Rating: 
Summary: A really good book for the beginner
Review: For the beginner who wants to understand the basics this is a really excellent book. It gives the beginning chess player an overview of chess and a good beginning introduction of the winning principles of chess: force, space, time, and pawn structure. It is easy to read, easy to follow, and has lots of excellent examples. Most chess books are hard to read and follow for they always use sophisticated chess lingo. This book does not. It uses easy to understand language that clearly communicates chess principles. For the beginning chess player who wants to learn about chess and the beginning basics for consistently winning, this is the book
Rating:
Summary: This was the first chess book I ever read
Review: I have never found an easier book to read about chess than this one. It is easy to understand and superbly written! It covers chess notation but it's not your ordinary book that lists countless moves without covering them in detail. The moves are usually illustrated on the same page with the notation making it easy to follow. It dramatically improved my game to the point where I could beat several people who were an even match for me prior to reading. Excellent read. Excellent instruction. The tactics book is awesome also.
Rating: 
Summary: Second best beginning book out there
Review: I like this book as it does a good job of giving a basic introduction to the game. Written so any adult can understand basic strategy and basic rules of the game.
However, without a doubt CHESS FOR JUNIORS is a superior book for a kid or teen, and perhaps even for the adult reader. If you are an adult I would only give Chess For Juniors a slight nudge over this one. For a younger reader Chess For Juniors is best.
Rating:
Summary: A fine starting point for someone who knows the basics
Review: I purchased this book after reading the many reviews here, but noticed that a lot of the reviewers are fairly strong players already. Not that I don't appreciate their judgement, but it's probably more appropriate to see what a novice thinks of this book.I learned how to play chess at an early age, but never played much. I knew the rules, and how to move pieces, but had no idea how to really play. This book took me from the post Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess stage (that's the only other book I had at the time) to a level where I feel comfortable playing the game. While this book starts out at a very low level, don't let it fool you; it skips a lot and gets heavy pretty fast. So it's not ideal for a total beginner, but requires a good deal of attention and is best for someone who can grasp the basics quickly, since the author skips over them in just one chapter. Beyond that, this is an excellent book, and I have already ordered others in the series. The author neither talks down to the reader, nor does he patronize them. It's a relaxed tone, and that helps a lot. The only negative point is that the diagrams don't have coordinates, which makes it a little difficult to get used to spotting the right squares.
Rating:
Summary: Great starting place.
Review: I've recently started playing chess again, after 15 years off. Seirawan's book is an EXCELLENT starting place! It really teaches the basics everyone needs to know, and the chapter on pawn structure is absolutely INSPIRED -- a work of genius.
Rating: 
Summary: Some really great material, but the quality of the copy ...
Review: My Review of: "The Winning Chess Series," by GM Yasser Seirawan. (If you need to know, I am a LifeMaster of Chess.) This series was originally published by Microsoft Press, and unfortunately it was allowed to go out of print. This was a shame, as it was simply one of the finest series ever written. Now another publisher, Everyman Press, is bringing this series back. This is good, as a series of chess books this good comes along VERY rarely. The bad part about it is that EveryMan has not taken the care and the time to do things right. A local student came to me recently and said that they wanted to learn chess. I told them to purchase this entire series, which they did. I also own the original series by MSP. I sat down and did a "side-by-side" comparison of the two different versions. I came to the conclusion that they were nearly exact copies, but for the following problems:
# 1.) The paper is grainy and has a strange feel to it.
# 2.) Many of the diagrams look just like a really bad photocopy. (black and white - with a great degree of variance)
# 3.) The volume on "Winning Chess Openings," uses the most bizarre-looking font for the diagrams I have ever seen in a chess book. (It's just plain ugly.) The original series earned my HIGHEST recommendation. The words here are the same, even if the quality of the printing job is not. The material in here is some of the best instructional material ever printed, if you can get by the defects of the publisher.
Rating:
Summary: A no-nonsense introduction to improving one's skill
Review: Play Winning Chess by International Grand Master Yasser Seirawan, is a no-nonsense introduction to improving one's skill at the classic game of chess. Basic tactics, the rules of play, question-and-answer sections, black-and-white photographs and chess diagrams, and much, much more make Play Winning Chess an excellent introduction to using clever attacks and deceptive defenses. ...
Rating:
Summary: Great explanation of chess fundamentals
Review: Spurred by the reviews of one of my Amazon Friends I decided to start from scratch after a quarter century's absence from the checkered board. Based on the reviews, I thought that Seirawan's and Silman's book would be a good choice. After reading and working my way through the book twice, I give it a full endorsement. To paraphrase a title common among scientific textbook, this book could be called "Fundamental Chess". Indeed it is a well conceived and appropriately paced introduction for the beginner, yet even those that consider themselves beyond the beginner's stage will benefit from re-acquaintance with the principles that form the fundament of chess playing at any level. Furthermore, the inclusion of a set of problems helps the reader to see whether she/he got the message. Highly recommended
Rating:
Summary: Good, but steep learning curve
Review: This book aims to take the reader from beginner, possibly not knowing how the pieces move, to a player able to think and develop their game without getting wiped off the board quickly. We start with the obligatory rules of the game. Yasser doesn't waste time, they are taught quickly and then boom, you are thrown into chess playing. After learning the rules of the game, we are introduced to two basic checkmates, King + Queen vs. King, and King + Rook vs. King. No King + Bishop + Bishop vs. King, or the dreaded King + Bishop + Knight vs. King but that's ok as they are of greater difficulty. A beginner will do well to just learn the methods for these two mates. All well and good, but nothing any other beginners book hasn't done before. Yasser now throttles up the pace and exposes the reader to 4 ideas, at least one of which isn't typically exposed to beginners. Force(material inequality), Time(piece development), Space(control of the board) and Pawn Structure. These will be tough to move onto for someone who has just picked up the pieces in my opinion but they are the next necessary steps. Finally we have a collection of several short games where Yasser annotates the typical beginner mistakes that were made and why they are losing. This is probably the best part of the book and it does a good job of tieing together the four chapters on the concepts he taught. A glossary of chess terms, many not used in the book is also included. As a foundation, this would be a good book for someone who really knows very little or nothing at all, but despite Yasser's easy style it moves fast and will require work from the reader.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but steep learning curve
Review: This book aims to take the reader from beginner, possibly not knowing how the pieces move, to a player able to think and develop their game without getting wiped off the board quickly. We start with the obligatory rules of the game. Yasser doesn't waste time, they are taught quickly and then boom, you are thrown into chess playing. After learning the rules of the game, we are introduced to two basic checkmates, King + Queen vs. King, and King + Rook vs. King. No King + Bishop + Bishop vs. King, or the dreaded King + Bishop + Knight vs. King but that's ok as they are of greater difficulty. A beginner will do well to just learn the methods for these two mates. All well and good, but nothing any other beginners book hasn't done before. Yasser now throttles up the pace and exposes the reader to 4 ideas, at least one of which isn't typically exposed to beginners. Force(material inequality), Time(piece development), Space(control of the board) and Pawn Structure. These will be tough to move onto for someone who has just picked up the pieces in my opinion but they are the next necessary steps. Finally we have a collection of several short games where Yasser annotates the typical beginner mistakes that were made and why they are losing. This is probably the best part of the book and it does a good job of tieing together the four chapters on the concepts he taught. A glossary of chess terms, many not used in the book is also included. As a foundation, this would be a good book for someone who really knows very little or nothing at all, but despite Yasser's easy style it moves fast and will require work from the reader.
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