Square One "Starting Out in Chess" by IM Byron Jacobs, 1999 Everyman Chess, English Algebraic Notation, Softcover, 128pp., $12.95 Reviewed by Paul Kollar Tarrasch admitted to having "...always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity the man who has remained ignorant of love." While sharing this "slight feeling" somewhat, a sentiment occasionally crossed by downright envy of the chess-ignorant after a soul-deadening loss, I have to confess to another, related pity. My heart, cynically callused by the disappoints that make us "mature", can still go out to the absolute, earnest and unknowing beginner. We know, you and I, what he is facing, don't we? Unless he is gifted with a very atypical aptitude, and extraordinary powers of memory, visualization, and concentration, our rank beginner, if he sticks with it, may be doomed to the chess lover's disease. That is, of course, to spend years, maybe decades, of frequently unrequited effort, of untold hours of solitary study, of even more hours of practice, systematic or not, in pursuit of understanding and mastery. Or at least to continuously, vainly, engage in what Tarrasch calls, "...the struggle against error." More pitiable yet is the manner in which this voyage (hopefully not of the damned) may commence. There is a high probability that it may be cursed, or at the least severely hampered with a very rocky start. It was for me. Many of us veterans learned the game from friends or relatives who themselves didn't know all the ways and means, or even all the rules. Paul Keres himself, and his brother, knew nothing of castling for the longest time, blithely playing hundreds of games in blissful ignorance of this special but rudimentary move. There are misapprehensions, or complete blind spots in countless beginners' learning curves, which are usually corrected and illuminated, but only "later", or much later, and time and impetus are lost. Not everyone has Alonzo and Ernest Morphy for father and uncle; not all can encounter Vladimir Zak at the Palace of Young Pioneers. So many have said that chess is easy to learn but hard to master, that it is frequently forgotten that all too often the game is not so easily learned. Think of your own experience. If you can disagree, count yourself fortunate rather than typical. I think it was Averbakh, Grandmaster and author of endgame treatises, who, in mid-career, had to be assured by a referee that his opponent's queen-side castling was, in fact, legal, despite the rook passing over check. The great hope and consolation for many inductees is the well- written manual or primer, produced for the express purpose of helping the newcomer to chess start off, on what may well be a life-long journey, sure-footed and reasonably prepared. This category of chess literature has fewer examples than one might suppose, although there are a goodly number of classics, some major, others minor. There is Emanuel Lasker's Chess Primer, sometimes published as Lasker's How to Play Chess, in which he, as was his wont, waxes philosophical and gravely profound for the poor, green beginner. The great Capablanca, who had the misfortune to have both Lasker and Alekhine as life-long chief rivals, gave the chess world the excellent duo: Chess Fundamentals, and Chess Primer. These two famous works (the former was Botvinnik's favorite chess book) are available in algebraic notation, so there is no excuse whatsoever to remain ignorant of either of them, no matter how near or far one is from rank beginner status. Read the Primer first. Reuben Fine's Chess the Easy Way, a personal favorite, is also extremely good, but like the above-mentioned treasures is very dated with regard to opening discussions. Also, Fine's classic has not yet, I don't believe, been re-issued in an algebraic edition. If anyone is thinking of taking on this long-overdue project, PLEASE DON'T CHANGE ANY OF THE WORDS!! It would be fun to "treat " the reader to a necessarily lengthy exploration of the relevant efforts of Reinfeld, Horowitz, Chernev, Pandolfini, and, lately, Seirawan and Alburt, but I'll put that off 'till the next rainy month. For the present, if you are in the market for a good book or two for an absolute beginner (of any age), please accept the following warning. There are other classics one might find at the store, or in the catalogs, or on the web that appear to be geared toward the innocent devotee, but are not really suitable just yet. Save for the first ten or twenty pages, these books are for those players who are a tad further down the road some will interest even the expert. I refer to Mason's The Art of Chess, Lasker's Manual of Chess, Tarrasch's The Game of Chess, Golombek's The Game of Chess, Edward Lasker's Modern Chess Strategy, and Gerald Abraham's Chess. There are others. Be careful. By way of contrast, and, rather surprisingly, though that should not have been the case, Raymond Keene's The Simon and Schuster Pocket Book of Chess is a terrific little introductory chess book! It's "only" twelve years old, and