Capablanca was an exceptional tallent, and is one of my personal favorites. The reason i did not give this book better than 3 stars is because i just dont feel that Reinfeld really did him alot of justice with this book. The annotations are brief, and he seems to put down capa at times.

If you really want to get a book on perhaps the best player ever you should really consider buying instead "capablanca's 60 best chess endings" by chernev. Chernev not only admired the guy, but considered him the best player ever. So you know that the annotations are alot better. The book might have less games, but if you really want to enjoy, and learn from a book its definitely a fair trade. want to study a great player's games?
you cannot go wrong with Capablanca. awesome games, but Capablanca deserves better. If you cannot afford the extra dollar or so that Chernev's book cost. Then i would recommend this book to you.

José Raúl Capablanca (1888-1942) is widely regarded as one of the all-time great chess players, and possibly the greatest natural chess genius in history. World champion from 1921-1927, he is the only player to have won the world title by defeating the incumbent in a match without losing a game. Grandmaster Robert Byrne, in his foreword, pointed how Capablanca's games were the greatest influence on the modern great world champion Bobby Fischer, and Anatoly Karpov is another disciple.

Mikhail Botvinnik (three times world champ) also related how much he learned from Capablanca, and pointed out that even his successor Alexander Alekhine received much schooling from him in positional play, before the struggle for the world title made them bitter foes.

Once players have read all the introductory books about endgames, openings, tactics and basic strategy, to improve, they must study master games. Capablanca's crystal clarity of style makes his an ideal object of study.

Reinfeld does a good job here, as he did with his collection of Tarrasch's games. There are plenty of fine endgames, Capa's forté, but lots of brilliancy prize games as well. By the time Capa had won the world title, he had a unique record - winning a brilliancy prize at every master tournament he had played in where one was awarded.

In his biographical sketch of Capa, Reinfeld states his belief in Alekhine's superiory. But Byrne's foreword points out that Alekhine never fulfilled his obligation to play a return match, and selected weaker opponents instead of facing him again. In fact, their first game after their world championship match was nine years later at the great Nottingham 1936 tournament - Capa won both the game and the first prize (with Botvinnik).

The games in this book naturally overlap the ones in Golombek's book, but why not get both at such a bargain price?

I, personally, hate long reviews of books, so I'm going to make this short and sweet! Capablanca was one of the greatest players of all time. Mr. Reinfeld (the author) adds stunning history behind the games and tells the reader what to expect of certain games in the intro of each chapter. The only bad mark that I can give this book is that the annotations seem a little brief at times; however, this book will teach you so much about the game of chess that one bad mark should never prevent a serious player from getting this classic!

Worth the price in my opinion

This was the first book I ever bought on chess. It was a joy to read, and pulled me in to the richness and complexity of the game.

Highly recommended. It doesn't really require much chess sophistication to read - but will stimulate and educate the reader.

Bill Parr

There must be a time warp aspect to some of these reviews. This book was in print by at least 1965. My dad was stationed in Germany in the mid-sixties, a rather remote area without TV or radio even to speak of. My indulgence in chess was enhanced by this book to provide thoughtful provocation in an intellectual wasteland. It did, indeed. Foremostly, it demonstrates how not to ever surrender; rather, manipulate through the opponent's greed to commit the blunder necessary to salvage victory. I am a sloppy player nowadays. But I plan on repurchasing this book, as it's great combat training for the chessboard. And beware the unwary online when I'm done! NO PRISONERS!!!!!!

This classic text provides a compact collection of advice on chess strategies. A short, easy book to read, the author wastes no time and cuts right to the point in deliviring his suggestions on the various problems one must avoid in playing chess. Directed mostly at intermediate players, the book comes in very useful in explaining the many "gotchas" that inexperienced chess players frequently fall into. This book typically sells for a very low price, due to its small size and old age, but it is certainly as valuable as many modern texts at three times the size.

