Customer Reviews

Weapons of Chess: An Omnibus of Chess Strategies

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Great book, one of the easiest to read and follow of this type.
For the beginner, helps to learn the basic winning combinations /principles. Serves as refresher course for non-beginners, sometimes we forget the basics!

... There were many concepts in this book that were not new to me. Regardless, Pandolfini introduces them as though they are all new. He did state, in the introduction, that this book can be read from beginning to end, or used as a reference. I read it from cover to cover and must admit: this book gives you the book-knowledge behind what intermediate players have already learned from experience.

Now that I know the "WHY" behind it all, I can push for the positions I feel like playing and/or avoid unfavorable ones. Before this book, positions just kind of happened after the opening. NOW I CREATE THE POSITIONS I WANT. And, this book taught me that it all results from pawn structure.

If you want to learn how your pawns form the foundation for your game's positional play, then this book is for you. I give it four stars, a B+. ...

Way to go, Bruce! I am a class C-ish player who picked up the game again after 20 years hiatus (kids wanted to learn, so I decided to brush up so I could teach them). Unfortunately, I realized I was nothing more than a woodpusher and knew little or nothing about basic chess strategy. After working through the first 2 Lev Alburt books (excellent by the way), I found that further strategy books were over my head, or tried to teach above my level (Reassess Your Chess by Silman was a little over my head at first); other books offered to many games as examples without enough info on WHY the moves were being played. Then, someone recommended Pandolfini's Weapons of Chess to me. I must say that this book answered a lot of simple questions I had about pawn structure, weak squares/strong squares, and general strategy that other books ASSUMED I already knew. Obviously it isn't a book for the Expert, but for me it fit the bill perfectly. I am not sure why some chess authors knock Pandolfini and his books; for those who need to know the basics, this is the one to get.

Relevant Background: I am currently a lower rated adult player. I have mostly studied tactics and endgames with only a little positional study (1/2 of My System).

Let me say that I had rather mixed feeling regarding this book while reading it. It has several noteworthy qualities. Namely, it has a user-friendly reference format. While annotating my games, I occasionally refer to it to shed some light on the game, especially pawn formation. Also, it does a decent job of providing fairly broad (but shallow) coverage of many positional topics, especially pawn structure. The book spends 68 pages on isolated pawns (particularly the d-pawn). It also covers backward pawns, doubled pawns, pawn majorities/minorities, pawn couples, passed pawns, pawn centers, etc. Non-pawn topics that I feel are worth reading include two bishops, opening a file, knight corral, good knight, exchanging pieces.

The primary downside of this book is the editor's or author's decision to NOT use standard chess notation. They do use algebraic identifiers for squares, such as e2, h4, etc. But they attempt to use prose to describe maneuvers! An example from the chapter, Breakthrough Combination: "If, after White's g-pawn moves to g6, Black captures the g-pawn with the f-pawn, away from the center, White moves his h-pawn to h6, forcing Black's g7-pawn to capture the h6-pawn....". Huh? Clearly chess notation would have greatly simplified this explanation. Writing a book on chess and presupposing the reader knows the rules of the game without also presupposing they can easily learn algebraic notation within a few minutes, is a poor judgment call and significantly degrades the value of this book.

If you are under 1400 USCF, this book is an appropriate introduction to positional concepts. If you are over 1400 or have already read other positional material, I would skip this one and read My System by Nimzovich or Simple Chess by Stean/Wilson. A final recommendation, if you are a rank beginner, pick up Chess for Dummies (no joke) and then Everyone's 2nd Chess Book by Heisman.

I got this book as part of a bundle of books I purchased. I didn't think much of it. However, I would read it every once in a while when I didn't have a board handy or wanted some "light" reading. Many of the concepts were not new to me (USCF Rating ~1700). However, I found his discussion of different elements of pawn structure to be very informative. Particularly, his detailed discussion of isolated d-pawns, backwards pawns, doubled pawns, and pawn majorities were pretty good I think.

I play many openings which garner the isolated d-pawn (both with and against it) and my study of this topic in this book really helped my play in these positions. He breaks down the isolated d-pawn into strengths, weaknesses, and what to do when you have it and when you are playing against it. These sections I think are the best in the book.

The strength of this book is its simplicity. I think it is important to know the ideas (which you can gain from this book) and to see many concrete examples from master play (which you should find in other books). If you have many books on pawn structure, you may not want this book.

I found the other sections to be not as helpful, because other books I had did a sufficient job in teaching me these concepts. However, I think this is a good book for general positional ideas, particularly in the realm of pawn structures, which is an important one in chess.

I recommend this book for players under 1500. Players over 1500 may have much of this knowledge and I would recommend Silman's The Amateur's Mind to those.

I'm one of those people whose rating is under 1600 (as written above), and this book certainly is great for me. At the end of each chapter Pandolfini writes a very nice and informative summary that truly helps. The principles he outlines, as I can perceive, come across as though you are truly getting expert teaching that you should take to heart. I absolutely loved one of the lessons in an end game on how to make a pawn (3 pawns vs. 3 pawns)breakthrough and become a queen (it requires 2 pawn sacrifices); Principles about how to try and manipulate your pawns when you have a good or bad bishop; and of course more. This book has me wanting to now purchase books on end game lessons. Learning the "tricks" and proper methods is so much fun to learn.

I love this book. I take it with me to tournaments and read through it as a warm up for my games. It does not require to much intense thinking, but serves as a great reminder of Important principles. It is perfect for any one rated under 1600. I belive the principles in this book are so important that you can't go over them to thourghly, but they are not so advanced as to require indepth deep analyisis. In my most recent tournament I used concepts that I had just reviewed in the book to win two games that I would probably had drawn (first game) or lost. (second game) These aren't new concepts but because they are presented in such an easily digestible manner they are ingrained quickly and easily. I like to read this while I try to relax between rounds. You can put it down when ever you want and come back to it even after a long time and you'll remember exactly what was going on in the book. Unlike many other books i I don't have to read through the entire chapter to keep from loosing the train of thought. this book won't make you an expert but if you wan't to gain an under standing of the vitals of chess with out wasting hours crouched over your chess board Pick up a copy.

It seems like you either love this book or you hate it. Positional chess is hard to explain and hard to learn, but this book does the best job I've seen of explaining positional concepts to relatively new players. If you already understand pawn structures, then don't buy it, but if you've heard that doubled pawns are bad but don't really know why, then this book is for you.

Pandolfini's idea of using no chess notation is very interesting. I know I lose interest when all I see is columns of notation, and it's nice to have a book that does not require you to have a board in front of you. The wordiness of "move the king's pawn to the third square" gets old after many repetitions, but I still think it's a good idea for the intended audience -- someone who knows the moves and wants to learn more.

Please don't be mislead by all the bad reviews. There is a simple reason why many of the readers give this book a bad review: they probably already know the material.

If you are already a 1500 player, this book will probably not help you much. If you are 1000 it will be divine inspiration. The truth is that Bruce Pandolfini _regularly_ churns out positively horrid books. This is one exception that should be read by any weak player....if you already know the material in this, you shouldn't be reading Pandolfini level books anyway.

By the way, this is one of the three books I recommend for players, the other two (in order of playing strength) are: Reassess your chess (Silman) Play/Think Like a grandmaster (Kotov).

This book is for the smart beginner after he has played a bit.

This book is totally a waste of money and it should never have been published. It is a mistake to buy this book so my advice is DON'T BUY IT!