Customer Reviews

1000 Best Short Games of Chess

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This is a very useful book in that it gives you 1000 games won in the openings. This is really a book on opening traps. You will find games impossible to find elsewhere. I know this is a hard to get classic but my dad has a copy from many years ago and it is fun to go through the different short games. It doesn't have much analysis unlike "Winning Chess Traps for Juniors", but it does have more games than any single book I have seen. I think the tactics in the openings found in this book will really help you improve both what you know about openings and what you know about tactics in action!

This book is a lot of fun to play through. It is also very instructive to watch bad chess be punished so quickly and severely! One master I read about recommends that his students memorize 400(!) of these games rather than study a bunch of opening tomes and strategy books. I'm not 100% sure I concur with him, but any student that plays through this massive book from end to end will come away a much better player.

1000 BEST SHORT GAMES OF CHESS: A Treasury of Masterpieces in Miniature (c.1955) by Irving Chernev is more than just a collection of quick chess games, it contains the games of several important historical figures such as: Leo Tolstoy; Jean Jacques Rousseau; and Napoleon Bonaparte.

It also contains the game made famous in Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey', known as the POOLE vs. HAL 9000 game to Kubrick fans - it is game #322, Roesch v. Schlage in 1910 Hamburg, Germany, 0-1, on page 148 in the c1955 Chernev edition.

By using short games as played throughout chess history, the reader can follow chess before popular defences were invented, such as the defence (#167) Remusat used against Napoleon, 0-1,1802 Paris; and readers can also learn solid chess moves such as dazzling sacrifices, picturesque long range mates, and epaulette mates. The book also contains some interesting blind folded plays, correspondence chess, and a few checker games thrown in.

The 1000 SHORT GAMES OF CHESS (c.1955) by Irving Chernov is useful enough and interesting enough for modern chess players that they might want to browse through second hand book stores to add this copy to their chess libraries, or keep it close to the recliner for a learned reading at night.

This is a wonderful book that every chessplayer should own. When I was a teenager, I read a comment by a chess bookseller who mentioned a master who had played through every game in this book in his youth, and had said what a great book it was. At first I snorted derisively, but I decided to look at the games myself. Over a period of several years, I played through, analyzed, and annotated the first 800 or so games in the book. I also became a master, and this book is a significant part of the reason why.

Chernev loved chess, and said that he had probably played over more chess games than anyone in history. (This book was published in 1954, long before the days of chess databases, or even Chess Informant; Chernev had to read through thousands of chess books and magazines, some quite obscure, to assemble these games.) The games Chernev has selected are very entertaining and some are quite beautiful. The games are very lightly annotated by Chernev, so for the most part it is up to the reader to figure out where the loser (and often both players) went wrong. Careful study of the games in the book will acquaint you with practically every tactical idea there is, and will help you avoid mistakes yourself, and exploit those of your opponent. I see tactical ideas very quickly, and I think this book is part of the reason why.

Several reviewers have stated that the book is a pricey collector's item these days. It is indeed possible to spend a lot of money for it, but several booksellers here are selling it for $13-14. New chess books today cost about twice that, and are usually a lot smaller than this tome, so this book is quite a bargain. I bought the paperback over 30 years ago when it was still in print. A couple of pages came loose over the years. I've since bought another paperback and a hardcover copy of the book, copied my original annotations into the paperback, and given away my original dog-eared paperback to a friend. I couldn't bear to throw out any copy of a book for which I have such affection!

This is a really fine book with well-selected and commented miniatures, the study of which is both a real pleasure and a fine learning tool. I am using this book to try to learn to play without a board ("blindfold"). The games are short enough to attempt to play mentally, and since the book starts with short games and goes up in length it's just the right kind of exercise.

I highly recommend this book if you can get it at a price below $50 (I paid over $30 for a very beat-up trade paperback). This is a real classic but unfortunately seems to have become both rare and in demand, and therefore expensive.

This is the best chess book for anybody who wishes to improve their results. Play through all the games and u will internalise lots of tactical ideas which will boost your playing strength. The book is a collection of miniature games ranging from 4 moves to 24 moves long in order of length of games (lots of fun to play through). Not only do u get to learn lots of tactical ideas effortlessly but also get to see the principles of good chess in action like rapid development, weakening the king or weak colour complexes etc. I am surprised nobody has ever thought of putting it back in print!

There have been so many times when my room mate and I played chess, with me ending up the loser. So, I started to go over the games in this book and I learned so much. If you like chess and want to learn to play well, I totally recommend this book. Heh, oh yeah, after 6 months of playing that guy, I finally beat him. :-p

this is a goldmine of best short games which show how to take tactical advantage of opponent mistakes .annotation to games is not as detailed as i would like to be .nevertheless it is recommended