50 Essential Chess Lessons

By Steve Giddins

Published by GAMBIT

Steve Giddins is a FIDE Master from England who plays regularly in international events and has frequently contributed to the British Chess Magazine. He has gained a reputation as a writer who provides useful, no-nonsense advice on topics of genuine practical importance. This is his third book for Gambit. His other titles are 101 Chess Opening Traps and How to Build Your Chess Opening Repertoire .

Steve Giddins has chosen 50 supremely instructive games - some old, some new, and including many that few readers will have seen before. He has annotated these games in detail from a modern perspective, explaining the useful lessons that can be learnt from them, while avoiding the harmful dogma or depictions of 'grand plans' that characterized many older works of this type. Throughout, there is emphasis on identifying helpful 'mini-rules' - nuggets of understanding that are of genuine use when facing a resourceful opponent across the board.

Giddins writes in a highly accessible down-to-earth style that appeals to club players seeking to improve their understanding of practical chess. His knowledge of Russian-language chess literature has enabled him to find many excellent examples that have not appeared in previous western literature.

In this book Giddins classifies the 50 games into 5 important chapters: Attacking the King, Defence, Piece Power, and Endgame Themes. Each chapter starts off with an introduction on the specific topic and then is followed by wonderfully annotated games that clearly show many important key ideas. Every game in concluded with a great recap of the main lessons to be learned.

The nice thing about this collection of games is that most of the games use the openings which are popular today (Sicilians, Kings Indians, and Nimzo-Indians for example), so most likely you will find at least a few games with openings you play. With 50 top quality lessons, for less than 50 cents each, this is an outstanding book!

NSG rating = 9.8 of 10