A chess genius friend of mine from Cuba (that should tell you something right there!) was the first to introduce this slim gem on chess improvement to me (circa June of 2000). You see, in Cuba there is still a great deal of reverence for the late GREAT Jose Raoul Capablanca.
This friend of mine (named Alex {Alejandro}) had been TRAINED in chess as a youngster in Cuba at a chess academy that pays tribute to Capablanca. Alex sees with great depth the position on the chessboard and in record time. One day, after one of his many victories over me, he handed me his own "How Not To Play Chess" and said, "I think you could learn from this. It's the only chess book I've ever read." Now, I have written everything in this review up to this point, not "to pat my friend on the back" (O K that's part of it!), but, so that you can go through the same thought process I did after I completed this book the first time (I have read it at 3 different times over the past two years; the third time was just recently from February 18 through March 8). This is the only book Alex has read?!?!?!?! Since he's so good at the game, that fact alone tells me a lot about this book.
I would have to say this book introduces chess players to their own tendency toward mishaps; no matter what level you may be; even beyond 1800.
You can improve a lot when you keep in mind the author's intention that he has written in the book's introduction. The part that deals with the 3 types of analyses and then planning is very important to know like the back of your hand.
However, I am critical of the author's tone of voice throughout the book, as he seems to wonder why all chess players aren't able to see what an expert like himself sees. The book is generally easy to read, but at times the writing becomes rather cumbersome. I also am critical of how the author assumes that the reader, whom he is thinking is a beginner or amateur in chess, even knows what a combination is! I myself had absolutely no problem with his instruction on combinations, but I have to say it was a bad idea to just dive into talking about combinations in the way that the author does without explaining at all what a combination is. I started reviewing this book again a day after finishing "Extreme Chess" by C.J.S. Purdy (Read my review!) and afterwards my understanding of that "chess experience" I had just undergone (and of chess itself) solidified and clarified even more so!! This book is so thin that reading it thoroughly again at about 6 month intervals (until you've really got it down pat EACH TIME) is something I highly recommend. Take note that this third time around I got a pencil and paper and transposed all the book's dreaded descriptive notation into bi-column algebraic notation; I would recommend that you do the same. It will help your retention of the book's teachings. I think the chess quizzes at the end should have made specific mention of what principles were being addressed as you go over the answers; but definitely try to figure out the answer before looking at it. All in all, this is a good introduction into combinations, but beginners should pursue more instruction on combinations after reading this.

A brilliant little book that is clearly written, extremely useful, and bargain-priced. Do not be misled by the author's use of maxims for chapter titles: he is not dogmatic whatsoever. Znosko-Borovsky's verbal analysis of a chess position, for example, on pages 54-60, regarding visualizing a plan based on the differences (however slight)in each side, and putting that plan into effect is an eye-opener. If you've read Jeremy Silman's How To Reassess Your Chess, you'll recognize the thinking method detailed decades before Silman published. I believe you will not regret time spent with this book.

This book and its companion, 1001 Chess Sacrifices and Combinations, are excellent tools for intermediate players to use to sharpen their eye for combinations. This book is nothing more than page after page of diagrams of chess positions from real games that contain a forced checkmate. Like a math book, the answers are in the back in case one cannot solve the mate. The aspiring player cannot help but learn from the repetitive practice solving these mates. The book is not without its problems: A few of the diagrams are printed a little dark; a couple answers are incorrect (the corresponding diagram is probably incomplete); and, the problems are not arranged in any order of difficulty -- a mate in ten is often followed by a mate in two. Some beginning players are also disconcerted by the fact that there is little or no instruction provided in the introductions to the chapters. For them I would strongly recommend Renaud & Kahn's The Art of the Checkmate and Seirawan & Silman's Winning Chess Tactics as prerequisites to tackling 1001BWTC. My guess is that a class C or D player could easily pick up a 100 rating points in strength after reading these three books consecutively.

This is a must have for any tournament chess player. It helps your visualization of chess moves and patterns for creating a checkmate.

It is easier than the 1001 combinations book because you know the goal is to get the king checkmated.

The 1001 combinations book was too hard for me until I went through a lot of the checkmate book. The reason is that you don't know which piece you are trying to make a combination on.

However, after going through this checkmate book, the combination book is much easier now.

My advice--start with the checkmates then move on to the combinations book. However, if you are already good >1600-1700, then maybe start in directly with the combinations, since they might be more realistic positions. (However, the books are cheap by chess book standards so get them both...)

Pattern recognition is a very important skill in chess both for attack and defense. This book drills in this very matter testing your ability to recognize a pattern and to calculate the variations leading to checkmate.

I solved each and every puzzle in this book and I can honestly say that the skills gathered were put to the test almost inmediately: I was engineering simple checkmates and executing them over the board after reading the book.

Objectively speaking the problems range of difficulty varies a lot. Some of the problems are as simple as calculating a mate in one while others require you to find a ten moves solution. Is this good? Sure it is! A plain diagram with the words "white (or black) to move" not telling you how long is your path to victory is in my opinion the best way to train tactics. [In fact, I would say that Reinfeld should not even divide the material in themes like queen sacrifice, attack to the uncastled king, etc.]

A single pass over Reinfeld's problems is just not enough and the book demands a second or even third "reading." Why? Because it will save time and suffering in actual games...

