Improving Your Chess the Eight Bad Moves

by Fred Reinfeld

Book Overview

Improving Your Chess by Fred Reinfeld is a comprehensive guide to help readers enhance their chess skills. The book is designed for both beginners and intermediate players who want to improve their... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0389002283
• ISBN13: 9780389002284
• Release Date: January 1955
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Nice Compendium for the Under 1500 Crowd

Who of us over the age of 50 doesn't love Fred Reinfeld and in a younger day, didn't learn at least some of his chess from his books? Certainly, Fred recycled a lot of his material over and over; was often hyperbolic and at times over-selective in his annotations; and isn't going to teach you modern grandmaster chess. But in "Improving Your Chess" --- really a compendium of extracts from several of his other works --- Fred provides a solid 180 or so pages of what he does best: basic instruction for the improving player. I'd say this book is good for the USCF 1000-1500, perhaps petering out a bit at the upper end but still providing value. Fred propounds and briefly illustrates the basic principles which we think we know but often overlook in the heat of tournament combat--- simple things like development, control of the center, not wasting time with unnecessary pawn moves. He talks about how to exploit White's initiative, and how Black can take control if White plays incorrectly. Now, translating his few examples into actual practice in your own games will take a lot of over-the-board practice; this book alone cannot work miracles (although I don't know of a book that can, actually). The most original part of the book is quite close to the front; the "eight bad moves" (referring actually to eight bad things to do -- or not do!) although again seemingly obvious, remains fresh and useful even over 50 years later. The end of the book contains a series of tactics and checkmate problems, excerpted from his "1001" books. It's a nice selection and working through them will certainly improve your play. Appended to the book is a very high-level overview of common openings; it's rather dated and far too brief to be of much use. However, it's written in a common-sense style and the ideas may be of interest. Should you buy this book? It's available on the used market for a couple of dollars, and at that price, it's an enjoyable read with more than enough content to be of practical use.

An Excellent Guide to Become Aware of Things We do Wrong

With the help of this book anyone can improve his playing level, of course with a reasonable amount of application. What I found unique about this book is that it helped me play strongly by first making me aware of some of the things I was doing wrong. The author focuses on what he calls "The eight bad moves", describing them with enough detail so you identify yourself so one can overcome the faults that are producing them. The eight bad moves analyzed in this book are: - Neglecting development of your pieces. - Exposing your king to attack. - Making too many queen moves in the opening. - Weakening your castle position. - Getting pinned. - Failing to guard against captures. - Underestimating your opponents treats. - Losing a won game. But this book is not only about identifying bad moves, you will also learn new ideas and techniques that will be most helpful in actual game playing. In summary I really believe this is a great book for beginners.