Whiz Kids Teach Chess: Chess for 16-Under Players by Ten Child Prodigies

As a fulltime chess professional and chess trainer,(I run the Stan Vaughan's Las Vegas Chess Club) I am always interested in taking a look at new books out by fellow professional chess teachers, coaches, and trainers.Eric Schiller most certainly qualifies as one of a handful of top coaches and trainers in America, having trained or coached many of America's top "whiz kids" and promising prodigies. As a successful trainer myself (having numerous individual and club team national scholastic championships earned by my students) I was interested to see if this book had any new ideas of use to me or my students. It does! One of the outstanding new concepts I found from this book was Mr. Schiller's expression of piece values. Many books designed for beginners use whole numbers. In my instructions I have usually modified this, using fractions, which is sometimes difficult for kids aged 4 and up who haven't had fractions in school as yet. Mr. Schiller solves this longtime problem, simply multiply by ten so that a quen is worth 90 while minor pieces are 35. Now why hadn't anyone of us trainers thought of that before! The book has lots of photos and of course games from these "whiz kids" and all in easy to read large type. My only possible criticism of the book is that the "basics of chess" starts on page 95, instead of at the front, prior to the whiz kids games analysis etc. Other very minor criticisms would be simple nitpicking such as FIDE is the International Chess Federation, while competitor World Chess Federation is a different organization. Also the big payday in 92 of 5 million for Fischer-Spassky 2 certainly tops 3 million. But all in all the book is well worth the price, if only for the piece valuation innovation of Schiller, let alone a nice collection of games.