The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played: 62 Masterpieces of Chess Strategy (Dover Chess) Kindle Edition

I am an OTB USCF A class player. I read through half the book before deciding to review it. I have had the pleasure of owning and reading through Chernev's other works, such as Logical Chess and Capablanca's 60 best games. Game collections are what you make of them. If you are expecting for chess improvement over night, look elsewhere. If however you want to go over chess games that will bring you delight in the evenings with your choice of hot coco, tea, or coffee then look no further! And ultimately if chess isn't something you enjoy, then why bother with it indeed? These aren't a collection of swashbuckling games, though indeed the game that features the Vienna sure comes to mind as being that variety. No rather these are of a more positional nature, that feature classical openings (plenty of QGD, Ruy Lopez, and Sicilians galore) by many chess giants of a bygone era (Botvinnik, Petrosian, Capablanca, Tarrasach, Tartakower, etc) written in that forgotten tongue of yester-yore known as descriptive notation. Now Chernev's comments are light and human in nature, not those of a computer engine - which makes it accessible and his prose is witty to say the least. To the modern generation, they will simply watch grandmaster's explaining their thought processes for free on youtube. But for those of us stuck to our old ways of reading physical chess books, this is worthy to add to your collection ( only if you have already read the other books in your chess library).

There are two versions of this book available. I believe the one pictured uses outdated notation (P-B4) etc. The other version, with a purple and grey cover, uses modern geometrical notation. That one is extremely instructive and enjoyable. I highly recommend it.

I'm not the best at chess, but i'm past the point where my opponents stop donating their pieces to me. I am only 6 games into this book, and I can already tell this is going to really help me step up my decision making and strategy when approaching different phases of the game. The book is structured to give one main lesson with a ton of mini lessons as well. It literally walks you through how the winner won the game, step by step. It is written in descriptive notation, so it took me a little bit to learn how to read it but got the hang of it pretty quickly. One downside is that you need a board in front of you, or you have to be incredibly good at playing blindfolded chess, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing because if every move was diagrammed, the book itself would be absolutely massive.

Almost every page, the formatting has moves stacked on themselves vertically.The text is fine and readable, but it's impossible to follow the games.In short, the kindle version is useless.

Chernev's book could have equally been title "The Most Instructive Chessbook Ever Written." Although the games are almost 50 years old at the newest, they are carefully selected and Chernev's commentary is accurate and will greatly aid a developing chess player. I always appreciate chess commentary that is literary in style, rather than a reproduction of an endless string of variations. Chernev only discusses alternatives to show why something was necessary or a move was bad. He does not use "!" or "?" without explanation. Even for very advanced players the games are great to review and understand, many are pieces of "artwork." Overall, I most highly recommend this book as instructive for a club level player and a nice collection for someone more advanced.

After reading his previous book, with almost move-by-move illustrations, this turned out to be one of the usual "of course you're a brilliant player, can read notation and visualize it 15-20 moves in your head"....blah, blah. NO, I'm not that good, and can't just 'imagine 20-30 moves' in my head....if I was, guess I'd have written the book. I'm a musician, I read music.....I can't imagine being shone 1 note on a ledger line, and then told to imagine in their head it goes from here to here many measures later, are you with me?" Same thing. Do NOT waste your money on this.

Chernev was a great chess writer, and while this is a great book, it really doesn't compare to Logical Chess. All the same, I'd recommend it to anyone who's already finished reading Logical Chess since reading games is one of the best ways to improve your chess. It's a bit more advanced than Logical chess, and the commentary reflects this. There isn't as much repetition or explanation of basic moves.Now for some real cons. The printing isn't great, and the book is small, so it's annoying to try to keep open as you play out the games. All of the games are also given in English Descriptive. This will really turn some people off. I personally don't mind, but I find that I have to "relearn" the notation every time I refer to this book after not having used English Descriptive for a while.

I would like to receive the book. We received many orders but this was not in any. Checked all boxes, locations for delivery, neighbors etc. It did not come Pictures of 3 boxes on porch does not prove the item was included. Please advse. Thank you,

I bought this as a present some 40 years after I bought my own copy. It's a great second or third book for a someone who has learnt the moves, a has a grasp of the basics of strategy ("Control the centre! Knights before bishops! Rooks on open files!") and wants to move on from there.Descriptive rather than algebraic? It's a twofer - learn chess strategy and a foreign language at the same time.

Excellent instructional chess book. Played through all the games and did gain some improvement. Will re-read in future. Glad to have this in library.

Brought for my dad. His started playing chess on the computer. It's a good book.

Uses the old style of annotation so it's hard to use if you started playing chess after about 1980!

This Kindle version is awkward to use and not worth the money. Extremely poor and disappointing Kindle version of this book. Both the "Index of Openings " and the "Index of Players" have neither numbers, as stated in Contents, nor a link to Openings and Players.