This is a book for beginners, but not starting beginners. It’s designed for folks who already know how the pieces move and the main rules of the game, although they may not know a whole lot more. It’s a description of your average chessplayer.
The assumption is that the average chessplayer wants to know more, wants to get better, wants to become a Winner, or why else pick up the book. Well, as the title suggests, How to be a Winner at Chess will help you do just that. One word of caution: It’s written in adult language, so it’s not for the little kiddies. But any teenager who can read can handle it.
As an aside, we mention that should a total beginner happen onto this book, there’s a quick refresher course in the back that will introduce the pieces and the rules. Author Reinfeld covered all his bases.
But what does a chessplayer need to know to get better? That’s the tricky part. Many authors, afraid of giving too little, often go off in the opposite direction, overwhelming their readers by giving too much or too advanced. Reinfeld is well aware of the trap and the beauty of his approach in the present work is that he keeps everything simple.
He got all the basic concepts down and as you can see from the table of contents, there are not all that many. Moreover, there is nothing abstract here; everything is geared for practical play and so all the basic concepts are illustrated with concrete examples.
In the world of chess, Fred Reinfeld is considered the supreme wordsmith. There’s no point rendering what he says in different language as Reinfeld can speak perfectly well for himself.
So I’ll confine myself to the task of the editor, which was to read the book, and prepare the modern manuscript. Along the way, many new diagrams were added and the old English descriptive method of explaining moves was converted to modern algebraic notation.
Notation is something every chess reader has to deal with. It can be a pain untill you get the hang of it, after which everything moves along nicely. I suppose you could do a chess book with figurine pieces and arrows but it would be a pretty simple book, not quite what we have here.
And Reinfeld has made the process of following notation as easy as possible, using verbal explanations to suplement the moves. The editor also has done his bit by making diagrams with letters and numbers to ease the learning process. Just don’t expect letters and numbers in advanced works. You’re expected to have graduated by then.
Bruce Alberston
Astoria, New York
March 2013