Customer Reviews

Simple Chess (Everyman Chess)

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The reason this book is so good is that it has over 50 modern grandmaster games (and some other positions) that are clearly explained through a blend of vaiations and prose. Its an outstanding book. I find the games to be quite illustrative of the themes one encounters in Silman's Reassess or other strategic works. In this book you get to see how these strategic ideas emerge from the openings and how they are often resolved tactically. The book is also of managable size and depth so the serious amateur with limited study time can work through it in a timely fashion. Top stuff.

This book aspires to explain the positional basics. The title, "Simple Chess", is the same as a much earlier work by Michael Stean published in 1978. Indeed Emms cites Stean's book in the introduction.

Chapters in Emms' book cover ideas such as outposts, the two bishops, and the isolani. Many of the examples he gives are taken from his own games.

The problem is that many of the ideas are covered in other books (e.g. the two bishops are covered in Watson's "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy"; similarly, the isolated pawn is covered comprehensively in Baburin's "Winning Pawn Structures"). Nor, I feel, does Emms' book shed any new light on these ideas. The notes are all right, but nothing spectacular.

In contrast, Stean's "Simple Chess" is a classic and both the analysis and discussion are exemplary (It is, however, extremely hard to find this book).I can't help but feel that Emms's "Simple Chess" is but a pale imitation of Stean's earlier work.

Who might find Emms' book useful? Perhaps a player in the 1400-1700 category, who either needs an introduction to positional ideas or doesn't wish to read more specialised literature.