Customer Reviews

How to Win in the Chess Openings

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This is not really a book on "How to Win in the Chess Openings" as the title says. It is a book that covers ideas behind some selected openings. You should not plan to "force" a win in the opening, but to be prepared for tactics at all parts of the game. But, to best be prepared for Tactics in the Opening you should be looking at a book on Opening Traps (there are a couple good ones published).
This book, which is not up to date on the openings, is written in the old form of Descriptive Chess Notation - these should be fixed by an updated version. I personally like "Understanding the Chess Openings" by Collins far better as a general book on the openings since it covers a lot more material and is up to date. I feel Collins book and an opening traps book together is the most ideal way for someone just starting out learning openings to get started.

The first chess book I ever waded through, was all about tactics, mating patterns, etc. After reading it, I schooled all of my friends. But I had a rude awakening in my first tournament when I got had by fool's mate in the first game. So I commenced on learning openings in order to get into position to use my tactic skills. How To Win in the Chess Openings is a book I've studied in two phases. The first phase was just learning the different patterns and typical sequence of moves. I really didn't understand the theory and logic behind most of the opening moves. So at first, I was pretty disappointed in the book and left it alone. But now, 5 years later, I've been using the book to really get the logic behind the opening moves and it's finally making sense.

As some of the other reviews have stated, it only goes over a few different openings and not to a depth of being able to learn every variation. However, the openings covered are very common and the knowledge provided is very good for someone trying to get into the middlegame.

Beginning players often pound out their first moves of a chess game by rote, merely imitating moves they've seen in a book or magazine. When they run out of pre-learned moves, they are often at a complete loss as to how to proceed because they do not understand the reasoning behind those memorized moves. In this little book, the late Al Horowitz uses lots of clear prose to explain every move -- not reams of confusing variations that are gibberish to most of us amateur players. The book covers only certain variations of openings popular in the 1950's, so one will not see the King's Indian Defense or Benoni. But warhorses like the French, Ruy Lopez (Spanish), Giuoco Piano (Italian) and the Queen's Gambit are given good coverage. A good companion book is Chernev's Logical Chess Move by Move. HTWITCO is suitable for players class E through B. After a few run-throughs, keep it for reference! I still refer to mine from time to time.

This book is as old as I am; we both apeared in 1951, but it has stood the test of time substantially better. It's still a very good first book for the player who knows how the pieces move and who understands the objective of the game, but who is still struggling to get his or her game organized. The reader who is willing to put the time into it will come away with a good understanding of a few very basic openings, an understanding that then makes it easier to begin to work on basic tactics. I bought it back in the seventies, and it quickly gave me the edge I needed to beat the little band of cut-purses and ne'er-do-wells with whom I periodically got liquored up and played chess. Then I put the chess set up and didn't play for a lot of years. A few weeks ago, when my young sons expressed an interest in learning to play the game, I pulled the dusty, weighted Stauntons down out of the closet, but I couldn't find the old copy of Horowitz. I was glad to see that it was still in print, and now I'm working my way through it a second time. Don't be put off by the fact that it uses descriptive rather than algebraic notation; It's still well written with copious diagrams and easy to grasp.

If you are a beginner at chess, you need to read this book. After reading it, and using a reasonable amount of diligence on your part, you should have a workable knowledge of the very important principles of opening chess. Without "talking down" to the beginner, Horowitz uses an easy to understand language and very appropriate examples to explain his lessons. He makes learning the openings of chess what it should be- fun and helpful.

There is an excellent kid's review of this book which I believe raises many valid negative points, I agree with them and I won't repeat them here. I also concur that "Understanding the Chess Openings" by Sam Collins is an excellent and more up-to-date book that is well-organized and relatively short with a logical structure and lots of diagrams with a minimum of unnecessary text.

What I would like to say about "How to Win in the Chess Openings" is that despite the book being somewhat outdated, it is short at less than 200 pages and covers a lot of ground. What is most useful about it is the good commentary which illustrates many important principles of the opening. Since there are more than a 1,000 trillion ways to do an opening, gleaning principles and themes from as many points of view as possible is an important road to simplifying all the possiblities.

This book covers about 15 popular openings and some of their variations. I have found the commentary to be complimentary to the book "Understanding the Chess Openings" by Sam Collins. However, the text is a bit more dense in the book I'm reviewing in terms of move-by-move commentary and I think this is very useful for a beginner and will help a more advanced player consolidate concepts.

I own several books on openings and for me this is essential. I need to see different openings from a lot of angles to truly internalize the principles. I realize not everyone learns like me, but for those of you who do you will probably find this a good text. In addition, it is often available for next to nothing used so why not pick it up along with "Understanding the Chess Openings" by Collins?