not at all musty yet; it's in algebraic notation; it has very good graphics, great photos and reproductions; it covers the essential matter deftly and entertainingly. I think it not as meaty and certainly less serious than Fine's book, for example, but probably more alluring and more fun for the younger beginner. I am going on record here to credit Keene with a very good example, and, who knows, perhaps a worthy standard for compact and "portable" chess introductions. (With Aron Nimzowitsch: A Reappraisal, that makes two, anyway, for Keene.) International Master Byron Jacobs, with his Starting Out in Chess, has thrown his hat into this petite ring and hopes to add to the general store of beginner's luck. He has opted for an ultra-slim and sleek approach that is undeniably fat-free and very lean without being needlessly mean. His book, which purports to provide a "thorough grounding in the fundamental principles of the game", to the point of bringing a rank novice "...to the standard at which they can enjoy a friendly or competitive game", weighs in at 128 pages, not at all densely packed, arranged in ten chapters, the last of which is nothing more than "Solutions to Exercises." It is an out-sized paperback, brochure-sized, resembling in size and heft the PC owner's familiar "Introducing Microsoft Windows 95", with plenty of wide margins, lots of white space, and those ubiquitous icons that are meant to draw attention to hints and cautions and noteworthy asides. These little marginal pictures of light bulbs, skull and crossbones, and the like, are a mainstay of the hysterically successful publishing venture with the signature mock-modest titles, Such and Such for the Terminally Stupid Lemming. God grant that they soon disappear along with the phrase, "user-friendly." That rant out of my system, let me say that Jacobs' book is beautifully produced nonetheless, and is laid-out very nicely, with just the right amount of diagrams for its size and length. The quality of the paper stock and printing is top notch. And the cover is one of the most clever and witty that I've ever seen: a beautifully rendered queen pawn shyly and tentatively testing the waters of the d3 square, a perfect symbol of the hesitant novice. It's a very pleasurable book to hold and thumb through, and IM Jacob's prose is clear, purposeful, conversational, and, well, friendly. He is authoritative without at all being condescending. Also, with a lot of ground to cover in a little time, he is never rushed, although sometimes a bit fleeting. Turning to actual content, the easiest way for me to convey the covered ground is to reproduce Jacob's table of contents. See if you can spot the hole. · 1. How the Game is Played · 2. Meet the Pieces · 3. Notation and Unusual Moves · 4. Winning and Drawing Games · 5. It's a Material World · 6. Introducing Tactics · 7. Introducing Opening Play · 8. Introducing Strategy · 9. Inside the Chess World · 10. Solutions to Exercises Now that's certainly clear, clean, and succinct enough, and fairly self-explanatory. Let's go a little deeper, though, and poke around a bit. It really wouldn't be right to judge this book by its wonderful cover alone, even in conjunction with the above-listed road map. After the first chapter which defines the "conduct of the game" and describes the board and the chessmen, Jacobs, naturally enough, explains, in chapter two, how the pieces and pawns move and capture, illustrating check and checkmate, and discussing mobility for good measure. When he comes to the knight, he writes that its move is "the one that causes most problems for newcomers to the game." It would appear that the knight move also causes big problems for the writer of chess primers. Like many before him, great and small, Jacobs declares that the knight moves in an L- shape: two squares up, down, left, or right on file or rank; then one square at right angles. He goes on, again like many others, to offer "another way to perceive" the knight's move by visualizing a 3x2 box of squares, with the piece moving from one corner to the opposite corner. This is, notwithstanding the like opinion of world champions, a fine madness. Even the occasional famed writer who describes the move as one square as a rook, and one more square as a bishop (or vice versa), which at least points to an attempt at demonstrating the inner harmony of our lovely game, has not got it. The "L-shape" camp is mistakenly seeing a three square, two- dimensional, machine-like move. The knight is a symbol of cavalry, of a war-horse, of animal energy, of a dynamic that is based on a living entity, not an inorganic, clanking apparatus. Must I write a chess book? Here is my contribution, my corrective to the chess world: the knight moves two squares, leaping over adjacent squares, occupied or not, to an opposite-colored square from its origin. Do you really think, that when Kasparov plays Nf6 in reply to d4, he moves the thing through his g-pawn to g6 and then, braking and turning some wheel, moves the piece sideways to