Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess

By Stuart Margulies, Bobby Fischer, Don Mosenfelder, et al.

Book Overview

This book is essentially a chess teaching machine. The way a teaching machine works is: It asks you a question. If you give the right answer, it goes on to the next question. If you give the wrong... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553263153
• ISBN13: 9780553130539
• Release Date: July 1982
• Publisher: Bantam
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Basically full of basic puzzles. No theory. Still good practice

How does one write a chess book that's informative and challenging to all skill brackets? That's the dilemma I see with writing such a book. Make it too simple and the experts will say it's not useful. Make it too hard and it isn't accessible to beginners. Yet, this book seem to strike a nice middle ground. Disclaimer: I am at a 997 elo at the time of writing. So give or take my skill when writing this review. That's why I sympathize with the authors a bit on that topic. Yet, Bobby Fisher, Stuart Margulies, and Donn Mosenfelder did just that. This book covers the absolute basics to some beginner/intermediate techniques. The whole book is essentially exercises with some explanations between. Think of it as a collection of chess puzzles and you get the picture. It does over rely on back rank checkmates. But how else can one set up a simple chess puzzle with 1-4ish moves to checkmate? I found it a bit fun practice. Some areas I did miss (pins, sacrifices). Yet, all around good fun. 4/5. Written in the 60s yet still useful for today. I guess that goes to show the timelessness of this game.

One of my Favorites!

Very quick and easy read while also being very informative. You train your chess without actually realizing it.

Only purchase this if you are an absolute beginner

If you don't know the ABCs of chess, this book is for you. If you are looking for openings, gambits and traps - they are not present in this book. As someone has already noted - Its filled with a basic puzzles.

Not what I wanted

This gives page after page of diagrams where you determine if checkmate is avoidable, etc. Lazy book written by chess masters wanting to make money off Fischer's name. I was expecting game development, etc.

Sheesh, relax, it's only a book

Wow, so many reviews bashing this book for promising the moon and the stars and then not delivering! It's not a bad book! If you are brand new to chess, want to learn to play relatively quickly, without getting bogged down with the more advanced stuff, and want something you can pick up and put down for short periods of time, this is a good book for you. You will learn the rules of the game and the basics of winning the game (checkmate, not long term strategy). It's pretty engaging because it doesn't spend a lot of time on explanations, instead most of its space is devoted to puzzles. Each page has a short one-move puzzle, with the answer on the next page. It's a pretty quick 'read', and it's pretty basic, probably anyone over 1300 should look for something more advanced. I'm a little amused at all of the gripes: "It wasn't written by Bobby Fischer." - OK, fine, but that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. Many books supposedly by experts were really ghostwritten, doesn't make them worthless. And knowing Bobby's anti-social nature, I suspect he wouldn't be the greatest teacher himself, anyway ;) "It doesn't teach chess." Sure it does. No, it doesn't teach *all* aspects of chess, but it does teach chess! It teaches everything you need to know to complete an entire game. "Not enough written text." This is more of a learn-by-doing kind of book. "Other books are better." Yep, there's lots of great books out there. This one has some good stuff in it, too.

The best chess book I have ever read!

This was the most influential book I read when learning chess 20 years ago. Since then, I have not found any book which has boiled down the goal of the game in such concise language and diagrams. I always recommend this book to those learning chess or desiring to become better players. It presents the fundamental objective: checkmate; and builds upon simple examples throughout the book until the end where the board situations become quite complex. Also, Bobby Fischer uses an innovative teaching method which presents the questions and solutions only on odd pages, so that when you get to the end of the book, you flip it over and read toward the front. This makes a person's progress through the book much faster and encouraging. Its an ideal method of teaching for young (and old) students of the game.