Your Move!

Sergio X. Madrigal, Ph.D.

A Pithy Primer of Chess

Your Move

My goal with this book was to include all the rules to play and the fundamentals to play well and enjoy chess. This book will give you the vocabulary for the chess concepts and techniques to enhance your chess skills, as you learn the terms for actions on the board that you might not even know were actual things. It should also prove productive and rewarding to the player who learned the game years ago but now wants to master the game enough to take their game to a new level. There is enough in this pithy volume that it will take more than a few re-readings to master it sufficiently well to productively apply the principles herein to your play. Mastery of the material in this book should be sufficient to enable a motivated player to achieve a mid-level ranking.

There are also many alternative ways to learn chess these days, such as the Internet. But I believe that this book can be a complement to these other sources and serve as a master set of notes for chess lessons that you may learn in more ephemeral ways, so that you a have brief, organized exposition of the fundamentals of chess in one handy volume. Basically, I want to present in this pithy primer sufficient chess knowledge to maximize your chess play.

My intention is to present you with a manual that concentrates on the beauty and wonder of chess with a healthy dose of the mechanics of chess, more like teaching you how to play the piano with sufficient focus on the mechanics of how to tune a piano. There is an enlightening quote from The World of Chess that chess is “… an art appearing in the form of a game.” I have always found this metaphor to be a great inspiration in the play of a game, that is, the idea that your opponent and you are participating in the creation of a work of art.

Some games may be more “artful” than others but you will learn to find moves that have more beauty or “truth” than others; these are usually the moves that produce a better game. In addition, replaying games recommended by chess teachers is an endeavor well worth the investment of your time and mindfulness. Many chess enthusiasts also enjoy perusing chess puzzles, which are a sort of solitaire chess. Chess puzzles are usually mate-in-two or mate-in-three compositions; these can be indulged in for pure enjoyment but they can also often help you think outside the box and bring fresh perspectives to your play; see Diagram 7.5 for a mate-in three chess puzzle.

In addition to helping you achieve a confident mastery of chess, my hope is to have made this chess book into an enjoyable experience in itself, to help the newcomer see for themselves the wonder and magic of chess that has entranced and delighted countless players and connoisseurs throughout the ages, and to enhance the enjoyment of the game for everyone that participates in the chess experience at any level. To this end, there is an appendix with a brief history of how the game originated and evolved to be the enchanting and alluring game it is today. I placed this history in an appendix because I believe it will be more interesting and enlightening to those who are new to chess to read after learning the rules of play.

May you enjoy the game of chess in a spirit of fun and adventure! Now it’s … your move!

Your Move: A Pithy Primer of Chess is now available from Amazon.com as a paperback for only $9.95 plus shipping and sales tax. Just click on the Buy Now button above to get your copy now.

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