Customer Reviews

The Chess Kid's Book of the King and Pawn Endgame

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

The way the book is written is very hard for me to understand. I may only be 8 but I should be able to understand this book. Not writen for a kid.

I purchased this book for my 9 year old who is in the 4th grade. He has played in a couple of chess tournaments through is school and gets As and Bs in school.
However, he expressed great disapointment when I purchased this book for him after he spend two days on it. Therefore, I look at it in detail and found my poor son had been reading a very poorly written book, that as an adult I found poorly organized and certainly a book with moderatly difficult concepts poorly explained.
Stay away from this!

This book contains some good ideas for the beginner. My biggest problem is that the book does not seem to allways cover things in the proper order and jumps to too many ideas too quickly. This makes it hard for me to understand some things. This book was in my sixth grade class. I found Pandofini's Engame Book to be much better.

I purchased this book to use as a text book in the classes I teach for kids.
It is poorly organized and jumps around too much. Not the most logicla progression of material.
The book, even though as the title suggests covers King and Pawn endings, a primer on how to checkmate with a King and Queen against a King should have been included (i.e. what does the kid do once a Pawn is Queened!).
Just bad writing. Stay away from this one.

Daa! It has been pointed out that the author forgot to cover how to checkmate with a Queen and King against a lone King when this is a book for the beginner. And, after reading some other books on the endgame I decided why not warn all of those who might buy this book and then be very upset that this book is disorganized and written in a way that it doesn't know what it is talking (writting) about. I my only be 10 (yeas old) but this books gets a 1.

David MacEnulty is a very talented communicator, writer and coach. This comes through in his books and I am very excited to see more of what he will be publishing! This book is fantastic.

An engaging overview of a difficult topic, how to play when there are only Kings and Pawns on the board. Macenulty eloquently covers the basic ideas (square of the pawn, opposition, triangulation (if you don't know what these terms mean, then get the book!)).

This book fills a nice void in a literature filled with material that is just a dump of positions with little explanation. If you have mastered the basics, and want a user-friendly introduction to the complex world of King and Pawn endgames, then this is a great place to start.

A side note on the other reviews. Over half the reviewers here criticize the author because he didn't include topics such as basic mates. If those reviewers had bothered to look, they would see that another book in his 'Kids Chess' series covers basic checkmates extremely well. This is a more advanced book. You might as well complain when a calculus book doesn't cover how to add two numbers.

This is a fantastically clear explanation of King and Pawn endings. Of course, if you don't know the rules of chess, or if you are mentally challenged, this material will be way over your head. However, assuming normal intelligence and acquaintance with the basics of chess, this book will explain this small but crucial sub-category of chess endings as thoroughly and instructively as the subject allows.

The people who complained about this book failed to read either the front or the back cover. Don't be upset if it doesn't explain the basic checkmates - that's NOT what the book says it's going to do, as the title on the front cover announces. Don't have a fit if the book is too hard for you - the "Chess Meter" on the back cover says it is not for beginners or most intermediates.

However, if you are a bright kid or a bright adult and want a good account of this intricate but important area of the great game of chess, this may be the first book for you. I started with the more technical treatise by Averbakh, and was pleased and relieved to see this book, and find those difficult concepts (triangulation, key squares) explained from scratch.

Very highly recommended.

I'm a retired engineer who loves chess, owns over 500 chess books and has read quite a few of them. I read this book a couple of years ago and still refer to it on occasion. I feel this is an excellent teaching book and I even recommended it this evening to my group of friends (all mature adults) who I play chess with each week. That said, the book seems to have been marketed for too young an age group. The young girl on the cover seems to be too young to read the book on her own. An older instructor or parent would probably be needed to use the text material to instruct the younger player.

Any beginner or intermediate player who is a teenager or older will get a lot out of this book. Especially nice are the diagrams that use large stars on key squares that need to be occupied by the King to achieve a winning position. Just knowing these squares eliminates a lot of calculations, a real time saver when under time pressure. This visual aid is a nice innovation: very effective and easily remembered.

For example, tonight a 2000 rated player showed us an common endgame position from a Eric Schiller book which Schiller claimed was a win for White regardless of whose move it was. Well, if Schiller had read this book, he wouldn't have made such a big mistake, as this book showed the position was a draw.

In summary, this is an excellent teaching book. If your endgame needs work, this one will get you up to speed quickly. It's just not for your typical pre-teenager.

This book has problems but it also has value. No this is not a stand-alone book on the King-Pawn endgame. The book would need the Queen and King checkmating lesson for it to be complete. Yes, this book could have been arranged differently. Yes, I can understand how rapid changes in example difficulty could make it difficult for a child (who are the target audience). However, it is better in the King-Pawn engame subject than the new Silman book is. But here are some things that I like about it.
1. The Fundamental Positions in the King-Pawn endgame are discussed in chapter 1. The book takes you right to the point: what position gives a WIN and which position yields a DRAW.
2. Good discussion on the "Key Squares" but there is one incorrect Figure. Silman does not even use the concept of "key-squares".
3. The section Triangulation is better in this book than in Silman's.
4. There are a ton more King-Pawn endgame examples and study problems than in the Silman book.

So, no, it is not complete, but it can still be useful.