This might be a good choice for the beginner, the person who knows how to play chess but hasn't read anything on the opening. Compared to Fine, whose _Ideas_Behind_the_Chess_Openings_ is often recommended to newcomers, Horowitz covers fewer openings but in greater detail. He explains the strategic and tactical principles behind almost every single move. To acquire the ability to see the game in this manner is far more important than memorizing pages of book lines.

As Horowitz acknowledges with misgivings, the title is not quite accurate. This book will not teach you how to "win" in the opening (which never happens unless your opponent really trips hard). Rather, it will show you how to play the opening solidly so you can begin accumulating the small advantages out of which spring winning chances.

As other reviewers have noted, this book is written in the obsolete descriptive notation. Although you may as well learn how to read it, Horowitz does not explain how to use it in this book--a glaring omission in a book intended for beginners! Enough illustrations are included that you could probably deduce it from the text. I'd encourage people new to chess to translate the moves (the boldfaced ones, at least) into algebraic. Doing so will facilitate your recognition of opening lines in other chess literature.

After you've studied this, then go to Fine for expanded treatment of the major openings and coverage of the others left out of Horowitz.

This book shows how to think about chess, and not just in the openings. Very valuable for tactics and strategy in general, especially appropriate for beginners, but useful also for more experienced players. It is entertaining as well.

Simply put, this is a classic. It is great for beginners, but if you feel you are an advanced chess player, then it will be a good review! I had this book recommended to me by a couple of players with a rating close to master when I played in high school. If it was good enough for them, then it is certianly good enough for me. Now that I have long since graduated from college it is still one of my favorite chess books. The notation is old, but that will prevent only the weakest from learning the time tested concepts shared by a great grand master who understands the game!

"HOW TO WIN IN THE CHESS OPENINGS" (199 pp.; copyright 1951) is a splendid introduction to the chess openings. Horowitz spends 29 pages on opening basics (Chapter 1, "Principles of Opening Play" and Chapter 2, "Exceptions to the First Principle"). In his chapter on "Exceptions to the First Principle," he makes the following observation: "... the first strategic principle points up the necessity for bringing maximum power to bear on the central squares in the shortest time. Likewise, it points out the fallacy of deviating from principle. Yet, while to toe the line with rigid obedience may be good discipline, it is wooden, unimaginative chess." In short, don't play the openings by rote.

He covers opening concepts that every novice should know (the exceptions will come later). Chapters 3 thru 15 cover individual openings. Each chapter ends with what Horowitz calls a "Chess Movie," i.e., an actual game, with many diagrams, illustrating the opening covered in that chapter. The openings analyzed in this book include the following:

Chapter 3: Giuoco Piano
Chapter 4: Ruy Lopez
Chapter 5: Ruy Lopez--The Open Defense
Chapter 6: Ruy Lopez--The Steinitz System
Chapter 7: French Defense--Classical Variation
Chapter 8: French Defense--Winawer Variation
Chapter 9: French Defense--Tarrasch Variation
Chapter 10: Sicilian Defense--The Modern Dragon Variation
Chapter 11: Queen's Gambit Declined
Chapter 12: Reti Opening--A Hypermodern Opening
Chapter 13: English Opening--Another Hypermodern Opening
Chapter 14: Alekhine's Defense--Hypermodernism in Defense
Chapter 15: Center Counter Defense

This is the first volume of a four volume work by Horowitz on the openings, the middle game, and the endgame. The second volume in this series, Modern Ideas in the Chess Openings, covers the Center Game, Danish Gambit, King's Gambit, King's Gambit Declined, Petroff's Defense, Philidor's Defense, Caro-Kann Defense, Nimzo-Indian Defense, Gruenfeld Defense, Budapest Defense, and the Dutch Defense. This series ends with the following two books: How to Win in the Middle Game of Chess and How to Win in the Chess Endings. In 1968, all four books were published in a single volume: How to Win at Chess: A Complete Course (817 pp.). These books were written in descriptive notation (eg., 1 P-K4 P-K4 2 N-KB3 N-QB3 3 B-N5 P-QR3, etc.); today, chess books are written in algebraic notation (eg., 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 a6, etc.). Horowitz assumes that you already know descriptive notation. If you are not familiar with descriptive notation, then see the article on that subject at the Wikipedia website.

Once you have read Horowitz's two books on the opening, I would recommend your purchasing Paul van der Sterren's Fundamental Chess Openings and Nick de Firmian's Modern Chess Openings. As you become more familiar with the chess openings, you will then want to develop an opening repertoire (eg., Lev Alburt, Roman Dzindzichashvili, and Eugene Perelshteyn's Chess Openings for White, Explained: Winning with 1.e4 and Chess Openings for Black, Explained: A Complete Repertoire). After developing a repertoire, you will want to study more advanced books on the openings.

Conclusion: This book and the second book in this series should be considered a single work. They are meant to be an "introduction" to the openings, so their main advantage is their stress on opening principles. Learning the latest wrinkle in opening theory can be put off until a later date.