In the search for understanding in chess, this book has been a beacon for aspiring players for decades, and Batsford’s reprint provides an opportunity for another generation to learn from the author. Perhaps the best testament to its greatness is the fact that Grandmaster John Nunn’s outstanding book UNDERSTANDING CHESS MOVE BY MOVE (Click to see Donaldson’s and Watson’s reviews of Nunn’s book.) is recognized as patterned after Chernev’s work.

For those who didn’t grow up in the era of descriptive notation, Irving Chernev wrote books that mostly appealed to the mainstream player. One of the first books I owned, Chernev’s THE FIRESIDE BOOK OF CHESS guided me through the many facets of chess during my formative years. Even though he wrote many other good books (for example, every aspiring player should also own THE MOST INSTRUCTIVE GAMES OF CHESS EVER PLAYED), this is widely recognized as his best.

In this book, Chernev annotates 33 games and comments on each move for both players.  His goal is to explain what each player was thinking while making his move. In this way, the reader gets an insight into the rationale behind the moves of and the thought processes of a master player. The author splits the games into three chapters, dealing with kingside attacks (16 games), queen’s pawn openings (7 games), and other concepts (10 games).  Given the book’s original 1957 copyright, it is not surprising that the earliest game is from 1889 and the latest was played in 1952.

The author does a great job of connecting with the reader – one feels that they really are inside the head of the players and that Chernev is explaining what they were thinking while deciding upon their moves. As a result, the games are absorbing and the lessons learned (at least in my case) tend to stick with the player.

I first came across this book at an early stage in my chess career, and I believe that it helped form my understanding of what chess mastery is all about. In fact, one of the games, Blackburne-Blanchard, probably gained me 100 rating points in my class days. I used the structure and natural kingside attack from that game in many, many of my own encounters.

While not a world-class player, Chernev was a prolific writer, and that combination serves the reader well in this book. The author can better relate to the reader and provide them the sort of insight that may be lost on stronger players. 

While this is a great book, there are some areas where it is showing its age (having first been issued nearly a half century ago). It is notable, for example, that by far the most popular opening represented is the Queen’s Gambit Declined; by contrast, today’s favorite Sicilian Defense is found in just one game. There is just one Queen’s Indian and one Nimzo-Indian included; there are no games featuring the popular King’s Indian, Grunfeld, or Benoni Defenses. The players you will encounter are Capablanca, Tarrasch, and Rubinstein rather than Karpov, Kasparov, and Kramnik.

I had a few quibbles not related to the age of the book as well. I found the print in this reprint to be a little light for my taste, and the diagrams a bit too small. Finally, why oh why are the Chapter headers for each game the site where the game was played rather than the players? “Lodz 1908” doesn’t really tell me as much as “Rubinstein-Salwe.”

Regardless of these types of issues, this is a very good book. Perhaps it isn’t as timeless as it once appeared to me, but it should prove useful to any aspiring player wanting to better understand how to develop logical plans, moves, and thought processes in chess.

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