English Chess Forum

Hi,

We have a small chess library bequeathed to us at our club containing a decent selection of chess books.
I have started a junior chess club (http://darlingtonchessclub.blogspot.com/) and was thinking I could add to our club library with some books for improving juniors.

For kids or any other beginner I would recommend 3 books
1, Chess Openings By Mike Basman
2, Logical chess move by move by Irving Chernev
3, Silman's complete endgame course by Jeremy Silman

Does anyone else have any recommendations for improving kids or beginners?

Kevin

The classic 'How to beat your dad at chess' should be in every library as well as Tim Onions' 'Ten ways to beat...' series.

I often write my own little booklets for my juniors which I either sell at cost for the school or email for free.

In coaching, it is really worth showing some of the videos from www.thechesswebsite.com as they are lovely little introductions.

In a piece of shameless advertising for another member of my club (and English Chess Forum member), I suggest the recently published "Chess For Kids: How to Play and Win" by Richard James, available here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chess-Kids-How- ... 090&sr=1-3

Not a book I know, but I think a very useful teaching resource, basically a site that starts by giving many one move mate puzzles, then moves on to two move puzzles.

http://mateinone.com

Andrew Camp wrote:The classic 'How to beat your dad at chess' should be in every library as well as Tim Onions' 'Ten ways to beat...' series.

I often write my own little booklets for my juniors which I either sell at cost for the school or email for free.

In coaching, it is really worth showing some of the videos from http://www.thechesswebsite.com as they are lovely little introductions.

"How to beat your Dad" yes definitely one to add. I liked "thechesswebsite" link, added to my favourites.

I am adding each lesson I do with the kids to the Darlington Chess Club blog (Copied at the start of the thread) so A, the kids can look back if they want a refresh and B, to allow other prospective members the chance to see what we are doing.

Kevin Wilson wrote:Hi,

We have a small chess library bequeathed to us at our club containing a decent selection of chess books.
I have started a junior chess club (http://darlingtonchessclub.blogspot.com/) and was thinking I could add to our club library with some books for improving juniors.

For kids or any other beginner I would recommend 3 books
1, Chess Openings By Mike Basman
2, Logical chess move by move by Irving Chernev
3, Silman's complete endgame course by Jeremy Silman

Does anyone else have any recommendations for improving kids or beginners?

These are books for adults. For children, Chandler's "How to Beat Your Dad at Chess," Gillam's "Simple Checkmates," and Ivashchenko's "Manual of Chess Combinations" (only vols 1a and 1b) might be more appropriate.

The Richard James book looks excellent. I've ordered a copy to help with the 6-9 school club I run. I've got several complete beginners this term.

Other books I use are the Onions books and for mate studies I like "202 Checkmates for Children" by Fred Wilson and Bruce Albertson. Some of them like to play through a few mate puzzles from this book in between games sometimes. It's handy if someone is partnerless for a bit waiting for another game to finish.

Does anybody else remember Black King White King?


I must have got that out of my local library a gazillion times. Not suitable for kids now because it's all in descriptive but - long story short - it introduces children to chess by telling a story of how each piece came to move like it does and how two kings got into a row over who owned a piece of land - The Board - that sat between their two kingdoms.

Thanks for the feed back I have emailed Tim Onions to try and buy his books.

If anyone else has ideas for kids post them.

What about first books for beginning adults?

The first chess book I purchased was "The Sicilian labyrinth" by Lyev Pougayevsky I think I was so pleased to find a chess book I bought it. It was so unsuitable for me at that time, I did try and read it but I'm sure took none of it. Probably the hardest thing as a beginner is buying the right books pitched at your level.

Kevin

Kevin Wilson wrote:What about first books for beginning adults?

There are some recommendations here:

http://arshadschesssite.yolasite.com/

"Play Better Chess" by Leonard Barden is very good (not as a first book for U10s but over 10s, including beginning adults, should rip into it). I've seen an article by Jonathan Rowson where he recommends it as well for up-and-coming players. It's now out of print, but there are usually a few copies floating around on Amazon.

Oh, and another GM recommended Bronstein's 1953 Candidates book when I asked for recommendations for keen 10-11 year olds who want to become strong players. When I asked what the lowest rating a player would need to have to get value from it was, the remark was that Bronstein's explanations were so lucid, with relatively few variations, that there wasn't really a rating floor.

I would also recommend Convekta/ChessOK's Chess Tactics for Beginners CD/downloadable program. It's a set of tactics that were used for years in the Soviet Union, put together well in interactive form. The name is a misnomer; there are 5 levels and I reckon that to do all of the level 5 puzzles "on sight" a player would need to be at least 135 new ECF, though the level 1 puzzles are things like checkmate in one move, or fork in one move.

Can I suggest you avoid any books by John Walker - for reasons that I won't go into here, but can be found by a simple Google search of 'John Walker chess'.

Gerard Killoran wrote:Can I suggest you avoid any books by John Walker - for reasons that I won't go into here, but can be found by a simple Google search of 'John Walker chess'.

This seems irrelevant to how good an author he may or may not have been

That site http://www.thechesswebsite.com is OK if face to face is unavailable.

As an excercise for your novice juniors you can get them to
look at the 'Birds Eye View Trap' and spot the glaring hole
in the teacher's play "...from a blitz game."

A good lesson for them not to believe everything they see and hear.
They must check it for themselves.

'How to Beat Your Dad.' Good Book.
Half of Scotland actually think I am Murray's Dad and I was once asked
to autograph his book because I'm mentioned in the title as the target.
(I didn't and said I was just his uncle. .......I'm not).