The Pocket Book of Chess

S & S Pocket Book of Chess is an excellent reference book for the game. The author, International Chess Grandmaster Raymond Keene, has penned a book that is clear and insightful. This book is aimed for beginners from ages 9 to 99. The pages jump out at you with over a hundered color board diagrams, artwork, and play. It covers the basic rules, moves, stages of the game, strategy, and common pitfalls to avoid. The review quizes are a nice touch too, allowing you to fully comprehend the lessons. In addition, there are also sections on the history of the game, champion biographies, greatest games, computer chess, competition play and recommendations of further reading. This pocket book is full of little pleasures. Enjoy!

Not only a great childrens book but also one of the best books written by grandmaster Raymond Keene (who has written more than 100). He seems to have picked the eyes out of the best of his previous works and summarised them in an easy to understand guide that appeals to kids and adult beginners. As the other reviewer says its many many illustrations are terrific and designed to catch the eye encouraging kids (and adults)to read on. Almost every page has at least one picture or chess board shot. It starts with an interesting history of the game and ends with biographies of world champions, discussion of computer chess and resources for further learning about chess. In between it covers the basics of pieces and how they move, and has quite comprehensive sectiions on openings, the middlegame, and endgame/checkmates. It goes into detail that is a welcome surprise for a childrens guide. For example he covers the "more difficult" checkmate by knight and bishop briefly in an easy to understand illustrated way when adult books on checkmate endings written by so called experts avoid discussing at all! So Ray Keene really know what he is talking about and explains it simply and well. As well as the many illustrations, there are plenty of summary boxes, and quizzes with answers at each step of the book. There are also several complete classic games which are used to explain key concepts. This makes learning easy and it proceeds in simple steps from basic to progressively more complex concepts. The edition I have is from the 1980s which you might think makes it out of date. But for a beginner to intermediate it is still one of the best books to learn from particularly for children. I rate this as a classic childrens chess book which will be hard to equal. (A worthy and up to date competitor is the Usborne Complete Internet Chess Book (see my review)). This book by Ray Keene is more suitable for older children as it is more wordy and goes into more detail for more difficult concepts (eg the bishop and knight checkmate mentioned above) In short a great book. You may need to buy it second hand or search the net for a copy as it may not be readily available. But it will be well worth the effort to get it and enjoy every page.

This is one of the best books to give someone who is thinking about getting into chess. Its very eazy to read and has wonderful full color pages. I got this book because its the best looking chess book that i have ever seen. It screems read me, learn about chess!