Customer Reviews

The Mammoth Book of Chess

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4 star:		(1)
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This is sort of a buffet of a chess book. There's a little of everything, and not a lot of depth in anything, but what's there is fun, though in some spots Burgess seems to be writing for everybody: there are arcane references to past games, players and techniques; there are "tests" of considerable difficulty and some of incredible ease. There's a section on how to play chess, so apparently he wants notices to pick up this book too. There are sections that address simple questions like "If I just started playing, is there any chance I can ever become a master?" which again leads one to believe the book is aimed at novices. But then a few pages later there will be position analyses with many variations and sub-variations that make my head spin (and I am an Expert-level player) plus some solutions I flat-out do not get. I wonder who the intended audience is for this book.

Most puzzling, though, is the section on computer chess. I guess this made sense when he wrote it back in 1996-97...but now the chapters read as a relic, albeit an often amusing one. He talks about the latest in computers and computer chess: 486s and Pentium IIs, and Fritz 3 and 4! (We're up to Fritz 8 now, if you're counting.) He shows strategies to defeat computers that any recent program will mow down. He gives URLs to chess sites and publishers, most of which no longer work. He gives Telnet addresses! It's kind of like using a telephone directory from 1966 to find somebody today.

But despite all the apparent griping, the book is useful, but more as a quick reference, or entertaining page-turner than as a serious study. If you really want to improve your game and you're an intermediate-level player, I recommend, for starters, Silman's "How To Reassess Your Chess," and "The Amateur's Mind," Nimzovichs "My System" and Pachman's "Modern Chess Strategy." You will have a strong foundation. (Heck, if I reread them, I'd have a stronger foundation.) This book also had some glaring typos. Some were just grammatical ("Fischer took on the hole Russian chess team" or something like that) but there are at least two moves in games I've caught that are wrong, ie, impossible from the diagrammed position. Both times I went to a computer database to find the game and see the correct move.

Still, I find most chess books to be fun at the very least, so I gave it four stars. (I'll rarely give less than that to any chess book so long as it wasn't written by Eric Schiller.) If you can get this title for cheap, it is a reasonably good book, but more as a supplement. It's not comprehensive, it's not up-to-date and it certainly won't teach a beginner very much. Seirawan's series on strategy, tactics, brilliancies, etc., from Microsoft Press is much better at that.