Review: Great For Beginners
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 5, 2013
One of my bucket list goals is to learn how to play chess at least semi-competently. Before reading this book the odds of my achieving this aspiration were as remote as me traveling to Mars. Literally, the computer would kill me on the easiest levels. I have read other chess books in the distant past but none really helped me. I typically got bogged down before I ever reached the endgame. What makes chess so interesting is also what makes it so tough to learn for a beginner. It is complicated. The combinations in which you can move those pieces is staggering. This is why I found Tim's book so helpful. In it he diagrams nearly 300 chess problems and invites you to find the best move. The advantage of this simple approach is that it forces you to think in "a chess way", if you get my meaning. Once you decide what to do you simply turn the page (or, more accurately, click forward) to see if Tim agrees with you or not. As a bonus every chess puzzle is linked to a website which shows you the complete game from which the puzzle was derived. This feature even worked on my basic Kindle, which was great. At any rate working through the puzzles in this book has definitely helped this beginners pathetic chess game (I can beat the computer on easy now, lol). Perhaps I'm ready to move onto a more advanced chess book? The bottom line is that if you are a complete novice to chess you can't go wrong with The Word's Easiest Chess Puzzle Book. Highly Recommended.