f6? No way! He, like every chessplayer, picks up the knight from g8 and arcs it over to f6 straight away. Every time we castle we briefly enter the third dimension, unless you insist that rooks can go through their own kings once a game, so accepting the notion that horses jump, especially in battle, shouldn't be so difficult. Moving on, our author, in chapter three, explains algebraic notation, slighting completely descriptive notation, and describes the three special moves of castling, pawn promotion, and taking en passant. He tells a couple of good stories on himself regarding pxp en passant that may well help the learner remember this anomalous move. Chapter four touches on checkmate, stalemate, perpetual check, and drawing, but has nothing on three-fold repetition or insufficient mating material. In chapter five the economics of capturing and exchanging (or defending) are outlined, with the familiar table of the relative value of pieces and pawns. Jacobs uses the time-honored scale of pawn=1, Knight and bishop=3, rook =5, and queen=9. In my book I will use Euwe's formula of 1, 3.5, 5.5, and 10. This would at least dissuade legions of beginners from taking the bishop pawn in front of a castled king, and the rook behind it for the investment of knight and bishop. Tactics are featured in the sixth chapter, with forks, pins, and skewers presented. Discovered checks and queening combinations are not. For that matter, combinations and sacrificing aren't defined either. Chapter seven speaks of the opening in terms of development and influence in the center, and king safety. Strategy is introduced in chapter eight, with material on typical play on the wings and in the center, and the technique of winning with a material advantage. Jacobs wraps up in chapter nine with a look at the current chess world, relating its organization, or lack of it, with excursions into the World Championship history, the ratings game and title spectrum, and, obligatory now, a picture of chess on the Internet, and chess and computers. That's it. Zoom! I read this book in 2-3 hours, and, as an experienced (understatement!) chessplayer, I had the sensation of flying in the Concorde...but only thirty or forty feet off the ground! All that stuff in 128 pages. But I am not a beginner. This book is not for me. To a raw recruit this may be plenty to start with, even more than enough. Is it really wise to drop a five-pound tome on an already overwhelmed trainee? Would it be beneficial to saddle the beginner right off the bat with one of those "suites" of beginner books such as Seirawan's, that just happen to add up to many pages for many dollars? I am not a teacher or coach, and I honestly don't know. I do strongly suspect, however, that such a book as Byron Jacob's will probably work, and while not necessarily bringing the new player to a competitive level, will surely enable him, as promised, to enjoy friendly games with not only friends and relatives, but also at a club, real or cyber-virtual. And, like practically any chess book, this one will inevitably lead to others being acquired ad infinitum. So I don't have a problem with the brevity and spareness of this book, even though it races over much that is important. I do, however, have to significantly dilute the recommendation that I would have liked very much to give. There is an omission that is too glaring and detrimental to overlook and forgive. Above, in reproducing the book's table of contents, I asked if you could "spot the hole." I have to suppose the interested reader noticed the crater where a chapter on the endgame should have been, a section that covered the basic mates, "square of the pawn", a few simple king and pawn endings, and a couple of common rook and pawn endings - you know the ones I mean. This modest little book was a very near-miss, only inches away from A+, but every beginner book has to have this endgame material, and not just for tradition's sake. Remarkably, while researching and preparing this review, I literally chanced upon another, very current book expressly for the beginner, Enno Heyken's Beginner's Chess Course (1996). The coincidence is greater: Heyken's offering is also a very nicely produced out- sized paperback of 128 pages. Like Jacobs', Heyken's has tests, solutions, excellent graphics, and well-written expository prose... and a good attitude! But, in contrast, Beginner's Chess Course has an index, a glossary, and a section that covers basic mates and endings. I must therefore close with two recommendations. To you, the reader, I suggest that, if you're in this market at all, and have to choose between these two books, you would do better with Heyken, although Starting Out in Chess would be at least adequate, and then some. To IM Jacobs, I commend your efforts as far as they go, but please, get a revised edition out as soon as possible. You are only ten or twelve pages away from an excellent, promising, and comprehensive debut. As an author "starting out in chess" literature, you would then be well on the way.