World Champion's Guide To Chess by Susan Polgar

I just received the first shipment of the new version of my best selling chess book A World Champion’s Guide to Chess. This book is aimed for beginners/novice players. It is a perfect book for parents / teachers to teach youngsters how to play chess.

The best-selling A World Champion’s Guide to Chess is available again!! Winning Chess the Polgar Way!

http://www.amazon.com/World-Champions-Guide-Chess

In A World Champion’s Guide to Chess, Women’s World Champion Susan Polgar’s exclusive training methods will have you playing winning chess! Topics include Chess Essentials, Tactics, Strategy, Pattern Recognition, Endgames, Chess Etiquette, Advice for Parents & Coaches and much more! SUSAN POLGAR is a winner of four Women’s World Championships and the top-ranked woman chess player in the United States. She became the #1 woman player in the world at 15 and remained in the top 3 for over 20 years. In 2013, she received the U.S. Coach of the Year Award and the following year, she was named the Chess Trainer of the Year by the International Chess Federation (FIDE). She thus became the first person in history to be accorded both honors. Under her guidance, SPICE chess teams at both Texas Tech University and Webster University have won a combined five consecutive National Division I Collegiate Chess Championships.

PAUL TRUONG is winner of eleven national titles, a prolific chess trainer, and award-winning chess author. He was also captain and manager of the historic 2004 US Women’s Olympiad team which won two gold and two silver medals, as well as the coach of the five-time national champion SPICE chess teams.

Some of the reviews:

By Michael P. Sullivan on September 17

First let me tell you what this book is not. It is not designed to teach you the movements of the pieces. Ms Polgar does cover the material, but dedicates only about 2 pages per piece. This is enough for adults or teenagers, but not enough for children. It does not spend much time on strategy or openings. It focuses on tactics.

I am a chess coach for an elementary school and find that focusing on tactics is probably the most important area for a beginning to intermediate player. More and more research shows that while openings and traps can have a short term boost in winning games, the best way to become a strong player is tactics. I’ve seen numerous beginning books, but this by far is the most important chess book that I know of for players that have learned “at home” or already know how the pieces move. As of this writing, when I lookup “chess” on Amazon, I see over 62000 results. This is my favorite book for teaching chess.

This book is easy to use and easy to read. It introduces a tactic (such as pins) with a paragraph or two and then jumps right into exercises. The exercises themselves start easy and get tougher farther along. It is also one of the few chess books that is easy to reuse (Ms. Polgar recommends going through the exercises again and improving speed.) Ms Polgar is not only a GrandMaster, but she has been focused on teaching the game. This book is an excellent product and shows how good she is at teaching chess.

I don’t think this is the only chess book you need when learning the game, just the most important.

Format: Paperback

I tried Chess for Dummies, Idiot Guide and others. Nothing can compare to this one. This is the most complete book for beginners ever. It covers everything from the absolute beginning to very important tactics. This is a great book! I highly recommend this book to all parents and teachers.
See the title of my review. Great for Novices and good up to 2000 ELO in my opinion. For the first time ever, pattern recognition is explained in relation to seeing ahead. Fantastic!

By Andrew on February 5, 2006

As a volunteer chess teacher in an elementary school, I desperately need a book that can help me do my job. This book is very complete and perfect for my needs. It includes everything from the abc of chess, important chess strategies, essential tactics, tips for young players and their parents/coaches, and much more. No other book is this so complete. Kudos to Ms. Polgar.
My son’s chess coach recommended me to buy this book to help my son improve. I followed his advice and I can see the difference immediately. I set up the positions in this book for my son to solve. He is doing about 10 puzzles a day and he starts to see so much more on the board after about 50-60 puzzles. The exclusive pattern recognition mentioned in the book is fantastic. I am truly impressed. I highly recommend this book for other parents and chess teachers.
on October 1, 2015
I have several books by Susan and I am working my way through them. I know I will never be a grand master but I know with her teaching I will better learn to be a weekend chess player and more. Thanks Ms Polgar.
on July 9, 2013
My wife and I are interested in learning chess, and we thought that learning from a champion would make the most sense. Susan starts with the very basic information needed, then progressively takes the student through the learning steps necessary to become a very competent chess player. She shows all the strategy of planned attacks, protecting your pieces and getting out of trouble when it happens. I love her training exercises where she asks you to identify how to attack or capture the opposing piece, and the answer explains why her choice is the best action. After a while, you choose the correct action more and more often; and that is what this book is designed to do. What a totally great book !! I can’t praise it highly enough. On a slightly different note- I wish she had written a book on how to fix computers!!
on April 24, 2011

‘Practice’ before you ‘Play’

This book teaches the game in small steps, such as how to checkmate if you have specific pieces, how to avoid a loss by using perpetual checks etc.
This book helped me in developing a “radar system” that scans for various parameters such as identify the vulnerable pieces, finding the pins and at the same time protecting your pieces from opponent’s attack.
I have taken a printout of dos and don’ts section and keep it with me while practicing with my chess simulator program.
I feel confident with basics and ready to read advanced material.
Great book for beginners. I give 5/5.

on August 15, 2008

I know almost nothing about chess. I suppose a very lucky head of cabbage might mate me in 6 moves (leaving me to make excuses). I don’t care about chess. No one will ever pay me a dime to play chess. I do have the sort of mind that is attracted by that sort of geometric strategy game. I wanted a book that would give me quick insight into how “real” chess players might think. I wanted a book that would let me think in a new way—as an exercise—and to see patterns that I missed before.

This is just a splendid book. There aren’t thousands of self-serving pages saying how great Ms. Polgar is (she probably is great—I wouldn’t know a grandmaster from a lucky head of cabbage). There aren’t tens of pages of motivational drivel. It’s short, it’s to the point. It has CONTENT. It’s all about real chess, and it’s written in chess language. It doesn’t waste any time, and it lets me learn by doing. It is as good as having a decent teacher around to show me how it’s really done.

I don’t think it would be possible to serve the vast mass of unwashed and uncultured boors—like myself—in any kinder or better way. We get to see how the real people play chess and think about it. Does that mean we get to see everything and all the issues and all their subtleties? No, how could that be possible. But we can go from zero knowledge and zero sophistication and zero chess to at least having some appreciation of that way of thinking.

In the end, the person with the most mental flexibility in their whole life—in all the ways they have to think about any situation—that person wins life, not just chess.

More reviews here: http://www.amazon.com/World-Champions-Guide-Chess-Step

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