In any case I wholeheartedly recommend this book

This is not a book bean counters will enjoy to say the very least :)... If you like to throw caution to the wind and go for broke... This is a pretty good book to consider picking up and reading :)... It uses old descriptive notation so that might not go over well with some. Still just reading the words I found to be pretty enjoyable. I like how he talks about the Sham sac and some other things. For the price it is really worth thinking about getting with another book or order. The contents of the book are setup sorta interesting...

Part 1 deals with
The Various Types of Sacrifices

Sham Sacrifices, Positional Sacrifices, Sacrifices for gain and Mating Sacrifice... Then he gets into what he calls Real Sacrifices... They include Sacs for development, Obstructive Sacs, Preventing (or anti-castling) Sacs... Other sacs he gets into are Line-Clearance Sacs, Vacating Sacs, Deflecting or Decoy Sacs, (Castled) King's Field Sac and King-Hunt Sac...

Part II deals with Sacrificial Values :)...

This mostly consists of the Exchange Sac and the Queen Sac... A few examples are given for each of the listed type of sacs... So its pretty interesting how they break it up in the Contents page... This book is also 197 pages, so its pretty good value for the price. If this book might fit your style, I would think about picking it up...

Spielmann was a great combinative player from the first half of the 20th century. He played against Capablanca, Alekhine, Lasker, Tarrasch, Rubinstein etc. In this fabulous book he explains the foundation of combinative play: deep positional understanding, and not necessarily calculation power. In practical play it is most of the times not possible to calculate all the ramifications of a "real sacrifice" (this is Spielmann's therminology for those sacrifices which do not yield an immediate check mate or recovery of the material sacrificed). In such cases the sacrifice is based on positional understanding, not calculation power. Tal used to play like this; Shirov comes to mind as another example. A classic book. For this price do not think twice: buy it!

A superb book to streamline your thoughts about sacrificial play. This book gives you a broad framework without cluttering the general themes with a dense amount of similar examples or analyses. Although this is a relatively small book it contains more usable information for the average chessplayer than books double it's size. This gem could be used again and again to review your own games, just to make sure your sacs fit your framework to make them rational and succesful. As usual and especially with older chessbooks reading them in their original language (that's German in this case) is preferable whenever your language skills are up to it.

Very good set of puzzles. Several mate in 1 for warm-up. Then dozens of mate in 2. Then dozens of mate in 3. About half by White, half by Black.

Good format: 6 diagrams + solutions on each 2-page spread. You don't have to search for the answer in the back, but you also won't accidentally notice the answer as you might if it were directly under the diagram. Very simple!

These are not only realistic, but actually from old master games. The players and games are named, which gives a whiff of historical significance. Reinfeld often adds a sentence to the answer to tell us something about the players, or the game, or the circumstances. That adds some drama to an otherwise dry book of puzzles.

Unfortunately, the diagrams in this book must be third or fourth generation copies. They are too light. Look inside the book and see for yourself! This is exacerbated by the old-style drawings of the pieces, which makes the queens difficult to distinguish from each other.

Maybe Dover will do a new edition in Algebraic Notation with new diagrams? (This one is in Descriptive Notation, but the answers are so short that it's really not a problem. In fact, I prefer Descriptive for puzzles, since QxB is easier to visualize than Qxe4.)

I do not know how many of these puzzles appear in other Reinfeld books, but for the price you can't complain.

This is one of the few books I've read from cover to cover. And still is alot of fun to look at.

The books gives problems w/mate in 1, 2 and 3. The problems can be solved by anybeginner but almost everyone will appreciate them. I recently looked at it after almost 10 years and was still impressed! And at the price it is a steal. I would recommend it to anychessplayer!

What a pity this book is not better known. It is one of the best books I have ever read on attacking the king. Reinfeld gives hundreds of master games in which masters beat their opposition with one,two and three move checkmates. The finishing touches on many of these mates is truly brilliant. He also gives a few alternate moves in the solutions. Anyone who masters the mates in this book, would find moves that would shock his opponents, in any phase of the game. The book teaches pattern recognition which is essential to finding attacks in all phases of the game. Highly recommended!

I found this book to be a very good introduction to checkers. It covers, in depth, sacrifices (pitches) to set up two-for-one exchanges, and the "five positions" that most commonly occur in the endgame. The analysis of openings is thorough, and a major plus for me was the section on forcing draws from "losing" positions. Only two things stopped me from ranking this book at 5 stars - the pictures of the boards are just too big, and are sometimes two pages back from where the written analysis takes place. Also some sample historic games would have been nice. The author has used an appendix to describe different versions of checkers around the world and this is, frankly, useless. That space could have been better used by a couple of analysed historic games. Other than these minor peeves, it is an excellent book. I would not hesitate to recommend it to a checkers enthusiast from beginner to intermediate level.

Reinfield's book is a must for the serious checker player. He covers various situations, openings and endgames, and provides the reader situation problems to solve on his/her own. My game was improved by reading this book.

