Customer Reviews

Lasker's How to Play Chess: An Elementary Text Book for Beginners, which teaches Chess by a mnew, easy, and comprehensive method.

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This one has been around for a lot of years. The earliest edition of this chess book that I have been able is 1941. I collect chess books, both old and new (my goodness, I wonder how many books have been written concerning this wonderful game), and am glad to have a copy of this one in my collection.

Are there better books out there for the beginning chess player? You bet. Some of the more recent books published are absolutely great. But if you go back to the time when this one was first published, it is actually pretty good...all things considered.

The author includes in this work:

The Rules of Chess
The Initial Positions
The pieces
Notation systems
The moves of the pieces
Exercises
The object of the game
Exercises
The end game
The start of the game
Principles of Chess strategy
Examples of the Play of Masters, with explanatory Notes

Now this is obviously a tall order for a small book of 106 pages, especially when you consider that volumes and volumes have been written through out the years on each and every one of these subjects. Hey, I have seven volumes on just the opening movies alone and I have not even scratched the surface.

No, this would not be my choice of books to offer the beginning player these days but had I been playing chess, wanting to learn chess or teach chess back in 1941, then I probably would have latched on to this one pretty quickly.

My reasons for giving this one five stars is simply out of historical consideration and not in a practical sense at all. It is a nice one to add to your collection if you are interested in such things.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks