Monthly Archives: November 2015

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Beat Your Dad or a Kid?

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This is a double book review:

  • How to Beat Your Dad at Chess (by Chandler) – best for intermediate players
  • Beat That Kid in Chess (by Whitcomb) – best for “raw” beginners

The first is not really about defeating your father; the second is not really about defeating a kid. Both are exceptional at teaching you to win a chess game, but only within narrow limits: two different skill levels in chess.

How to Beat Your Dad at Chess

This chess book is extremely popular on Amazon, yet combining the two-star and one-star customer reviews makes 9%, which can be a warning flag if you’re to purchase a book to be used as a gift (6% are two-stars; 3% are one-star). How to Beat Your Dad at Chess is far from ideal for the early beginner who has not yet learned to look ahead in calculating a combination in his or her head. One purchaser said:

This was Not the book I needed to help my 9-yr old grandson advance from the beginning level of chess playing. It is much too complex. . . .

That grandparent would probably have been much happier at purchasing Beat That Kid in Chess, which is crafted especially for early beginners. So who does benefit from the book for intermediate players?

chess book by Murray Chandler

How to Beat Your Dad at Chess, by Murray Chandler, can greatly benefit certain players who have already learned how to look ahead at least to this degree:

  • What move can I make in this position on the board? (find a move to make)
  • What can my opponent do in response to that move?
  • What can I then do in response to that potential move by my opponent?

Once a post-beginner has arrived at that level of move-calculating ability—that’s when How to Beat Your Dad at Chess may be appropriate. But don’t throw that book at a novice who is not ready, or it may bounce back at you.

So what exactly does the book by Chandler teach a post-beginner? It’s almost entirely devoted to checkmate combinations. That’s it. If that’s what a chess player needs the most, then How to Beat Your Dad at Chess may be ideal, the very best chess book.

But if you want something that teaches you about openings or middle games or endgames, you’d better look for another chess book.

Beat That Kid in Chess

If you win most of the chess games you play, at least some of the lessons in this chess book may be too elementary for you. It’s for the raw beginner who knows the rules of the game but has not yet learned much about winning.

Whitcomb's nonfiction "Beat That Kid in Chess"

The first chapter demonstrates how to recognize an opportunity to checkmate your opponent. Just as important, it shows you how to recognize when a checkmate is almost possible but not yet available in a position on the board. (Many other books do the former but not the latter.)

The reader may be unaware of the new NIP system of chess training in Beat That Kid in Chess, while reading and looking at the diagrams. You don’t need to know anything about the teaching-psychology of nearly-identical positions to benefit from it. You learn to think tactically in a smooth orderly manner, naturally learning to think a little bit more like a master would think about a particular chess position on the board.

This new chess book may be the first publication to use the NIP system systematically, helping the early beginner to see what’s most important. In addition, the following important subjects are taught:

  • Checkmate
  • Material – both preservation and capturing
  • Defending against checkmate in the opening
  • “Tactics in Battle” (Chapter Four)
  • The order of what to look for in a position
  • Endgame
  • Middle Game
  • Opening

This chess book ends with two short sections of exercises: simple and “advanced”

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How to Beat Your Dad at Chess

Like the other two chess books, it has a title and cover image that could be misleading. . . . [The other book, “Beat That Kid in Chess,” is much better for the early beginner]

Best Chess Book for Beginners

“Take the lessons in this book [‘Beat That Kid in Chess’] seriously and your ability to play chess  may advance further than if you had struggled through losing twenty  games.”

Tactics in a Chess Combination

The Cuban chess wizard Jose Capablanca played a gorgeous combination against the music professor Marc Fonaroff, apparently at an evening party in New York [in 1918].

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The Value of Nearly-Identical Positions (NIP)

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Before September of 2015, very few chess book reviews mentioned the nearly-identical positions (NIP) method of instruction in the royal game. Beat That Kid in Chess was then published, perhaps the first chess book every written that systematically uses NIP in helping beginners grasp the essence of simple chess tactics.

If you already own a copy of Beat That Kid in Chess, the following diagrams will simply supplement what you learn in that chess book. (The NIP positions shown below are not found in the book.) If you don’t have that book, you can still benefit from this:

NIP-001-1-C

Diagram-1  with White to move

What can white do in Diagram-1? That can be a difficult question for a raw beginner, a player who has had little if any experience with chess tactics. Let’s look at three moves.

Rxe7 – The white rook near the white king captures a black knight

The black rook near the black king will then capture that white rook, giving Black an advantage of taking a rook (generally worth five points) at the expense of only a knight (generally worth three points). Rxe7 would be a mistake, for White gets no compensation for that loss of material (not even a pawn to show for that exchange).

Bd5 – The bishop moves to a central square, right in front of a black pawn

With the bishop then on the d5 square, it would attack and pin the rook that is near the black king. That rook cannot move to safety because that king would then be exposed to check from that bishop. Does that mean that White will win material, gaining a rook in exchange for a bishop? Not quite, for there’s a black knight on e7, next to that black rook, and that knight would capture the bishop on d5. So Bd5 would be a blunder, throwing away a bishop for no compensation.

But that bishop does appear to control a long diagonal leading to the upper left corner of the board. What about another bishop move in that direction?

Bb7 – The bishop moves almost as far as it can to the upper left

This move makes a double attack. On b7, the bishop is now attacking a rook and a knight, so one of those two black pieces will be captured by the bishop.

NIP-001-1-cont-C

Diagram-2  White just moved the bishop to b7

From the first diagram, White moved the bishop to b7 making a double attack against two of Black’s pieces, shown in the second diagram. Black may move one of those two pieces, but the bishop will probably then capture the other piece. One exception is if black now moves Nb4, where it will threaten to move to d3, forking the white king and both white rooks. If the black knight on the upper left does move to the b4 square, however, the pawn at a3 will capture it, winning a piece for white.

But now let’s look at a different position, one similar to what we saw in Diagram-1:

NIP-001-2-C

Diagram-3  White to move

Please don’t immediately look for how this differs from the first diagram; we’ll get to that difference soon enough. What can the bishop now do on that long diagonal?

What about moving the bishop to b7, like we did earlier? There’s a problem with that move now, however, for the knight at d8 would capture the bishop after it moved to b7. But that bishop now has another option, a move that did not work in Diagram-1: Bd5.

NIP-001-2-C-cont

Diagram-4  White just moved the bishop to d5

The bishop now pins the black rook that is on f7, meaning it cannot move because the king would be in check. This time, no black piece can capture that bishop on d5, so White will win material after capturing that rook.

Now we can see the difference between Diagram-1 and Diagram-3. Those two NIPs have one of the black knights in different positions: e7 and d8, yet that slight change in the placement of that knight makes a big difference in what White can do.

Consistent use of Nearly-Identical Positions in BTKC

Because of the systematic use of NIP in Beat That Kid in Chess, it may be the best chess book for beginners who know the rules of the game but little else.

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Chess book review

The following five chess books were chosen, for this review, not for head-to-head competition but for comparing different skill levels of chess players.

Nearly-identical-positions in chess

Beat That Kid in Chess uses nearly-identical-positions in many of the diagrams. Yet how important are those little differences!

Best Chess Book for Beginners

“A common weakness in the games of raw beginners is failing to see  the many possibilities. When you see that a particular piece can move  to a particular square, compare the resulting position with what it  would be if you made a different move.”

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Best Book for a Chess Beginner

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Whether for your own enjoyment or for that of the person who receives a gift-book from you, the choice of a book on chess should depend on the playing level of the one who reads the book. The purchasing decision should depend a great deal on that point, and we need to look deeper than then cover to find out which ones are best for particular persons.

For a teenager or adult who knows the rules of chess but little else, the choice may be easy: the new book Beat That Kid in Chess or the old one Chess for Dummies. If the book purchase is for a gift, the first title is obviously much better, unless you want to insult the one you’re giving the book to. Be aware, however, that this recommended book, Beat That Kid in Chess, is for the raw beginner who knows how to move the pieces but has had little, if any, experience actually winning a game. It has the most basic elements of tactics and how to avoid becoming checkmated and making your own checkmate.

In fact, an older child could enjoy Beat That Kid in Chess, if that kid reads well. The reading level of the text is generally easier for teenagers and adults.

If you’re giving the book to a precocious child who already gets more wins than loses in the royal game, consider Chess Tactics for Kids (by Murray Chandler). It’s not for the early beginner, however, but for the player who can already look ahead in a chess position.

For a young child who might like to learn to play chess, one of the best choices is The Kids’ Book of Chess and Chess Set. It teaches the rules of the game in an entertaining way for younger children, although it warns about a choking hazard for those under three years old (but what toys do not have that warning?).

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Checkmate for the Chess Beginner

So how do you make  progress during all those moves in which a quick mate is impossible? You try to gain some advantage that will lead to eventual victory.

Chess Book for Many Beginners

The paperback [book] Beat That Kid in Chess was published by Createspace on September 2, 2015 . . . This book can take you into a level that should help you defeat many beginners, at least sometimes.

Chess Book – for the early beginner to win

Written especially for the raw beginner, the chess player who knows the rules of the game but not much about how to win . . .

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