Customer Reviews

Understanding Chess Move by Move

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Nunn did a great job of providing great analysis and a great selection of games in UNDERSTANDING CHESS MOVE BY MOVE. He goes into great detail where it is called for. I would definately recommend this book for Advanced Players along with UNBEATABLE CHESS LESSONS FOR JUNIORS for the advanced beginner or Intermediate player. Both of these books seem to compliment each other well (though unless you are advanced get the Unbeatable book first and Nunn's book as a follow up).

John Nunn takes games that are instructive and gives very (very!) detailed analysis on them. This book is well suited for an experienced chess player who had already gone through the other "every move analyzed for lessons" books for beginning and intermediate players. Popular approach? You bet! it works very well for helping you understand what is happening in each game.

John Nunn is very accurate in his detailed analysis. He does expect the reader to have basic knowledge so doesn't spend time going over the simple general rules, but focuses on what a good player needs to know to get getter. Sometimes, he does go off on a tangent with some of the variations and maybe could have spent a little more time explaining the plan instead of just the variation. This one of the top books of its type for the advanced chess player.

If you've read and loved Chernev's "Logical Chess Move by Move," you'll have a rough idea of Nunn's book. The main differences, I think, are:

1) Chernev's is much more basic, even though Understanding Chess "avoids jargon" and "emphasizes general principles" Nunn still writes more in-depth textually and doesn't avoid long variations.

2) Nunn is less repetitive - he doesn't try to come up with a dozen different reasons for why 1 e4 or 1 d4 "is the best move on the board," he just refers you to game 1, and moves on.

3) Nunn's games reflect current theory and modern openings which are a bit more sophisticated (or at least not as readily comprehensible) and require more explanation than Chernev's.

I enjoyed Understanding Chess (the writing, variations, thematic ideas, summaries) but I think it is a bit too much for younger players or newcomers so if you haven't read Logical Chess or found it too hard (or **shudder** boring) you might do well to wait awhile before trying Understanding Chess. Understanding Chess is like a college textbook while Logical Chess' is a high school workbook.

This is a very popular and famous book, and John Nunn is a well-known chess writer. Almost every move is explained deeply in this book. But there is one problem with this book: For whom did Nunn write this book? I'm confused because, in a specific game the first move "1.e4" is explained as if the reader is beginner or a novice. But later in the same game, Nunn includes a lot of long and complex variants in several analyses after a specific move, analyses that are only useful for a strong chess player. For me it seems like the author couldn't decide for whom he wrote this book for, and that sure makes this book not one of the best "move-by-move" books. The games chosen, for instance game 20 between Kasparov and Shirov is to complex, to explain weak colour complex for a novice/beginner. And some games presented in the book are actually exceptions from basic guidelines, e.g. "don't keep your king in the centre, but castle quickly", guidelines that an intermediate player should follow.

Improvers should instead try books like McDonald's "The Art of Planning" or Giddins "50 Essential Chess Lessons". Beginners should try Chernev's "Logical Chess Move by Move"

This latest offering by Nunn is more accessible than his earlier "Secrets of Grandmaster Chess", though here too, top-flight games are being dissected. Thirty extensively annotated games are divided into three groups - opening, middlegame and endgame - depending on which phase they shed most light on. The bulk of the games - twenty-two - are devoted to middlegame themes.

Positional analysis and concrete tactical analysis are interwoven; often an accurate positional evaluation depends on a tactical finesse in a sub-line. In following Nunn's notes, we enter the subtle and complex mind of a modern GM. Earlier annotators writing similar books, such as Reinfeld and Chernev, would give sweeping general assessments based on superficial and static evaluations of a position and backed up by one or two unconvincing lines of play to corroborate them. Furthermore, Nunn strives for objectivity. Earlier annotators would give exclamation marks only to the winner and question marks only to the loser. Not only does Nunn point out the mistakes of the winners and the good moves of the losers but he makes clear the pyschological problems in coping with poor but tenable positions.

The games are taken from contemporary GM praxis, where both players are au fait with theory past and present. The games are not one-sided contests. Note particularly the four games devoted to defence. In each case we see a full-blooded fight between evenly matched opponents. These games receive minute analysis and not superficial and facetious comments.

New positional methods are discussed, such as for combating the isolated d-pawn (Kamsky-Karpov 1996), where instead of playing the N to d5 in front of the isolated d-pawn, Karpov plays it to f5. Another example is playing with or against the hedgehog (Karpov-Ribli 1986). Exceptions to the classical 'rules' occur often in the games; Nunn provides the raison d'etre. The rules are seen to be half-truths at best.

