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The Pocket Guide to Chess
Reviewed by
Rick Kennedy
|
 |
by
GMC
(and IA)
Jonathan Berry
Master Point Press (2005)
80 pages, 4.25 in. by 7 in.
softcover, spiral-bound
figurine algebraic notation |
Okay, so you have this guy at the office who has been listening to your
tales of adventure down at the chess club, and he’s decided he wants to pick
up the Royal Game and get in on the action. You could get him that
introductory book with the cute dinosaur on the cover, but it might be more
his daughter’s speed. There’s always Chess for Dummies and The
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess, which are both good introductions; but
the titles might put him off a bit. There’s that old, great Reinfeld tome on
your bookshelves, though it’s the size of a decent dictionary and you don’t
really want to scare the poor fellow off.
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Thank goodness for Correspondence GM and International Arbiter Jonathan
Berry, of Canada, and his
The Pocket Guide to Chess – a book that fills a niche in the world of
chess publishing, as well as fitting a decent suit pocket. It might
very well be what your colleague needs. In fact, the guide does so
many things, you’ll wonder why it was never advertised as the Ronco Chess-O-Matic!
on Saturday Night Live…
Seriously. There’s the Laws of Chess (including some Gotchas –
rules and explanations you need to know) and How the Moves are Written.
There are Rules of Thumb for the game itself, and for Material and Strategy.
The latter remind me of the notion that chess masters don’t look at all the
possible moves when deciding which one to play - they look at the most
relevant, and then choose the best. Likewise there is a lot of chess
wisdom packed into these pages, more than you would guess at first glance.
Beginners will think: oh, wow! Club players will mutter: Oh,
I knew that…
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There’s a comparatively large chapter on Tactics, and one on Checkmate.
The longest chapter is on Specific Openings, which may be
questioned by some – why do newbies need to know all this stuff,
wouldn’t some Rules of Thumb for the Opening do instead? – but someone
hanging around the water cooler has to do better than “My Russian Opening
zugzwanged his Ponziani zwischenzug – he should have stuck with
his Kieseritsky Gambit when he had the chance?!” Part of chess life is
throwing all those impressive words around, and the Specific Openings (and
the Pocket Guide in general) chapter helps you do so correctly (as
well as serving as a guide to some basic opening move-orders.)
Berry finishes with Positional Ideas, a Glossary, and an Index of Openings.
I’m going to an elementary school “Math Night” tonight, where I can set up a
table and talk to parents and children about my “Chessboard Math” groups.
Besides my chess pieces, roll-up board and clock, of course, I’m going to
have the Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess CD, and that American
Grandmaster’s Chess for Success
book. I’ll have Breaking Through
by Susan Polgar, and some of the “Little Chess Books” by Jerry Brooks.
For nostalgia’s sake, there will be a Fidelity Chess Challenger 7
computer; and I’m going to be raffling off some chess sets.
However, I’m going to leave my books on the
official rules of chess (USCF and FIDE) at home. I trust that Jonathan
Berry’s The Pocket Guide to Chess will be all I need to answer the
questions that come up. I can discretely refer to it, and then slip it
back into my jacket pocket…
Index of all Reviews
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