Reinfeld has truly excelled in this book about checkers. This is the most complete book on checkers you will ever find, in or out of print.

The book covers tactics such as traps and shots and then goes on to cover just about every important opening to at least some degree, often with main-lines and numerous variations. Finally, the section on endings is quite complete; nowhere else can I find the four kings vs. three situation covered.

Whenever I have a question I turn first to this book and almost always find an answer.

Be aware that information is packed tightly into every page and you will need to study each situation carefully, playing through the variations on a second board. For instance, opening variations are often contained in a few lines of commentary; you will lose out if you don't pay attention to these variations. It is clearly not a book for dabblers, but one which requires substantial effort, which will be well rewarded.

This book does not get a lot of attention from the experts, perhaps because of Reinfeld's so-so reputation as a chess writer. In fact this book is a must-have for serious beginners and intermediates. If you combine this with The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Checker Puzzles you have enough study material for months, and your game will improve rapidly.

(Don't be put off by the cover photo, which is full of errors and serves to trivialize and stereotype the game of checkers. The contents are what matters.)

This book deals specifically with 3 and only 3 openings - the Stonewall Attack for White; the Sicilian Dragon and Lasker's Defense to the Queen's Gambit Declined for Black. It presents 4 to 6 example games for each opening with pretty good commentary and explanation for each. However, each example given is a highly successful adoption of the subject opening, which gives good illustrations of what they are capable of, but which might give the inexperienced player the impression that each is a sure-win bet. After all, 6 examples of the Dragon will barely scratch the surface of this line and 6 out of 6 wins might be a little misleading to the novice.

Part 4 of the book is titled, "How to Exploit Inferior Play by Your Opponent". It contains 4 examples of Morphy and Alekhine crushing no-name opponents who are offered up as cannon-fodder for former world champions. Hardly inspiring and not very good examples of play for beginners.

What this book does offer, however, is 3 solid choices of openings (1 for White; 2 for Black) for beginners who may have just joined a club or school team and need a limited opening repertoire to use against stronger players while they learn the game in more depth. It gives several very concrete plans to follow and they are presented in very clear fashion with the reasoning behind the moves. The authors occasionally use phrases such as "White intends..." or "Black plans...", but whether that justifies the title of the book, "How to Think Ahead in Chess" is debatable.

On the whole, if you are a beginner who needs some openings to play while you continue to develop, this may be just the book. But if you are rated over 1300 or so, you need to have a keen interest in the Stonewall or in Lasker's Defense to bother with this book.

Master Horowitz and enthusiast Reinfeld's _How to Think Ahead in Chess_ tackles the problem of the mediocre play of most of us chess players most pointedly: Know only 3 openings, a few positions, and several variations -- but know them well. Train your eye upon the image of key chess positions seen through the analytical eye of the master. And, masterly, your chess instinct will react. This is the most fun book of chess I ever read. I've had it for well over 10 years and, the book is true to its back cover blurb, "you will enjoy each game to the fullest." Improving chess demands work. And for those of us afficianados with pedagogical interests, this is a "must have." This is not a beginner book nor a complete treatment. It is just a unique yet effective vehicle which may give your chess games a quantum leap toward the rewards of their deeper understanding. Four stars because a book should solve the basic human dilemma (whatever that is) to earn 5, and I'm conservative with my praise upon others or myself. I don't know a lot about winning a lot of chess games, but I know a lot more about my own approach thanks to this book.

Most of us know how to open and then wait for something to develope, somtimes this goes well, other times not so well. After reading this book you will have a clear cut idea/strategy from the first move to the last!! I went from a mediocre player who usually finishes somewhere in the middle, in our chess tournaments at work, to the CHAMPION!! All from reading this book. Gives the reader a definite strategy whether he is playing white or black!! Makes the game interesting and more fun! This book is not for beginners but for those of us who have a grasp of the game but lack an overall system for consistent wins. A MUST READ!!! If you are looking for a chess book that is easy to read and understand, don't hesitate to purchase this work of art.

This book will help intermediate players gain insight to strategy and help give them the confidence to play more aggressively. It's too bad that this book is out of print, My copy is held together with duct tape (I had it for 17 years). If you can get a copy, it's worth the time and effort.

This book is really great for the beginner (as I was) who usually just moves one move ahead and is reactive rather than proactive. This book teaches you to EASILY plan your entire game from the beginning. I enjoyed the game of Chess much more once I really understood having a Plan and watching it beat my opponents (who used to beat me)

Note that this book was originally written in the 1960s and therefore uses the old-style (non-algebraic) notation. Otherwise this is a fine beginner's book with lots of good examples and few typos.