The book will likely appeal to players with ratings of at least 1600. Anyone who has been through such books as, say, "Logical Chess" and "The Most Instructive Games of Chess ever Played", both by Chernev. Class B players, who all too often have blinkered vision in that they concentrate exclusively on attack, or play on one part of the board, or one tactical theme, are likely to learn quite a bit as they see how the entire board has to be kept in mind, how attack has to be balanced with defence, and also how subtle and indirect methods can often be more effective than a crude and single-minded approach.

If you look at the book description (above), you get the idea that this book is focused on teaching fundamentals to non-experts. Wrong. The title's obvious parallel to Chernev's [excellent] work (Logical Chess Move by Move) only reinforces this misleading perception.

Each chapter does begin with a few paragraphs on a fundamental principle of chess. And the first moves are described as if to total novices. But as soon as Nunn gets beyond those first few moves, you'd better be able to follow lots of algebraic notation with very few visuals, because the vast majority of this book is variation intensive, and thus useless to non-experts who don't want to spend hours getting through a few pages at a time.

On the other hand, if you ARE an expert, then what's the point of reviewing fundamentals that are already second-nature? In that case, this is just a group of highly analyzed games.

This book sits useless on my shelf. If you haven't read Chernev's book, then you're better off getting IT because it is what it says it is.

This Book contains 30 GrandMaster level games selected carefully and analyzed thoroughly by GM Nunn, a well-known chess player and now author.
GM Nunn was a top grandmaster in the 80's and until 95, and is now a great author with several books published. This is one of his finest.

-Games are sorted by theme : Opening (5), MiddleGame ( Attacking, Defensive, Positional Play )(21), Endgame (4)

-Comments and annotations are not routinely done. Any Master or Grandmaster can run Fritz or Shredder or Junior on a game , identify tactical errors, and find where are the closest games played beforehand in a database.
What GM Nunn achieves here , is to explain with both words and variations, what is going on, what are the plans for each side, and who succeeds or makes a mistake.

-What would be a great way to train is as follows : take one side, try to guess each move, and write down the variations&ideas you had. Then compare with what GM Nunn had done.
What I have done personally is go to www.chesslab.com, or www.chessbase.com, and downloaded the moves in PGN format of each and every game in the book. Then, with ChessBaseLight ( free on Chessbase.com) and by hiding the score sheet, I tried to guess the moves and only after that read GM Nunn comments.
This is a great way to learn, as opposed to simply read the book without doing any indepedent thinking, which yields less chess improvement.


For instance, Game 25 Kamsky-Karpov 1996 is great lesson about the isolated d-pawn, and Nunn picks a game at the highest level to explain what is at stake. Kamsky certainly knows a lot about this kind of position but nevertheless loses against the ex world champion. Lots of comments on this game cannot be replicated by just looking at a chess engine, which fails to detect the plans and subtleties of the position.

Finally, Nunn himself is using a computer to check his analysis, so it will be very hard to question his variations, which have been double-checked.

All in all, a great book by a top GM who did an outstanding job at revealing how Chess GrandMasters think and play, and support his commentary by meaningful sum-ups and accurate variations.
Great material to read or use to get better in chess.
Recommended for anyone, from beginner to International Master.

You will find that there are few books that analyze every move that are for stronger players. The author does a good job of covering middlegame strategy and a moderately good of covering opening and endgames. As a strong player myself, I found the analysis to be accurate and often extremely deep (sometimes to excess, beyond necessity!).
Using a move by move analysis [...] like in the several other excellent books that use the same idea, it touches on almost everything!
An very good work by an excellent teacher, player and writer!

This book is very similar in nature to Irving Chernev's "Logical Chess: Move by Move" classic in that it features a selection of grandmaster games and the author gives an explanation of why the move was played after every move.

Here's my real problem with this book:
Too many variations! I worked my way through about 20 games in this book and almost every game I became so bored and distracted going through long-winded variations(that no one could ever see or understand without a lot of time or a computer) that I completely forgot what the actual game was, and what the theme of the game was.

Now I should say in all fairness that this is John Nunn's style, and all of his books are this way. If you like this sort of thing, and you enjoy his style of writing, then I'm sure you will love this book.

Personally, I find his writing to be tremendously dull and uninspiring. Though this book is nicer in the manner of conveying modern opening theory over the 1950s opening beliefs of Chernev, do yourself a favor and buy Chernev's work(and his "Most Instructional Games" book, his best). Chances are very good that if you buy Nunn's book it'll either be too advanced for you or will bore you to tears - or both.

I own Irving Chernev's Logical Chess Move by Move and just finished Dr. Nunn's outstanding work. The objective annotations and manageable variations will help any tournament player with their over the board analysis. If you play tournaments, or just want a great sample of tournament games from the late 90s early 2000s, this is the work!