Irving Chernev’s Logical Chess: Move by Move

My name is Simon Hayward and this is my first review for the blog. I am writing from the perspective of someone who has learned to play chess properly only recently, and having learned some basic tactical themes and some openings now wishes to improve their game to the standard of serious club play.

Reading annotated games is an excellent way to improve your play but I find that often annotations concentrate just on the novelties in a game or else lose a novice reader in endless branching variations. Logical Chess is the perfect antidote to this. It gives simple explanations of every move, good or bad, in over thirty master level games. This covers an enormous range of tactical themes, opening theory, positional jockeying, and endgame techniques. I found the games demonstrating how to exploit the weaknesses created by moving pawns in front of the castled king particularly enjoyable and instructive.

There are a couple of minor flaws with the book, but they should not put you off studying it. The first is that sometimes Chernev does labour his points; while his wit and erudition does carry the reader through slightly repetitious opening annotations they do eventually get to be annoying. The second is that it concentrates a great deal on variations of the Queen’s Gambit Declined and the Indian Defences to Queen’s Pawn Openings. However since well over half of all tournament games begin with 1.d4 this should not be seen as too serious a flaw.

I would recommend this book overwhelmingly to anyone that wishes to improve beyond the strong beginner stage of chess playing, and wishes to understand why certain moves form the mainline of the openings. It will also improve your endgame technique and positional understanding. A great book.