black about in this and all the Queen's Gambit Declined games, over and over, and he misses when Black has a chance to play it! <
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>There are many more examples of bad analysis in the other games like this. Just read through the games, absorb the general principles, and move on to more modern "move by move" books with more accurate analysis.

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One of the best books for beginning players!
I read the old edition (descriptive notation) of this book years ago and although it was somewhat "hard to read" due to mainly the notation the games themselves were very instructive and I feel I got a lot out of it. This edition seems (I haven't gone thorugh it cover to cover) to have corrected some errors and of course the notation issue so I'd imagine it's easily in the "Top 10" beginning/intermediate books on chess.